Live Blog from the Anchor Desk 3/4/08
No live blog tonight. Anderson joins Wolf Blitzer in the Election Center for results from tonight's races.
Read last night's live blog HERE.
Afternoon Buzz
Hello. We're waiting for the polls to close in Rhode Island, Vermont, Ohio & Texas. Stay with CNN all night for the best political coverage. It could be a long night. Will Clinton stop Obama's momentum? Click on the links below for the latest on the voting and today's other top stories. Enjoy the afternoon buzz.
Raw Politics
Clinton looks for comeback victories
Voters were packing the polls on a day that could be a make-or-break day for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential bid.
Wintry mess could slow voter turnout in Ohio
Election watchers kept a nervous eye on the weather in four states holding primaries Tuesday, with Ohio the most likely spot for conditions that could dampen voters' enthusiasm.
Top Stories
Six killed, including 2 children, in home
Whoever killed six people in a Memphis, Tennessee, home may still be on the loose, police said Tuesday. They asked the community for help in solving the slayings.
Israel returns to Gaza; Rice urges return to talks
Israeli soldiers returned to southern Gaza on Tuesday hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared in the West Bank calling for Israelis and Palestinians promptly to resume peace talks.
Crime & Punishment
Boy band creator to plead guilty in fraud case
The creator of the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync has agreed to plead guilty to charges he laundered money and made false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding.
Couple sues over baby's lost remains
A Boston funeral home is being sued by a couple who claims it lost the remains of their stillborn son, forcing them to have to sift through cremated ashes looking for them.
What YOU will be TALKING about TONIGHT
Video appears to show Marine abusing puppy
The military is investigating a "shocking and deplorable" YouTube video that seems to show a Marine throwing a puppy off a rocky cliff.
Favre retires after 17 seasons
After flirting with retirement for years, Brett Favre means it this time. The Green Bay Packers quarterback quit a 17-season career in which he dazzled fans with his grit, heart and rocket of an arm.
Beat 360° 3/4/08
Bloggers!
It's time for 'Beat 360°' Everyday we post a picture – and you provide the caption. Our staff will get in on the action too.
Tune in every night at 10p ET to see if you are our favorite! Can you Beat 360°?
Here is today’s “Beat 360°” pic of the day.
Have fun with it.
Make sure to include your name, city, state (or country) so we can post your comment.
Spinning out in snowed-in Texas and flooded Ohio
Bloggees-
I cannot tarry today ...very busy building an ark so we can get out of Columbus when the time comes.
Ketchup for those of you who have a life.
Wowsie, did we have a rough and tumble three days or what. Obama got hit with:
a) his long relationship with a land developer on trial for corruption - the trial opened Monday. Timing is all, dear reader, timing really is all.
b) a memo suggesting his economic adviser told the Canadians that Obama doesn't actually mean his criticism of free trade deals. (Death, and I mean DEATH in Ohio)
And 3) Clinton ads beating him over the head for being a subcommittee chair with jurisdiction over U.S. policy in Afghanistan and not holding a single meeting. Smiles all around in Camp Clinton.
My eardrums hurt from the number of conference calls from HRC types pushing the story line..and Obama types pushing back.
And for all my friends calling–honest, i don't know what's going to happen. I have a better feeling for this one, but I’m not sharing.. That way I sound really smart tomorrow morning when I say..well, EXACTLY, I knew it all along.
Back to the Future
I have always been fascinated by the Turn of the Century. Not this one. The last one. Though I am no historian, I am a believer in that old truism, first given to us by poet and philosopher George Santayana: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Certainly that is true of the worst of human experience – war, economic hardship, famine, disease. But I have always about the flip-side. If we study our glory days - our successes and the greatest men and women who have come before us - can we draw upon that greatness to create a new Golden Age or, more to the point, perpetrate the one already ushered in for us?
That is why I read, with great anticipation, Jim Rasenberger’s new book America 1908. And I wasn’t disappointed. Through the prism of one remarkable year, a hundred years ago, we see a lesson for our own new century. 1908 reveals a country that seems to stumbled into the new era that America would ultimately dominate. The lesson is one of possibility, ingenuity, perseverance and courage. We encounter, throughout the book, Teddy Roosevelt – who embodied all of those. We meet his successor, William Howard Taft, who embodied none. There is Henry Ford, who invented the Model T and with it a new American freedom. There are the explorers - trying to reach North Pole. The Wright brothers take country (and ultimately and the world) into the air with implications that even they could not fully appreciate. Of course the stars of 1908 and of history are the extraordinary Americans.
But here is the best thing about America 1908: Jim Rasenberger fills in the spaces between the big events and important people with smaller, no less significant stories. This is what is so very compelling about his approach to history (as it was in his last book, High Steel). Ordinary people matter – African Americans caught up in a bloody race riot; ordinary women who challenge Victorian morality with their cigarettes and clingy Parisian fashions; the Wright brothers’ devoted sister without whom much of their success would not have been possible; a single boy on a bicycle.
2008 is passing quickly. What will we accomplish? The first woman president? The first African American? Who can imagine what new technologies will be born, or new application of the “old” ones. What will the year 2108 bring us?" As the New York World wondered a hundred years ago, "What marvels of development await the youth of tomorrow?" As Thomas Edison said later that year, "Anything, everything is possible." Read America 1908 and you will believe it too.
