mushin no shin

I’ve been watching the LP Convention coverage on C-Span, they had the nominating speeches this morning, and just now finished the first round of balloting. Looking at the numbers for the first round, I’m thinking my prediction may bear out.

First round went 153 Barr, 152 Ruwart, 123 Root, 71 Gravel, 119 for everyone else, plus 10 write ins and 2 NOTA. 2nd round should be pretty similar; Mike Jingozian and Christine Smith were dropped; Jingozian endorsed Gravel, and Smith as we speak is tearing righteously into Barr. Anyway, as it shakes out, Root’s 123 will probably go mostly to Barr, while the 190 captured by Gravel, Phillies, Kubby, Jingozian, and Smith should eventually go mostly to Ruwart as each gets dropped in turn. We’ll give Barr the 10 write-ins since many of those were for Ron Paul. So at the end of the day, it looks like it will be something in the neighborhood of 285 Barr, 340 Ruwart. But again, you never know.

The nominating speeches were fairly interesting. Christine Smith isn’t a fantastic speaker, but it was great to see her use her time to lay into both Barr and the platform killers (well, she didn’t get specific, but it was readily apparent what she was getting at). So she gets my award for courage. Meanwhile Jingozian gets the award for class, walking right back up to the podium to nominate Gravel after delivering his own stump speech.

The heavy hitters came out to nominate Ruwart & Kubby — Dean Ahmad (one of the people I most respect in the party) and Barry Hess for Ruwart, and LP founder David Nolan for Kubby.

Well — the second round just came in; a tad unsettling: Barr 188, Ruwart 162, Root 138, Gravel 73, Phillies 36, Kubby 32. Kubby gets dropped, and he just endorsed Ruwart. But it looks like Root & Barr both pulled in their I-promised-someone-my-first-ballot-but-I-really-want-someone-famous votes, and the new math looks like Barr 326, Ruwart 303. Unless Ruwart’s got more strength among Root’s voters than I anticipate, it might be a bad day for the LP after all.

But a great day for Obama :)

Third ballot starting now…
Update: 3rd ballot in, and it’s getting worse. Barr 186, Ruwart 186, Root 146, Gravel 78, Phillies 31.

Sigh. OK, I’m out to the lake. I guess we’ll see what happens when we get back.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 25th, 2008 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Babble, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.