No More Incumbents Blog

It was bad enough that the US government did nothing to help victims of Hurricane Katrina for days after the hurricane.  It was worse that FEMA was grossly inept at turning the billions of dollars from Congress into relief for those victims.  As a country we were outraged at the a government, a President and his incompetent buddy that couldn’t run a relief effort and ultimately helped to destroy the city of New Orleans.

FEMA Trailers Exposed Victims to Cancer causing Formaldehyde 

Well, FEMA apparently didn’t stop at those opportunities to outrage us and harm the victims of Hurricane Katrina yet again.  The trailers that hurricane victims were ultimately ‘lucky’ enough to be allowed to live in may have exposed those people and their children to a toxic gas that included formaldehyde.  That exposure could cause cancer in those victims.  To make matters worse it appears that FEMA and the CDC may have rigged some of their own reports to down play the risk of exposure, but Lawmakers have now gotten to the bottom of at least that rigging.  They could have been a little faster, and it would have helped if they had done something to prevent the harm to begin with.

Lawmakers Fault FEMA on Trailers

We need to clean up the sewers of Washington politics.  Washington doesn’t need a colon cleanse enema, they need a completely fresh start.  The only way to achieve this is to say No More Incumbents and replace the whole lot of them with fresh faces.  That also means that the Federal Agencies need a top to bottom review as well.  The bureaucrats need to know that it will not be business as usual in the capital or throughout the rest of the United States.

There was a massive voter turn out in South Carolina today.  Close to 500,000 voters turned out to vote.  This was my hope yesterday, and it seems to have helped in wiping out race as an issue in South Carolina.

White voters did not line up to vote against Barack Obama as many polls predicted just 24-48 hours ago.  African Americans did vote almost entirely for Barack Obama, 80% to 18%.  Most pundits are not interpreting the African American vote as a racial vote against a white Hillary Clinton, but a vote in favor of Barack Obama as a person to change Washington. 

Exit polls equally blamed both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for slinging too much mud in the South Carolina election.  The mud slinging by the front runners did not seem to give John Edwards a bump, but may have kept him alive.  In fact, it is starting to look like John Edwards will take his delegates to the Democratic convention and might possibly play King or Queen maker at the convention if he swings his delegates to break a tie for either candidate.  In fact it is rumored that he was approached by the Clinton campaign and then that his campaign reached out to the Obama campaign, which snubbed him. 

Barack Obama was expected to win the South Carolina before it began and NBC and CNN are now projecting with 0% of the precincts reporting that Barack Obama will win by a substantial margin. 

Right now second and third place is a closer fight between Hillary Clinton, who was polling heavily in second before last week, and John Edwards that did not go as negative as the other two candidates.  John Edward won South Carolina in 2004 against John Kerry.

As I write that headline I hope that I am wrong!  I was wrong about the Republican Debate the other night.  I figured Giuliani would fight a lot harder for the nomination, but everyone took the high road to show up the Democrats in an odd and temporary exhibition of Republican unity.

So now, I hope my predictive headline is completely wrong tomorrow.

Unfortunately, here is why I think I will not be wrong.

CNN is showing a Mason Dixon Poll the night before the Primary that shows the following results:

Registered South Carolina Democratic Voters Choice for Nominee

Other recent polls have shown that 56-60% of African Americans are likely to vote for Obama tomorrow. (I suspect that CNN is not displaying the African American Column to essentially stir up more of a racial issue so that they will have something more extreme to report on. 

It is worth considering that a majority of African Americans will not vote for Hillary, but it hints of racism when a majority of whites do not plan to vote for Obama.

Note history would indicate that CNN by pointing out this disparity might actually help Clinton and Edwards.  This type of information too often in the past has turned African American voters off to the point where they did not show up at the polls at all, thinking that their vote would not count.  Atlanta based CNN is essentially potentially fueling that fire to block the African American vote.

Dynamics of Turn Out and Blocked Turn Out in South Carolina

This is what the Obama and Clinton Campaigns will be doing tomorrow based on those and other polls.  They will be promoting the base that is for them to get out and vote and they will be working to dishearten the portion of the base not likely to vote for them to stay home and give in.

Edwards as a white son of the south is in a weirdly neutral position and is only disliked by people that were negatively impacted by some of his lawsuits when he practiced in this area, especially in the medical professions.

What is so sad about this is that in South Carolina, people are lining up on racial lines to choose a President.  Now, this is not necessarily surprising.  Iowa may be able to turn out a majority of white voters to vote for Barack Obama, but let’s face it South Carolina is no Iowa no matter how many snow birds like myself may move in a southernly direction.

I’m from Illinois and live in North Carolina about 14 miles from the South Carolina line by car and 2 miles by boat.

My Hope is a Massive Turnout

Now its cold here tonight.  About 32 degrees and in Northern terms that translates to about 10 degrees below zero down here where the blood is thin.  Fortunately, the forecast does look dry and it will likely warm up in the morning.

My hope is that South Carolina witnesses a massive turnout of all the races of people.  At the end of the day, I feel that democracy will win if neither Obama nor Clinton succeed in discouraging any voters.  Hopefully all of their negative attack ads will fail and people will go to the polls in droves.  I’m not saying that people should not vote for Clinton or Obama, but I do want as large of a representative group as possible to make that decision together.

If that is not possible, then I hope that both Obama and Clinton’s attack ads backfire and the voters that actually do show up, I hope they vote for Edwards.  I do not agree with Edwards on many points, but I do disagree with the political attacks that Obama and Clinton are engaged in right now.  I do not think South Carolina will decide anything tomorrow as far as the general nomination goes.  So if the Democrats were to receive a nice wake up call that attack ads are not going to be tolerated by the electorate and that the politics of discouragement are not to be rewarded then I think America will have taken a positive step in the right direction.  No longer will politicians be able to put their finger to the wind, test the polls and take actions to block the people that do not like like unplugging the power of adjustable beds in hospitals to prevent the patients from getting up and out of bed to vote. 

If this can be stopped, we will all have South Carolina to thank for opening the door to a great new future.