Democratic Race or Should I Say Democratic Mess

The Pennsylvania Democratic primaries are approaching with three and a half weeks remaining to make any difference in Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's campaigns. This northeast state is considered a Clinton's territory when it comes to the question who is going to win it. What is important, however, is what percentage of the 158 delegates at stake goes to the two presidential hopefuls. Right now Clinton is trailing Obama with more than 100 delegates and it undoubtedly matters how many more delegates than Obama she will get from this state.

Of course, in order for a candidate to win a state in the primaries, endorsements are extremely important if not the most important. Hillary Clinton already has the endorsement of Governor Edward Rendell, while Barack Obama has recently received a key endorsement - that of senator Robert Casey Junior. Contrary to his intentions not to endorse any of the two Democratic hopefuls until right before the primaries, Senator Casey decided to do that. In a news conference after his public announcement, he explained why he had decided to endorse Obama saying the following: "For a long, long time I was not only neutral but an undecided voter. That changed recently. I believe in this guy like I have never believed in a candidate in my life except my father." Those are strong words. Not only are they strong, but one should be rather naive in order to fully believe the Pennsylvania senator. How come somebody, let alone a U.S. senator, be an undecided voter and then all of a sudden starts to believe the person they are going to vote for so immensely that they compare the latter to their father? Actually, it is possible for an undecided voter to make their decision as a final one but I do not believe that the person they are going to vote for turns out to be so trustworthy to them that the only person they believe is more trustworthy is their father. What I mean is, you cannot be undecided yesterday and today be more decided than most of the decided voters. At least that is how I feel about it.

Some say that the reason why senator Casey decided to endorse Mr. Obama instead of Mrs. Clinton is that in the 1992 Democratic National Convention, when Bill Clinton won the Democratic nomination, his father Robert Casey Sr., who was then governor of Pennsylvania, was denied a prime-time speaking position which outraged many of the state's conservative Democrats (governor Casey was a pro-life Democrat and supportive of gun rights).

It makes sense but I doubt that it was decisive. In politics people do not always make decisions because of past facts. Sometimes there are more significant reasons such as better relations and more benefit. Who knows what Barack Obama promised to give Senator Casey in return - endorsements are not always issued because of what the endorsers say in front of the people! Senator Casey is popular among Catholic voters, people who usually vote for Hillary Clinton. This is not the first time that Barack Obama has tried to steal part of her electorate. Days before Super Tuesday, February 5, he received the endorsement of a white woman such as Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius. White women are another group that prefers Senator Clinton to Senator Obama. With her endorsement, he most likely sought more women to become part of his electorate.

In my opinion, the Democratic race resembles a mess. None of the two candidates has locked up his or her nomination and, except for the Black voters who mostly vote for Barack Obama and the Latino voters who mostly back Hillary Clinton, in every other group of voters it is not very clear which of the two is more popular.

Meanwhile, Senator Clinton recently said that even pledged delegates can switch votes at the National Convention. That is true but she should not rely on it. Honestly, I doubt that she really relies on it. Instead, she is trying to convince people that the race is not over yet and her chances to win the nomination are as good as those of Senator Obama. Some might say that if some of the delegates switch votes at the National Convention and thus elect the candidate with fewer delegates won, then this is not democratic. I rather disagree with such claim. First of all, it is the American people that founded this system of delegates. Second of all, primaries are between members of a party, that is, primaries do not elect an official but a party's candidate. And finally, if not only superdelegates but also delegates having switched their vote are decisive in electing the less popular candidate, if in such a close race we assume that there is a less popular candidate, it will be very likely that this candidate will later lose the general elections because of the party's loyal electorate being in disgust as a result of the events at the National Convention. I strongly doubt that the Democrats will risk losing the presidential race for a third consecutive time. That is why I believe that Hillary Clinton's words must not be taken seriously. Instead, they are just one of her attempts to narrow Obama's lead in delegates by making people believe that voting for her will not be a pointless vote.

However interesting the Democratic race is, Republicans find more benefits in it. Senator John McCain has already started his campaign for the general elections with an ad that can be seen on his website. Some people may argue whether ads are really important in this presidential race. I must say that they are very important because if you go to the CNN website and look more thoroughly at the primaries and caucuses results, you will see that senator Obama's voters see importance of campaign ads to be very big. Perhaps that made them vote for him and if this hypothesis turns out to be correct, then in the general elections ads may turn out to be decisive as well and senator McCain is already ahead in this aspect. Could this mean that the next president will again be a Republican? We are about to see this in November.

