THE DAILY BLADE:MI Primary: Hillary Gets Hollow Victory; Romney Gets Resuscitated
Hillary Clinton was the only first-tier Democrat on the ballot in the MI primary, but that doesn’t mean voters had no choice but to vote for her.
And MI Dems exercised their right not to vote for Hillary by staying home (turnout was low, with only 20 percent of registered voters participating); voting for Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel (as did 21,688 and 2,363, respectively); crossing party lines to vote for one of the Republican candidates (exit polling suggests that John McCain got 41 percent of these votes, Mitt Romney got 33 percent and Mike Huckabee, 14 percent); or voting “uncommitted,” and taking a chance that their preferred candidate might not get those delegates at the national convention in August.
Like a slowly deflating balloon, as the percentage of precincts counted increased Hillary’s share of the vote sank. Starting at 62 percent, she was down to 58 percent an hour after the polls closed and finished at 55 percent when all the votes had been counted.
Meanwhile, the number of voters who chose “uncommitted” – for all intents and purposes, a vote against Clinton – kept rising. Forty percent of all voters chose this option – as did 68 percent of black voters. Fox News exit polls indicate that three-quarters of black voters would have cast ballots for Barack Obama, if they could have.
This is just the latest evidence that Clinton’s support among blacks has eroded precipitously compared to just a month ago. According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, Obama has a nearly 2:1 advantage over Clinton amongst black voters (60 percent v. 32 percent). This bodes ill for Clinton going into the primaries in Southern states. Among Dems, black voters make up nearly half the vote in SC and GA (47 percent each), as well as LA (46 percent), and more than a third of the vote in VA and MD.
Forget Hillary’s “woman problem.” She now has a problem with black voters – rather, they have a problem with her. The politics of personal destruction has finally boomeranged on the Clintons.
On the Republican side, Mitt Romney had a huge win over John McCain (39 percent vs. 30 percent), with Mike Huckabee coming in third at 16 percent. While the win puts Romney back in contention – and gives him the distinction of being the only candidate who’s won more than one primary or caucus so far - he does not necessarily come out of MI with the momentum to overcome Huckabee’s strength in SC.
In the RealClearPolitics Average of four polls, Romney is currently trailing Huckabee by 10 points. If Huckabee comes out of SC with a solid win, he has the momentum to challenge Giuliani and McCain for a first or second place finish in FL - the RCP Average for the FL primary currently has Giuliani and McCain tied at 21.3 percent, with Huckabee at 18.3 percent and Romney at 17 percent.
MI was do-or-die for Romney, but he could just be a dead man walking.
The Definition Of Chutzpah
Former crystal meth addict Sandy Bergen and her parents sued Clinton Davey for negligence after he gave her the drug and she overdosed, which caused a heart attack that led to multiple organ failure and a coma. Bergen says she got hooked the first time she tried meth at age 18, was able to quit, but relapsed because she was stressed out over testifying in an upcoming sexual assault trial and when Davey did the drug in front of her she could not resist its lure.
Bergen, of Biggar, Saskatchewan, won her suit against Davey on a procedural technicality: A Canadian judge struck Davey's defense because he refused to reveal the name of the person who had given him the meth, meaning her suit is unopposed so the only thing left to decide is the size of the damage award, reports The Associated Press. Bergen shrugs off those who think that she should bear the responsibility of her own actions: "[Y]ou've just got to be strong and not really worry about what people think," she tells AP.
Breasts Are Not Udders
The Stiletto belongs to a subversive – and reviled – group of women: Those who do not wish their breasts to be put to work feeding babies. Nora Ephron is one of us, too:
I’ve never understood the religious fervor that surrounds breast-feeding. There are fanatics out there who believe you should breast-feed your child until he or she is old enough to unbutton your blouse. Their success in conning a huge number of women into believing this is one of the truly grim things about modern life. Anyway, one of the main reasons given for breast-feeding is that breast-fed children are less prone to allergies. But children today are far more allergic than they were when I was growing up, when far fewer women breast-fed their children. I mean, what is it with all these children dropping dead from sniffing a peanut? This is new, friends, it’s brand-new new, and don’t believe anyone who says otherwise. So: is it possible that breast-feeding causes allergies?
Although lacto-Nazis consider women like us child abusers, there are no well-controlled, large-scale, long-term prospective studies comparing the health status and IQ levels of children who were breast fed as infants and those who were bottle fed. The truth is, the vast majority of infants will thrive equally well on breast milk as on formula.
Take The Stiletto, for instance, who was born a month premature and had to stay in an incubator until she had gained enough weight – on formula – to go home. The Stiletto’s mother did not believe in breast feeding, and continued bottle feeding. Today, The Stiletto is healthy as can be – no allergies, no asthma, no digestive problems. And because she didn’t breastfeed, at 71 years of age The Stiletto’s mother has breasts that are as pert and perky as when she was a newly-wed.
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