Alaska, Hawaii, And Washington Hold Presidential Caucuses

Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington held their Democratic caucuses on Saturday and, as expected, Bernie Sanders did very well. Sanders has done well in caucuses in this campaign. He dominated the caucuses in all three states last night. Here are the results:

ALASKA

Clinton...............18.4%
Sanders...............81.6%

HAWAII

Clinton...............29.2%
Sanders...............70.6%

WASHINGTON

Clinton...............27.2%
Sanders...............72.6%

Sanders picked up more delegates than Clinton did tonight, which means he did cut into her delegate lead -- but not enough. Here are the current delegate totals:

Clinton...............1712
Sanders...............1004

That means Clinton has to get 671 more delegates to win the nomination. Sanders needs 1379 more delegates. Since there are 2,049 unallocated delegates, Clinton needs 32.7% of those unallocated delegates, while Sanders needs 67.3% of those delegates. Sanders has a Herculean task ahead of him -- especially considering Clinton is expected to do well in Wisconsin, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland (which are coming up soon).

Alaska, Hawaii, And Washington Democrats Vote Saturday

The Democratic presidential nominating race marches on. Democrats in three more states will decide their presidential preference this coming Saturday, March 26th -- Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington.

Alaska has 16 delegates up for grab, while Hawaii has 25 and Washington has 101 delegates. Those states will send more to the convention, but those are the delegates that will be decided on Saturday.

All three of Saturday's states will be having a caucus, instead of a primary. That would seem to favor Bernie Sadners over Hillary Clinton. So far, in this year's campaign, Sanders has done better in the small state caucuses and Clinton has done better in the large state primaries.

But Sanders needs to do more than just win these three states. He needs to win them by a huge majority, so he can take most of the delegates at stake. Splitting the delegates with Clinton does him no good at this point. He needs to start cutting into the substantial delegate lead that Clinton currently has -- and he needs to do it before the large state primaries of April (like Wisconsin, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania).

Here are the Bloomberg Politics delegate totals for Clinton and Sanders:

CAUCUS / PRIMARY DELEGATES
Clinton...............1223
Sanders...............920
difference...............303

ALL DELEGATES
Clinton...............1690
Sanders...............946
difference...............744

(NOTE -- The caricature of Clinton and Sanders above is by DonkeyHotey.)

Another Small Step Toward Equality In U.S.

Even though the Constitution guarantees all citizens of the United States equality under the law, that has never been a reality. The primary reason for this is that some people in the U.S. still think their religious book should trump the Constitution. But slowly, the country is making positive stapes toward that goal of equality.

One of the major battles currently being fought is to extend the same legal rights to same-sex couples that opposite-sex couples enjoy. A couple of weeks ago, New Jersey became the 14th state to recognize same-sex marriages as legal. And only a week ago, Illinois became the 15th state as its legislature passed a bill to recognize same-sex marriages. That bill is still awaiting the governor's signature, but he has said publicly that he will sign it (and same-sex marriages in that state will be legal next summer).

Now a 16th state has climbed on the equal rights bandwagon. On Tuesday, the legislature in Hawaii passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriages, and the governor signed it into law on Wednesday. The law will go into effect in a little over two weeks -- December 2nd. Here are the 16 states that have extended equality to include same-sex couples:

1. California
2. Connecticut
3. Delaware
4. Iowa
5. Maine
6. Maryland
7. Massachusetts
8. Minnesota
9. New Hampshire
10. New York
11. Rhode Island
12. Vermont
13. Washington
14. New Jersey
15. Illinois
16. Hawaii
and
District of Columbia

The tide is building and soon the entire country will grant true equality to same-sex couples. The only question now is how soon -- and which state will be next.

The chart below shows that, as usual, the Republican Party is out of step with the rest of America on this issue (as they are on many social issues). While only 37% of Independents and the general public, and 20% of Democrats, remain opposed to same-sex marriage, a substantial majority of Republicans (64%) remain opposed.

But the tide of history is against them, and it could easily hurt the party's future membership. Only 20% of the young remain opposed, and the other 80% are unlikely to join a party that remains opposed -- since this is a big issue with the young. As older party members die off, the party will shrink if it cannot moderate its views on this issue. Unfortunately for the GOP, the fundamentalists and the teabaggers control their party in most states, and those two groups have the highest percentage of opposition (while moderate Republicans show a percentage very similar to the general public and Independents).

Alabama, Mississippi, And Hawaii Enter The Republican Presidential Melee

(The above caricature is by DonkeyHotey from a photograph by Vishnu Pitiyanuvath.)

Three more states and another U.S. territory enter the GOP presidential fray by making their choices known today. The territory is American Samoa with 9 delegates. The states are Alabama (50 delegates), Mississippi (40 delegates), and Hawaii (20 delegates). I haven't heard who the favorite is in Hawaii or American Samoa, but I suspect it may be Mitt Romney (aka Wall Street Willie). He's been doing well in Pacific islands this year.