My Impression on the Current Events in Tibet

Tibet is located in southwest China. The people who live there are of different ethnic groups but as many might infer, the Tibetan culture is predominant in that region. There are Tibetans outside the territory of Tibet as well. As journalist Adrienne Mong has pointed out in her blog on the MSNBC website, in Aba Prefecture, neighboring Sichuan province, half of the people there are Tibetans. This makes, according to her data about the net population in Aba Prefecture, about 420 000 people.

The unrest that is happening in Tibet is already known worldwide. Leaders such as U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Republican presidential hopeful senator John McCain have urged the Chinese government to stop the unrest. They have also claimed that there are human rights abuses committed to Tibetans. Not only are they firm in their conclusions on the events in Tibet but some of them, like the European Union leaders, have also threatened the Chinese government to boycott this year's inauguration of summer Olympic games in Beijing if it does not eventually get along with the local population. From this aspect, the unrest in Tibet turns out to happen at probably the wrongest time possible. This year's Olympic Games may give bad image to the host country. As a result of this, there could be less income from foreign attendance despite the fact that unrest is far away.

Judging by the current events in Tibet, I get the impression that the Chinese government has not been adequate in its actions toward that region for a long time. On a slideshow in MSNBC about part of the Chinese history, what I read on the last slide immediately grabbed my attention. On this last slide, the reader realizes that there was unrest in Tibet in 1989 and Communist leader of China Hu Jintao ordered martial law in order to deal with it. When there is martial law ordered in a territory, that means that the military has more control and more rights on it and can prescribe more severe punishments than laws do there. No people likes to be under martial law and this may urge bigotry or, if there already is bigotry, it may further develop it. Martial law allows the military to abuse their powers and abusing your powers on somebody will very likely cause this person to hate you more than ever and try to get rid of you ruling him or her.

Apart from the martial law ordered in 1989, if we look at what BBC wrote as information about the conflict, we see that the Chinese central government wanted to centralize the power so much so that it could elect more heads of institutions by itself only. The election of the Dalai Lama does not make an exception. As far as I judge by their reaction, the Tibetans worship the Dalai Lama more or less the same way the American people worship democracy and depriving them of choosing his reincarnation is like depriving U.S. citizens of electing their president. I am absolutely sure that there would be unrest if the U.S. president happened to be elected by anybody but the people of the United States.

In my opinion, the strange thing is that the Chinese government, after imposing itself so much on its people's life, assumed that there would be no limits on their influence on anything there. That is why they were willing to determine the Tibetans' cultural leader.

It looks like even in a communist country there can be harsh protests and unrest regardless of the cost. What unpleasantly surprised me was Beijing's efforts to give false information by anouncing a surprisingly low number of people who have died so far. According to the Asociated Press, the Tibetan government in exile has said that 99 Tibetans have been killed - 80 in Lhasa and 19 in Gansu, while the Chinese government has claimed that there have been 22 people dead.

This is interesting - two sides saying different things about such a conflict. Which source is more trustworthy: the Chinese central government, or the Tibetan government in exile? Here, I think that many people will believe the Tibetan government in exile rather than a communist government as the Chinese government is. However, I do not claim anything before I make sure it is true. On MSNBC's website I opened Adrienne Mong's blog where she described her recent trip in Tibet. In her article, she mentions that on Sunday local residents, from Aba town, informed her of eight bodies having been left outside a major monastery with this number having risen up to 16 by the end of the day.

If the local residents and the Chinese government were correct at the same time, then outside Aba County there would be no more than 6 deaths. This is quite irrelevant, isn't it? Adrienne Mong said that it was hard to verify the information without traveling there so there is still a possibility that what she was told was false. On the other hand, how could everybody say that the Chinese government is correct in this situation?! The fact that there are people in hotels in Tibet who, after having given information about what the Chinese army do there, are afraid to say their names for fear of being harassed by authorities is enough to make us suspicious of Beijing's claims. It looks like what to Adrienne Mong was reported is way more likely to be true.

That's how I see what is currently going on in Tibet. After all, the Tibetan government is in exile right now. No government is in exile for no reasons.

As a whole, in my opinion, if the Chinese government wants to solve this issue as soon as possible, it should give Tibet autonomy. To me, giving autonomy to a subordinate region is a threat to having this region seeking independence in the future. However, this time I doubt that the Dalai Lama's demands of "genuine autonomy", as cited by MSNBC, could one day turn into independence from Beijing. Besides, autonomy has to be given for the sake of the country's stability and also for the sake of the Olympic Games this year. After the Olympic Games, they may establish a strategy on what to do with this region in order not to lose it one day.

