Super Tuesday is here and I voted in Newton, MA at a middle school on the way to work. Sadly, my first choice John Edwards dropped out but was still there as the first name on the Mass. ballot-gone as a choice but still in my heart! I voted for Hillary Clinton as her health insurance plan far outdistances Obama's, and her depth of knowledge, intelligence, and experience trump Obama. But not an easy choice, as many of my friends are voting for Obama. And my Mom, who at age 90 was born into a world in which women could not vote and blacks were denied the vote in the South, is voting for Obama.

So, who are you voting for, and did you vote absentee, today on Super Tuesday, or is your state further down the queue?

This is a remarkable year, the first since 1952 in which both parties have a competitive race without an incumbent running so let's share our votes in the thread.

While some may be in a huff that Delores Huerta, who as the co-founder of the United Farm Workers used the phrase "Yes We Can" has recently endorsed Hillary Clinton, the untold story is that Barack Obama in using the phrase on election night in New Hampshire actually borrowed it from......Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. As a Massachusetts resident I saw Patrick use this phrase as his slogan in successfully winning the Democratic Primary for governor of Massachusetts in 2006 and Patrick went on to win the election (as the first African American governor of Mass.) and subsequently endorsed Barack Obama. As a Mass. resident who voted for Patrick I know this and still see the faded bumper stickers that say "yes we can." I don't recall any media mention of Patrick attributing it to Heurta, but I was astonded that the media did not pick up that Obama, no doubt with Patrick's blessing, used Patrick's campaign slogan.
Yet another example of Obama borrowing from somebody else without attribution and sounding great. And of course the Main Stream Media did not pick this up because they no longer have bureaus in Boston or the reporters who covered the 2006 Patrick campaign have been laid off. Obama speaks well, but taps into other people's eloquence as well as his own. John Edwards speaks from the heart and always attributes other people, whether it is political leaders such as Obama, Dr.King, Clinton, or working class people struggling to support their families.  

West Wing viewers like me are anticipating Sunday night's debate between Democratic Congressman Matt Santos(Jimmy Smits) and Republican Senator Arnold Vinick(Alan Alda), to be aired on NBC Sunday at 8(ET and PT). In the series, Vinick has a 9 point lead in the polls as a pro-choice Republican from California, but is facing the need to energize the pro-life GOP base while courting a pro-choice group mulling over an endorsement. Santos has shaken up his staff and is gaining in confidence, and personally challenged Vinick to the debate while waiting to speak at the Al Smith dinner.

In advance of the debate episode, the Zogby group is polling selected viewers(they just polled me) for MSNBC and asked some interesting questions about the West Wing. Namely,
*How do you rate Josiah Bartlett as president?
*Are you closer to Santos or Vinick on various issues, with about 10 issues listed-immigration, abortion, tax cuts, deficit, etc.
*If your car broke down, would Vinick or Santos be more likely to help you?
*Who would you rather have over for dinner and conversation?
*Who would you trust to take care of your children for a bit?
*Is the election campaign in The West Wing more interesting than an actual election?
*Do the producers of the show have a liberal bias?
*Will Santos or Vinick win because of being a better candidate, political philosophy, or whoever helps the ratings more?
*All questions also had cross tabs on demographics such as education, income, age, sex, state, religion, tv viewing(curiously PBS was not listed as a network choice-big goof there), and of course 2004 voting and party registration.
*The Zogby folks also plan to poll people right after the debate so that should be fun-If they don't take me off their list for posting this I will let you know what happens!

The Bushies have done it again, this time snubbing former president Jimmy Carter, who wanted to join the official delegation at the Pope's service, but was told to stay home. I can hear Karl Rove bragging about the photo op that resulted("There's George and his Dad and Condi, along with Bill Clinton-all set for Fox to label the photo, Republican Saints and a Democratic Sinner at the Vatican!!!!") Having Jimmy Carter there, of course, would have set up the contrast between Bush and a president who was the most sincerely religious of all of our recent presidents, and who not only said he was "born again" but taught Sunday School and believed in such un-Republican but Biblically correct views that it was morally right to work for peace, avoid war, and try to help those most in need throughout the world. And when the Pope came to visit America in the 1970s he met with.....Jimmy Carter!!!!   Excluding Carter from paying his respects to the Pope has not been a news story, but just imagine the wingnuts outcry if the Pope had died 12 years ago and President Clinton had invited former President Bush, but not the then still healthy Ronald Reagan. That is always the problem in the current crazy political climate-the wingnuts go nuts and drive the media agenda, while we play fair and when something like the Carter snub occurs, just shrug and say, that's the way it is. Meanwhile the public, who might care about such things if our side raised it, is not even aware of the issue.

Viewers of NBC's "The West Wing" will have a chance to perhaps influence the selection of the successor next fall to Martin Sheen's Jeb Bartlet by voting in a Zogby poll at www.zogby.com. As both a loyal West Wing viewer and a participant in Zogby's online polls, you can imagine my surprise Wednesday afternoon when halfway through their latest poll the question came up, are you a viewer of "The West Wing"? The next question asked if I favored Sen. Arnold Vinick, the Republican played by Alan Alda, or Rep. Matt Santos, played by Jimmy Smits, as the next president on the show.
         Since the poll also asks participants to identify their sex, zipcode, income, education, religion, and 2004 vote, NBC or whoever commissioned the questions will have a great set of demographics in trying to decide whether to have Alda(whose chances--as well as price-- may get a boost if he wins the Best Supporting Actor Oscar Sunday night.(My vote goes to Morgan Freeman for that one!)
         I loved Alan Alda as Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H* but voting for any kind of Republican, even a fictional one, is troubling, since real-life Republicans have hit the trifecta of winning the presidency, House and Senate in Washington. In Jimmy Smits as Matt Santos from Texas we would have a Democrat in power-if only on TV-as well as thoughts about what might have been had the Great Texas Democratic Hope of the 1990s, Henry Cisneros, not been sidetracked. As a former New Hampshire voter I participated in polls as well as the important primary, and thanks to mydd.com helped tilt online elections to Kerry, so here is a chance to win one for us Democrats. Vote for Smits and we will get to see a Democratic president in the fall of 2005, even if it is just once a week, Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.