The American presidential election (27)
As I blogged in this posting two weeks ago, the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania on Tuesday could be the knock-out blow for Hillary Clinton – and I hope that it is because I want the Democrats to get behind Barack Obama for a victory over John McCain in the general election.
The general view – as reflected in this article – is that Clinton needs to beat Obama by more than 10% of the vote to head off calls from senior Democrats to withdraw – and I don’t think she will.
Obama leads Clinton in the overall delegate count by 1,645 to 1,504. Clinton has a slight edge in super delegates, with 248 backing her compared with 226 for Obama but, since 3 March, he has gained 80 and she has added only five.
Footnote: On CNN, I saw someone introducing Obama at a rally who managed to refer to the terrorist as Obama bin Laden and, according to an AP/Yahoo News poll published yesterday, 15% of the electorate think Obama is a Muslim. Dooh!
April 19th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Obama is a practicing Christian, and has never been a practicing Muslim. However, it’s arguable that he had a moderately Muslim upbringing; see e.g. Islam an unknown factor in Obama bid.
It seems Islam was never important to Obama, but nevertheless his Muslim background is significant because his conversion to another faith makes him, in some Muslims’ eyes, an apostate. Were he to be charged with apostasy by a prominent Muslim authority, this would highlight the issue of religious freedom (or lack thereof) in the Muslim world.