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Audacity of Truth
The Potomac Primaries (*VA, MD, DC CALLED FOR BO, Mc* -WED AM UPDATE: MCCAIN SPEECH TRANSCRIPT LINK ADDED)
**This post has been bumped to the top and will be updated frequently throughout the evening, with the most updated content appearing at the bottom of the post. Newer posts appear below.**
Virginia, Maryland, and DC delegates are up for grabs today in what is being called the “Potomac Primaries.” The number of delegates in play for Republicans are listed here. The winner-take-all state of Virginia is the big prize with 63 delegates. Huckabee had a bit of a late surge in the polls going into the primary in VA, but I don’t see him winning that one (or Maryland, for that matter).
For Democrats, Virginia has 83 total delegates, and Maryland has 70, making them states both La Clinton and Obama would no doubt love to win. With his string of victories over the weekend, O-mentum is on Obama’s side.
For results as they come in this evening, check the following links:
Poll closing times:
In DC and Maryland, polls open at 7:00 am ET and close at 8:00 pm ET, and in Virginia they open at 6:00 am ET and close at 7:00 pm ET.
Turnout is expected to be high.
Update 1 – 5:59 PM: Jim Geraghty has the first round of exits, and the show a surprisingly close race between Mc and Huck in VA, but he cautions against reading too much into it, considering how something similar happened in AZ, where the Mc won by a significant margin.
Update 2 – 6:51 PM: Read this at the top of Drudge’s page: “EXIT POLLS SHOW 2:1 OBAMA LEAD OVER HILLARY IN VA AND MD, 3:1 IN DC…”
Update 3 – 7:00 PM: Fox News and CNN are already calling Virginia for Obama … the exits really must look bad for Hillary.
Just took a quick look. Yikes – they do. Even the female vote went more to Obama.
Update 4 – 7:06 PM: Shep Smith is saying that the reason Huckabee is running closer than was anticipated in VA was because it ’sounded like’ the “far right” were turning out in high numbers at the polls.
Sigh …
Update 5 – 7:12 PM: Fox is reporting that among Independents, Huckabee and Ron Paul did better than John McCain.
Here’s exit polling not just for VA, but MD, too.
Will I be able to endure the next 30 minutes of Shep Smith? That’s assuming Brit or Hannity and Colmes take over at 8. Hope so.
Update 6 – 7:42 PM: Per Shep/Fox: Voters in MD have until 9:30 to cast their votes tonight, due to traffic issues (I assume weather-related?).
Check out the exits for the GOP in VA:
VA GOP exit polls posted by MSNBC show McCain leading Huckabee 50-36% among men, who made up 52% of primary voters. Huckabee, however, leads 47-43% among women.
[...]
– 74% of GOP primary voters were registered Republicans, a group which McCain leads 47-45%. Among the 22% Independents, McCain also leads, 38-35%.
– Huckabee leads among conservatives (68% of voters), 51-35%, while McCain leads 67-26% among moderates (26% of voters).
– Evangelical/Born-Again Christians comprised 46% of GOP primary voters and went 58-30% for Huckabee. All others went 56-29% for McCain.
– 62% of VAans frequently or occasionally listen to conservative talk radio, a group which Huckabee leads 48-38%.
Conservatives aren’t just rolling over for McCain. Good. Like I’ve said before, he needs to earn their votes.
Update 7 – 8:00 PM: The polls have closed in DC – AND, Chris Wallace has taken over for Shep Smith. Whew!
McCain has just taken his first lead in the VA primary, with 23% reporting.
Update 8 – 8:04 PM: Wow – did ya’ll see this? Hillary supporter and PA governor Ed Rendell is quoted in today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as saying that “some whites” in PA were not ready to vote for a black man. PA’s primary is April 22nd.
Update 9 – 8:20 PM: With 39% reporting, it is still too close to call for the GOP in VA. Jon Garthwaite has results from different areas of VA.
Question: Since they obviously can’t use the “Bradley Effect” as an excuse for how the actual results are at odds with what the polling was in VA on the GOP side, what excuse will the punditocracy use? 
Fox News is reporting that a top Clinton campaign official has resigned.
Update 10 – 8:31 PM: Fox News has called Virginia for McCain – meaning he gets all 60 delegates. So has CNN.
Hillary is losing big – down 23% with 61% reporting. No wonder she’s already in TX. She’ll probably be camped out there for three weeks (the 193 delegate-rich TX primary is March 4th).
Check here also for Virginia returns.
Update 11 – 8:53 PM: Here’s more on Clinton’s deputy campaign manager resigning.
Update 12 – 9:12 PM: Hillary is now speaking in Texas … will we see tears?
Update 13 – 9:39 PM: The nets are calling MD for BO and Mc. Obama is getting ready to speakin in WI. Will I be able to sit through it?!