Primaries and Caucuses So Far

Roughly two and a half months passed since the beginning of the presidential race in the United States. Most of the two major parties' candidates quitted it before the Iowa caucuses, right after them, or after two or more states having cast their ballots, whether primaries or caucuses. It has been a rather interesting contest so far both in the Republican Party and in the Democratic Party.

Although Republicans already have one of their candidates locked up his nomination, Senator John McCain (R - Arizona), this race did not lack passionate polemics between the candidates such as the one between Mr McCain and former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney. The two accused each other of being liberal. This is the first time I have ever seen this word being used as an insult but it did not amaze me because I know that Republicans are conservative and being liberal is not typical of their party's platform.

Super Tuesday contributed to a new scandal among the Republican presidential hopefuls right in the beginning when it appeared that former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee had won West Virginia, a winner-take-all state, with about 99% of the McCain voters having voted for him thus contributing to his win with 52% versus 47% for Mitt Romney and only 1% for John McCain. After his failure on Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney felt obliged to quit the race and later endorse John McCain for the sake of the party's unity. Mike Huckabee remained in the race until its informal end after the results of the elections in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island which were sufficient for the Vietnam War veteran to eventually lock up his nomination. There is still another rival in the race, Ron Paul. Nevertheless, John McCain is technically the Republican presidential candidate in the general elections having won more than the required 1191 delegates for the Republican National Convention. What remains unclear is who is going to be his running mate.

While Senator McCain can afford to take a rest after having locked up his nomination, on the Democratic side tension is still high. In fact, it has constantly been high especially between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Most of the democratic voters do not even know that there is a third candidate, former senator Mike Gravel from Alaska, but this is not important at all. On March 11 Obama won the Mississippi primaries and now his lead in delegates has increased. Now the difference between the two in terms of delegates is more than 100 to Mr Obama before the pivotal Pennsylvania primary on April 22 where 154 delegates are at stake. Besides, Florida and Michigan may have primaries, this time at stake, through e-mails and hypothetically if Clinton wins both of those states, Obama's lead may shrink which will give Hillary Clinton bigger chances to eventually get the nomination.

What impacted Mrs. Clinton's trailing in the race in my opinion? I believe that she did not manage to play her cards well. First of all, in her attempt to attract the voters, she tried so hard to satisfy them by saying exactly what they want to hear that she frequently changed her stands on the issues. For example, when already resigned governor Spitzer wanted to allow illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses, she was with him. Then she changed her position on this issue right after Mr. Spitzer changed it. It can be inferred that she wants the presidential post so badly that she is ready to do anything for that.

Second of all, she acted as if she was already president of the United States. This may be a good tactic in order to impress the voters but it may turn out to be a bad one because of some people's getting the impression that the particular candidate is too arrogant and hypocritical.

What made an even greater impact on Senator Clinton's trailing was her husband's playing the racial card in South Carolina where Hillary suffered a great loss mainly because of the black vote there which was 50% of the registered Democrats. About 83% of the African Americans in South Carolina voted for Barack Obama and after the state's primaries the black vote for him increased to around 90%. In my opinion it is Bill Clinton's relating Barack Obama to Jesse Jackson that further separated African Americans from his wife.

A fourth factor was money and endorsements. Senator Obama got a pivotal endorsement from Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius in order to attract female voters. Meanwhile Senator Clinton's having been endorsed by Mr. Spitzer might turn out to be negative for her after his love affairs with a "petite brunette".

As to money, according to opensecrets.org, Barack Obama got almost twice as much as Hillary Clinton on January 2008, $36 060 927 and $18 884 127 respectively.

Overall, it looks like things go well for the Obama campaign and very bad for the Clinton campaign. It is still a close race between the two not only in state delegates but also in the popular vote where Clinton leads by a very small margin.

What if the two eventually run under the same ticket? It would be extremely interesting and at the same time difficult to figure out whether it will be good or bad for the Democratic Party. According to results posted by MSNBC, about 6 out of 10 Obama supporters approve of the two under the same ticket whereas about 4 out of 10 Clinton supporters approve of such option. However, if you have watched CNN in the evening of March 11, the results in the Mississippi primaries show that Mrs. Clinton got more support in mainly Republican areas. So, in November, with Hillary Clinton on the ticket either as a presidential candidate or as a vice-presidential candidate, the Democratic Party my benefit by stealing the Republican electorate from the Republicans which will most likely lead to a broader electoral college and eventually being victorious for the first time since 8 years.

Russia and the Presidential Elections - Past, Present, Future

Russia, the biggest country in the world geographically, may have lost a lot of its power for the past several years but it is still a world power and everybody who thinks that Russia has lost its influence in the world either hasn't read news for the last several years or has never been interested in business or politics.

