Legal Commentary

Obama Pitches Independents and Repubs to Register as Dems in PA

By Jeralyn

Remember Dems for a Day? Here's the new ad that went up on Barack Obama's website yesterday, telling voters if they are Indpendents or Republicans they must register as Dems by March 24.

Salon has more on the Obama's very orchestrated and intentional campaign to have Republicans and Indpendents register as Dems so he can be our party's nominee. [More...]

According to the L.A. Times, the Obama campaign is seeking to register an additional 100,000 voters as Democrats in the next two weeks. Currently, there are 3.89 million registered Democratic voters in the state.

....But both the Politico and the Los Angeles Times have published stories recently about the Obama campaign's efforts to register thousands of independent and Republican voters as Democrats before the March 24 voter registration deadline. The vote itself will be held on April 22; as it's what's called a "closed" primary, only registered Democrats will be allowed to participate in the Democratic half of the primary.

If the Obama campaign is to pull off an upset, the new registrants will be vitally important. As the Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown observes, "The final tabulations [of the voter rolls] from the Department of State could offer the first tangible indications of whether Obama can catch Clinton in a state where she holds the advantage."

More at Politico, the Philadelphia Enquirer and the LA Times.

Independents and Republicans can easily switch back for November. At least if real Dems, not Dems for a Day, were picking the nominee, we'd know we'd have their vote for the general election. And real dems prefer Hillary. She's got more of their votes than Obama, I posted the numbers in this post a few days ago, as calculated by a TalkLeft reader. No one disputed them.

When you re-tally the votes of only self identified Dems (from CNN exit polling), and using Rear Clear Politic’s reported votes by state, the following is the breakdown of votes by Democrats for Obama and Hillary.

Popular Vote Total:
* Total Dems 19,067,662
* Clinton Dems 9,508,926
* Obama Dems 9,027,622
* Hillary Over Obama 481,307

Popular Vote Total (w/FL)
* Total Dems 20,210,950
* Clinton Dems 10,103,436
* Obama Dems 9,427,773
* Hillary Over Obama 713,010

Total Popular Vote (w/FL & MI)
* Total Dems 20,680,081
* Clinton Dems 10,384,915
* Obama Dems 9,596,660
* Hillary Over Obama 825,601

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 15, 2008 (boomark / email).