– Jami Floyd, “In Session” Anchor/360° Contributor
In tonight’s primaries: Mind the Gap
A year and a half ago, I hired a young graduate from Brown, Jeremy Haber, to become my research assistant. He has quickly developed one of the finest eyes I have seen in politics, and as we await the verdicts of the voters today, I am paying increasing attention to his latest advice: "Watch the margins."
As Jeremy has figured out, the way Democrats award delegates will mean more than one might think in today's contests. Hillary Clinton is now favored in Ohio, but if she were to win there by less than 5 points, she would likely only gain a few more delegates in the state than Obama does. She has to win by 5 or more to harvest a sizable number of delegates - to cut into Obama's pledged delegate lead - and by all indications, that will be hard.
In contrast, the much smaller state of Vermont could net Barack Obama 5 additional delegates if he wins there by double digits. And by all indications, he will. That may not seem right to Hillary supporters - that Obama could benefit more from winning Vermont, than she will from winning Ohio - but under rules both sides have embraced, the margin of victory counts enormously in awarding delegates.
One of the reasons why Obama is ahead so far in elected delegates is that his team figured out the math, too. As noted here earlier, Clinton beat him in the New Jersey primary on Super Tuesday but on that same night, she didn't really compete against him in the Idaho caucus and he swept to a big victory there. Net result: putting the two states together, Obama actually came out ahead in delegate count!
I have been telling Jeremy that psychology can often trump math, so that if Hillary wins the popular vote in both Ohio and Texas tonight - and election-eve polls say she is gaining traction in both - the fact that she won will be a huge story that will restore her campaign in the popular mind (and in the press).
But he is right to caution, "Watch the margins," because if Hillary were to win by only a tiny fraction, she won't get much help in the delegate count. Indeed, Barack could still end the evening with a bigger delegate haul. If so, that will count for more and more as the race moves on to states like Wyoming and Mississippi, where he is strong.
My eye will still be trained first and foremost tonight on who wins the popular vote in the four states. But my next question will be: by how much?
A final note: Hillary Clinton's supporters have every reason to go into today with their hopes up again. She has waged an aggressive and apparently successful campaign in these closing hours. Yet Barack Obama's supporters also have reason to be optimistic today: his crowds are still huge and boisterous, and since Super Tuesday a month ago, he has always done better in the final voting than the final polls. As the man said, "crunch time."
– David Gergen, 360° Contributor
Morning Buzz
Morning Folks!!! Big day today in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island...Polls show a tight race in Texas, and Clinton with the edge in Ohio. John McCain appears to have both states locked up, but hey ya never know.... SO stay tuned to CNN for all the results. A few other headlines to chew over this morning, but politics seems to be dominating the headlines, so grab your coffee and lets get to today's Morning Buzz...
Top Stories
Suicide blast kills 5 in Pakistan...
A suicide bomber, prevented from entering a naval college in Pakistan, set off explosives that killed at least five people and wounded 15 others Tuesday, an army official told CNN.
Iraqi helicopter missing...
An Iraqi army helicopter with two officers on board went missing north of Baghdad early Tuesday during bad weather, security officials told CNN.
Raw Politics
Clinton hammers Obama...
Sen. Hillary Clinton Monday questioned her Democratic rival's commitment to renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, a charge that Sen. Barack Obama's camp called a "blatant distortion."
Geography may decide who wins Ohio...
A campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination that has pivoted on race and gender could be decided here today by another divide, the state's urban north versus the rural south - pitting Ohio's popular governor against a cadre of big-city mayors.
Texas weighs in...
Their race stubbornly tight, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama blitzed Texas on Monday in a final surge of campaigning for Tuesday's primary.
Clinton to continue despite outcome...
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed to press on in her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination after critical primary tests in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday, even as advisers to Sen. Barack Obama said the latest round of voting would do little to improve her standing in a race in which she has been dealt setback after setback.
As Ohio goes, so does the Nation...
The presidential spotlight shines on this Midwestern state every four years, and for good reason. As Ohio goes, so goes the nation–at least for the past 44 years.
Who has WON what...what is at stake?
Crime & Punishment
Memphis shooting...
Six people were killed, including two children, and another three children wounded in a shooting Monday in Memphis, Tennessee, authorities said.
Teen & boyfriend spents months planning killing...
A high school couple forced to break up spent about a month plotting to kill the girl's parents before her mother and two younger brothers were fatally shot and stabbed in a weekend ambush, according to records released Monday.
Keeping Them Honest
Ecoterrorism...
Fire engulfed five luxury homes Monday morning at a subdivision north of Seattle in what could be a case of ecoterrorism, officials said.
Case against a drug maker...
A 4-to-4 vote on Monday left the Supreme Court unable to decide a pharmaceutical pre-emption case that was argued a week ago.
What YOU will be talking about TODAY
None of it is true...
In "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.
Avalanche on Mars...
The image, taken last month, reveals at least four avalanches of fine ice and dust breaking off from a steep cliff and settling on the slope below. The cascade kicked up massive debris clouds, with some measuring more than 590 feet across.
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