Update 14 – 9:50 PM: I am mini-liveblogging BO’s “change” speech in the comments. Someone pass me a bottle of Tums, please!
Update 15 -10:01 PM: The nets call DC for Mc and Obama.
Update 16 – 10:06 PM: Mc’s doing just what BO did in his speech. He’s skipping right ahead to the general and attacking both Hillary and BO on their cut and run attitudes. Good for him.
Also, Bryan at Hot Air gets the same impression I got about Barack Obama’s speech:
Once he’s finished I’ll cut some and post it here. I’m struck by how Mondalian he sounds. And how easy he’s finding it to twist McCain’s words on the “100 years” comment. He’s shedding his Mr. Clean image to launch a fairly negative string of attacks on McCain, whom he just praised as a hero for opposing tax breaks.
Interesting. He speaks with passion, but if most Americans tune in enough to hear what he actually says, he’s a weak candidate. Much weaker than I thought.Now he’s talking about joining the Peace Corps or learning a foreign language to create the America “we dreamed of.” Why don’t liberals tout opening a business or joining the military?
If you’re watching this, chime in with your reaction to this speech. He’s not disguising his hard leftism anymore.
He sure isn’t.
It’s on.
Wed AM Update: Here’s a link to McCain’s speech from last night.
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44 Responses to “The Potomac Primaries (*VA, MD, DC CALLED FOR BO, Mc* -WED AM UPDATE: MCCAIN SPEECH TRANSCRIPT LINK ADDED)”
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what does huckabee hope to gain by staying in the race? Obama took wash. state by 37%! PLEASE read ‘moderate muslims, wherefore art thou?’ It’s at the top of http://www.darrellepp.com
What does Huck gain? Enough delegates to pass Romney for 2nd, which would make him “next in line” and the prohibitive favorite in 2012 (unless McCain pulls off an upset in November). After all, having the second-most delegates in the previous hotly-contested primary season is one of the sure-fire ways to get the Pubbie nomination (right after being a sitting President or a sitting/ex-VP).
I think it’s O’Reilly that takes over in 30, but the fact that Brett Baer did Special Report might mean we get Brit.
Thanks, steve. Heck, I’d take KO’s rundown of the results right about now over Shep’s.
Er, wait a minute …
Don’t tell me you caught a fevah too.
38% reporting, McCain up by 1,100 with approx 165,000 votes cast. Very close.
How? Take a look at the Survey USA tracking numbers. They showed Huckabee closing very rapidly over the last few days, and for once, the closing numbers held up (almost).
Fox projecting McCain wins Virginia and all 63 delegates.
If the VA primary were a few more days away, Huckabee might have pulled off the upset. Of course, things could still change tonight …
Regarding Clinton, we’re getting Bill on Thursday, then Hill will parachute in for some cash over the weekend.
Heheh. Gotta love it, steve. Make sure to get some good pix
What makes you think I’ll be allowed within 10x zoom range of Bill (much less into the very-closed Hill fundraising events)?
Continuing the thought (I’ve been hitting send too early all night), I do know somebody that is pretty successful in infiltrating liberal sanctums, Uncle Jimbo. He even has some press credentials as a member of Pajamas Media.
I would be even more interested in reading about conservatives who were able to get into an O-man rally. Hopefully they could make it past the hypnotists standing at the front door.
I recommend keeping an eye on Blackfive, because that is UJ’s plan. In fact, I believe he’s at the Kohl Center in Madison with Obama’s supporters now.
Try wearing a dress, I guarantee you’ll get to “see” Bill.
LOL NC!!
Sweet – will do, steve.
Sorry, I don’t have the legs for that (and if either of my sisters did that, Hill will be an instant widow).
Heh – you’re a trip, steve!
And I can’t even blame alcohol tonight. Because getting by-district results next week should prove to be very difficult, I won’t be able to drunkblog my state either (though I should be able to live-blog it).
Not that it’s going to matter; it will be McCain taking all 40 delegates on the Pubbie end and Obama taking the lion’s share on the ‘Rat end.
steve – don’t you wish you were at that O-man rally tonight?
Sheesh. Where’s the freakin’ chariot?
And you take $$ from lobbyists too, BO. What a con artist!
Dems tough on national security? Like you were today, Senator?
It would be a long drive home – I’d first have to tip a couple with UJ, then make the hour-plus drive back with that drive starting in a place that doesn’t believe in salt or effective plowing.
Let me put it this way; a couple of snows ago, I went to Madison the day after a pretty good overnight snow. It wasn’t all peaches and cream on the freeway to there, the main segment that would take an hour in free-flow and about 1:20 in Milwaukee’s morning rush took 1:40. The last 6 miles into downtown Madison took me almost an hour, and it was that short only because I bailed on the main drag in.
That’s right, BO – lie about the 100 years comment. AGAIN!