There's no way on this planet that Romney will get most of the vote or delegates from Alabama or Mississippi though. It is barely possible that he could win a plurality in one of those states, but only if the other three candidates split up the majority vote (and even then I just don't see him finishing in first). There are two new polls released for each of those two states (from Public Policy Polling and American Research Group), but about the only conclusion that can be drawn from them is that the races in both states are unpredictable. Here are the numbers:

PUBLIC POLICY POLLING (Alabama)
Mitt Romney...............31%
Newt Gingrich...............30%
Rick Santorum...............29%
Ron Paul...............8%

AMERICAN RESEARCH GROUP (Alabama)
Newt Gingrich...............34%
Mitt Romney...............31%
Rick Santorum...............24%
Ron Paul...............6%

PUBLIC POLICY POLLING (Mississippi)
Newt Gingrich...............33%
Mitt Romney...............31%
Rick Santorum...............27%
Ron Paul...............7%

AMERICAN RESEARCH GROUP (Mississippi)
Mitt Romney...............34%
Newt Gingrich...............32%
Rick Santorum...............22%
Ron Paul...............8%

I will be watching the outcome of the races in all of these places with interest. And I will post the results from American Samoa, Alabama, and Mississippi tomorrow. It might take another day for Hawaii, since they will allow voting until 8:00pm their time.

There are also two new polls on the race nationwide, and they show just what a mess the race has become. Both are respected polls, and yet they can't even agree on which candidate currently has the nationwide lead among Republican voters. Here are their numbers:

CBS NEWS/NEW YORK TIMES POLL
Rick Santorum...............34%
Mitt Romney...............30%
Newt Gingrich...............13%
Ron Paul...............8%

GALLUP DAILY TRACKING POLL 
Mitt Romney...............34%
Rick Santorum...............25%
Newt Gingrich...............15%
Ron Paul...............12%

CNN Settles The "Birther" Questions

It is a sad fact in this country that a majority of Republicans (and far too many of the general public) believe that President Obama was either not born in the United States or that there is some doubt that he was born here. This is because of conspiracy theorists called "birthers" (who just are unable to accept that an African-American was elected president by the people of the U.S.).

The folks at CNN have decided to settle this question once and for all. They sent a reporter to Hawaii to find the truth, and discover if there is even a grain of truth to the questions posed by the "birthers". Here is what they found:

1. Birthers say the president refuses to release his "official" long form birth certificate and that the certificate (shown above) which he has released is not official.

This is nonsense. The Certificate of Live Birth pictured above is not only the official birth certificate, but it is the ONLY birth certificate given out by the state government. Anyone born in Hawaii who asked for an official copy of his/her birth certificate would receive a form that looked exactly like the one the president has already released. And the form says right at the bottom of it that the form will serve as "evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding". How much more official can a form get?

2. Birthers say the president won't release his long form certificate because it says he is a muslim on it.

More nonsense. While the state used to have a longer form which contained information like the hospital the person was born in and the father's occupation, state officials say the form never contained any information about the baby's or the parents' religion. CNN viewed some of the longer (discontinued) forms and verified that there was no information about religion on it.

3. Birthers claim that the birth notice in the Hawaii newspaper was placed there by Obama's family so he could receive government services (or for some other nefarious purpose).

Again, not true. Both the newspaper and the Department of Health Services say there was no way for parents (or other relatives) to place birth announcements in the paper. All of the birth announcements printed in the newspaper came directly from the Department of Health Services (and they had no interest in placing a false announcement).

4. Birthers, especially Donald Trump (the most famous birther), say it is strange that no one remembers the young Obama in Hawaii.

This is not strange because it is simply not true. A lady named Monika Waidelich had her son at the same time and in the same hospital. She remembers seeing the president next to her son in the nursery because, "In those days, there were hardly any other black babies." A professor at the University of Hawaii, Alice Dewey, was faculty advisor to Obama's mother and knew the president as a child. She remembers discussing with his mother the difference between giving birth in Indonesia (where Obama's sister, Maya, was born) and Hawaii (where Barack Obama was born). Even the current governor of Hawaii, Neil Abercrombie, was a friend of Obama's mother and remembers seeing the child immediately after his birth and helping her celebrate the birth.

The fact is there has never been any real doubt that Barack Obama was born in the United States -- specifically in Hawaii. As I said before, this is an invention of some racists in America who are upset that an African-American was elected president. They will grasp at any straw and make up any lie to try and change that fact.

I appreciate the effort of CNN to try and lay this matter to rest, but I seriously doubt it will do any good. The "birther" beliefs were never based on any facts, and no fact will ever change their minds. But then they are Republicans, and to believe in Republican policies one needs to have an ability to ignore inconvenient facts -- both voters and politicians.