In my opinion, what happened in the recent presidential elections must not be perceived as a surprise to anybody. President Vladimir Putin's influence in Russia since his tenure started has significantly increased. This goes to show how impressive a politician he is. In most countries, politicians, who win a high office in the executive branch, usually stay there for one or two terms and after that they get replaced by another politician, without them being remembered by the constituency as much as Vladimir Putin will probably be remembered by the Russian people. Moreover, people all over the world usually do not pay as much attention to a politician's endorsement of a candidate as Russians apparently did in the recent elections with Putin's endorsement to Medvedev being critical for the his victory.

People who have followed what was going on in Russia for the last several months were convinced that First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was going to be the next president. His substantial win of 70.2% brought doubts about whether those elections were fair enough. Election watchdogs reported that the other candidates were denied equal access to the media.

Three or four days ago I watched a report on television featuring Garry Kasparov and the difficulties he faced during his presidential campaign. In this report there was a meeting in a hall where some Russians were discussing the presidential elections. In a dialogue between two women, it became clear that they were unaware of who the other presidential candidates were and what they standed for. Besides, I got the impression that those candidates' organized meetings on the streets were not as aspiring to the people as Mr Medvedev's ones. The only things I heard [from their meetings] in this film were violations of the Constitution and development of organized crime. In order to win elections a candidate should also propose positive changes, not just say what some people want to hear from him or her. For example, they probably mentioned the murders of reporter Anna Politkovskaya and former KGB security officer Alexander Litvinenko. Both of the murders are things Russia should be ashamed of. However, I suppose that they never proposed how to solve such problems – how to prevent future murderers like those ones.

As to Medvedev's campaign, some people from the opposition said that some of the young supporters were paid in order to be present there and scream slogans such as "we need Putin's Russia". I also remember a youths' camp where people were talking about Medvedev as a person who represents Russia's bright future and their being given the best conditions to bear as many kids as possible with his possible ascendance of the presidential post. The latter belief by those youths may be perceived as a sign of Russia's return to its communist period in terms of fanatical belief of something that is not as easy to achieve as it initially looks, bearing a lot of kids, but it is not. History has already shown Russians that communism does not work. If it worked there would still be the Soviet Union and perhaps there would still be the Cold War. Bill Clinton said in his biography written by Allan Metz and Arthur Schlesinger Jr.: "History is constantly being rewritten." However, I sort of doubt that Russia will rewrite its Soviet Union history with its Cold War attitude with the election of Dmitry Medvedev.

In my opinion, instead of turning to the past, with the election of Dmitry Medvedev Russia is looking to the future. At a closer look not only in state but also in international perspective, Mr Medvedev might be the only viable presidential candidate. Let us not forget that he is also Gazprom's chairman. Gazprom, once one of the ministries in Russia, is the most influential provider of gas for Europe. Although it is officially a private company, over 50% of its shares are owned by the Russian government. In this case it may turn out to be that Dmitry Medvedev will even be better a president than Vladimir Putin because now every country talking to Mr Medvedev may directly talk about striking a gas deal instead of talking to Mr. Putin who was something like a mediator between Gazprom and the countries interested in Russian gas. Some may say that it is not good when such an influential figure, as Mr. Medvedev is, is both chairman of a huge corporation and president of the biggest country in the world. Whoever else is Russian president, Gazprom would still be influential so even if it is not Dmitry Medvedev on Russia’s presidential post, I cannot see any big difference in terms of the world market’s status quo. Besides, when Mr. Medvedev talks publicly as Russian president, it will be more or less as if the company talks so it will be easier to figure out what course Gazprom is about to take.

Also, what I recently read in BBC is controversial to the common beliefs that Gazprom is evil in the world market and it makes sense. In an article written by Duncan Bartlett, "Russia's energy giant flexes its muscles", Alexei Pushkov, a professor of International Relations, author and TV presenter said that Russia's being perceived as a gas dictator was wrong by comparing Russia's Gazprom with American oil companies' influence. According to him, those are Russia's and USA's instruments of foreign policy. What he means is that if Russia is to be accused of increasing its influence globally with gas, then so is the U.S. with its oil.

Moreover, Gazprom denies its critics by having foreign investors like American-born James Fenkner, who also has his place in Batlett's article. Mr. Fenkner says that Gazprom listens not only to the Russian government but to its investors as well. It looks like the people in Gazprom know how important foreign investors are in today's business and therefore are now conducting a capitalist policy rather than a communist one.

So my opinion is that in the current Russian political situation, lacking alternatives, Dmitry Medvedev might be the only viable option for the presidential post.