What a way to support the troops, Senator! “The money in Baghdad could better be used for schools here.” Just pull the rug out from under them!
Make that “tip a whole heap with UJ until neither of us could walk”, and I would still have that long drive home. The Bravo Sierra’s so deep I had to mute Obama.
He’s speaking of “dreams” now. I have a dream of my own – a dream where Obama wraps up this cotton candy speech in the next ten seconds!
Hopefully McCain will step all over Obama’s speech like he did Romney’s in Michigan. Surprisingly, MSNBC is the one that has that alert.
Is Mc on MSNBC?
yeah – you DO need a reality check.
You know the feeling you’d get at the idea of eating a pork chop that had been placed in a used ash tray? That’s the feeling I have right now.
Love it! A liberal trying to correct the liberal mistakes of the past with more liberalism!
Thank you, Fox, for breaking to McCain.
Sounds like McCain is realizing that the presstitutes won’t be on his side the next 9 months (that time frame is just begging for a comment; I’m not quite qualified to make it however).
I want to get a transcript of Mc’s speech. He’s really tackling a lot of BO’s loftier rhetoric.
I’m sure Allahpundit or Bryan have it on their hard drives.
The line about the oil companies won’t give up their profit’s easily strikes me as something every conservative can latch onto to show he doesn’t know economics 101.
Won’t give up their profits easily?
um. No. They have a right to make money. You want to see gas lines and fuel shortages? Try taking “profits” from the oil companies who are not in it to be a charity organization and make $0.
Market place of ideas has Obama bankrupt…..
I think there is something to a “McCain effect”; oddly it’s kind of the reverse of the “Bradley effect”. Some Republicans appear to know they’re not supposed to be voting for McCain, so they under-report.
I don’t get the notion though that McCain has to “earn (conservative) votes”, though. There seems to be this oddball notion that having won the primary season with his stances that are tough-to-swallow for conservatives, he should now abandon them just as they’re about to do him some good with moderate Democrats and independents. I don’t get it, even on issues where I disagree with the senator. He is Mr Republican right now and the RINOs are the ones talking about sitting this out or (bizarrely) working for one of the Democrats.
Brainster might want to look at the fact that the GOP vote during the entire primary season has lagged behind the Democrat vote – sometimes far behind. Where are all of the moderate Democrats and independents that McCain was supposed to attract?
I plan to vote for McCain in November, but right now he has the look and feel of a Grade A lemon. The rationale behind supporting McCain is that he will put “blue” states into play. But what if the reverse happens? What if McCain’s many glaring weaknesses force the GOP to play defense in “red” states like Texas (my home state)? That could happen if he follows the advice of some embittered moderates and blows off conservatives as “having no place else to go”, as one commentator on another blog put it.
Call it the Lincoln Chafee Effect – a “moderate” Republican veers so sharply to the Left he alienates his base without attracting many votes from the opposition. Recall that the GOP spend lavishly to defend Chafee, and he still lost handily. Could this be McCain’s fate?
McCain better buckle down to earning conservative votes – and fast.
Hey MD – I heard one of the talking heads speculate tonight that perhaps the O-man is getting a lot of the Independent vote now that the “I’s” know that McCain is pretty much a lock for the nomination at this point, and so they are trying to help defeat Hillary.
Dunno if it’s true or not, but just wanted to throw that out there.
I had thought he was getting a significant percentage of the Independent vote earlier in the primary season, but I could be wrong. I’ll research it sometime later today.
Indeed, it is McCain’s fate. Seeing that the man isn’t a Conservative In Name Only and barely differs from sHillary on many policies, I think his supporters main concern shouldn’t be the Independent vote but attracting the Conservative vote.
The worst case scenario for him and supporters is if B.O. gets the nod. If that happens, he will struggle getting either the Conservative or Independents. The Conservatives will sit out and the Independents will vote for B.O.
Hey MD – I heard one of the talking heads speculate tonight that perhaps the O-man is getting a lot of the Independent vote now that the “I’s” know that McCain is pretty much a lock for the nomination at this point, and so they are trying to help defeat Hillary.
My concern is that the turnout in the GOP primaries and caucuses has been bad from the start, even when Hilly the Hun was “Ms. Inevitability” and McCain was still struggling. Mort Kondracke has an excellent article about the “enthusiasism gap” that McCain has to somehow overcome. He needs to focus on issues like winning the war in Iraq, ending earmarks, keeping taxes and government spending under control, pointing out the dangerous foreign policy ideas of Obama and Clinton, and standing up to a Congress with the worst poll ratings in history.
I should have added that if McCain listens to some of the wackier advice I have seen on other blogs and concentrates instead on sticking it to conservatives in an effort to prove his bona-fides with “moderates” and the MSM, he will run the risk of a 50-state sweep.