Randomly picked quotes about the winners/losers of "Super Tuesday"

As might be expected, most comments are focused on Obama. He is the exotic candidate, the romantic underdog, the pied piper, and all eyes are on him, even those who don't really want to talk about him (like me)...

Here are the quotes, not in any particular order:

... this Tuesday in the pub after our local Stop the War Coalition meeting there was a discussion about the US presidential elections, and one well respected socialist activist expressed the opinion that Israel decided who the US president would be, and a member of the Green Party agreed that Jews still controlled most of the world’s money. Of course other people, including myself, challenged these views. (here)

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Actually, I think both Democratic front-runners should be asked some tough questions about anti-Semitism and racism: "Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton are competing for the endorsement of Mr. Sharpton, who said he would make his choice among the Democratic field in a few weeks."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/us/politics/22obama.html

How did our politics degenerate to the point where the top democratic condenders are Competing for the endorsement of Al Sharpton (as opposed to competing to see who can make it to the exit first when he walks into the room)? (here in comments)

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"I shall not vote for Obama based on the information thus far at hand. Such information raises serious doubts about his being other than an opportunist. And, the connections with Farrakhan require a lot more explanation than now is available and, on top of that, there is the issue of whether any explanation ought to be believed, given the long history of connection. That, I think, is a legitimate point raised by Ms. Schlussel"

No different from the luntatics who believe the rubbish of Isael Lobby and won't vote for a Jew. Ugly, ugly, stuff!! A new low even for you!!! (Here)

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Rick Moran is inspired by Obama's rise? He should be frightened after a look at his razor thin resume and vacuous speeches. The visual of such a green bean sitting across the table from Vladimir Putin - or just about anyone else who has the semblance of a spine should scare the hell out of anyone who has a clue. (Here)

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Obama's campaign preys on the naive, the inexperienced and blindly idealistic. He has, what we would call on the street, "a good rap." (here)

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Obama might stand for the freedom of opportunity in America. He also stands for the facile shallowness of a population that thrives on fantasy and denial, that will not educate itself on history, economics, or international issues, but will deign to vote for a candidate because he seems "inspiring" or has a "nice presentation" or because Oprah's in his favor. (here)

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Obama makes me feel swoony. I bet he takes a lot of womens' votes that might otherwise go to Hillary. I think its wonderful and extremely inspirational to see the first female and AA presidential candidates with a really good chance, but it's too bad they both came along at once. I hope they both get to be president one after the other. I haven't seen the media people (I'm mostly watching CNN) looking so upbeat and happy for a long time either. I think this whole think is just great for the USA and everybody who likes and admires it.

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In the Democratic camp, Barack Obama has performed much better than could be expected after his loss in New Hampshire one month ago. He won a whole procession of states.

Hillary Clinton, who half a year ago seemed to have the nomination in the bag, but who has lost some ground since then, didn’t do too badly either. She triumphed in big states like New York, New Jersey and California. (here)

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I find it particularly interesting that noone has written about McCain as the person least likely to understand life in America for most of its people, or to>> be very insightful in dealing with it: he grew up a Navy brat, which means living on bases and moving around every two years( I had an air force colonel cousin whose kids lived that way and they had attitude adjustment problems too)and then working inside a military hierarchy. Never had to organize or manage anything because the military structure itself did that. So his perpetual adolescence is what people who had to grow up in a civil (actuallly that's debatable) society had to do as they aged. (A friend's email)

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I will leave it to my discerning reader to decide which comments have any substantial merit and which are the equivalent of autoerotic indulgence...

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Jeff Weintraub provides a very thorough assessment of the results on Super Tuesday. He also explains the seemingly inscrutable voting system in the American elections. There is certainly a method in this madness.

This is the most interesting:

It is also possible, of course, that developments over the next few months may upset this balance and give either Obama or Clinton a substantial edge in support among Democratic primary voters. But even if that does happen, it is still pretty safe to predict (1) that neither candidate will collect enough delegates from the primaries and caucuses to win the nomination, and so (2) we will probably see a genuinely contested Democratic nominating convention for the first time in over four decades, and (3) the so-called "superdelegates" will play a decisive role in the final choice (which is to say that we may see, not only a contested nominating convention, but a good old-fashioned brokered convention) [--]

Some Democrats worry that the party's chances will be damaged if the Republicans coalesce around McCain pretty soon while the Democrats spend several more months tied up in an expensive and increasingly bitter primary fight. That's conceivable, but I suspect that in this case Matthew Yglesias's pre-emptively dismissive response is probably on-target:

One thing I can predict is that you'll see a lot of handwringing about how this fight is dooming the Democratic Party. It's all, as best I can tell, total nonsense. Disagreeing about which of two strong leaders should go try to implement a pretty widely agreed upon vision of national policy is a healthy thing to do.