I wont be exaggerating at all if I say that the whole world will be watching carefully on the 4th of November 2008, wishing their favorite candidate win. The latest international polls have favored Barack Obama, and the USA polls gives him around a 12 to 13 points lead. But the race is not over, many factors play part here, McCain was down before and ended up winning the republican party nomination, then there is the Bradley Effect.
The Bradley Effect is where a white voter would say in polls he would vote to the African-American candidate but when voting in the voting booth he will end up voting for the other WHITE candidate, so basically racists being shy of their racism and lying to the pollsters. This happened in 1982 while electing California’s governor, Tom Bradley lost the elections although he was ahead in some polls. I do not believe that the Bradley effect happened or will happen to Obama, we already saw in the primaries how he hold close to the polls even in some places thought to be heavily racist, areas that has a very bad reputation with race discrimination.
So where will those who live in the Middle East watch the elections? Well, there is the free-to-air channels and the Subscription (PAY TV) channels.
Lets start with the PAY TV Channels: ORBIT: The best network to watch all the action, all year long ORBIT is actually the best place to watch the American politics on their channel “ORBIT NEWS”, shows from MSNBC, NBC, ABC, PBS and BBC. In the last week of the elections since the 27 of October 2008 Orbit launched another news channel “ORBIT NEWS 2″. “ORBIT NEWS 3″ will be launched on the election day.
It has been announced that “ORBIT NEWS 1″ will feature:
Brian Williams from NBC Nightly News
Charles Gibson from ABC’s World News
Jim Lehrer from News Hour on PBS
Tom Brokaw from NBC’s Meet the Press
While “ORBIT NEWS 2″ will feature famous political commentators from MSNBC:
Keith Olbermann (Countdown)
Rachel Maddow (The Rachel Maddow Show)
Chris Mathews (Hardball)
David Gregory (Race to the White House)
ORBIT NEWS 3 will starts on the Elections day and it will air a live feed from ABC channel. It will precisely launch at 1:00 AM KSA time.
ART [Firstnet - Pehla]: Not a great choice, as ART only has FOX NEWS and SKY NEWS. FOX NEWS has the worst reputation as the most biased name in news, although ironically their slogan is “Fair & Balanced”. SKY NEWS is not bad but I doubt their coverage would be as good as CNN and MSNBC.
Showtime Arabia: Showtime is by far the worst choice, as they only provide only SKY NEWS, I am not sure though if Bloomberg & CNBC would show any coverage of the elections, if they do then you might follow it on those to FINANCIAL channels.
FREE-TO-AIR Channels: CNN: The best source in my opinion, great panel of analysts and they have the resources to produce an astonishing full day coverage of the elections. Were very good in covering the primaries.
MBC4: If they do stick with the CBS schedule they will be one of the best channels to watch too, CBS coverage will be interesting to watch, that is if MBC4 cancels their regular schedule and stick with CBS as they have the rights to CBS News.
Aljazeera English: Really Really unbiased, am not being sarcastic this is for real, they are unbiased so much that I get bored watching it, they even cover the other candidates such as Ralph Nader and Bob Barr !! While the American mainstream media shoved them aside.
Other choices in English language: BBC World News, EuroNews, France 24, DW-TV, Russia Today, Press TV, NDTV Arabia
Other choices in Arabic language: Aljazeera Arabic, Al Arabiya, BBC Arabic, Future News, Al Aan TV, Al Ekhbariya, France 24, Rusiya Al-Yaum (Russia Today), Al Hiwar TV, Alhurra (The Free One), Nile News, NBN, ANN, CNBC Arabia (NOT SURE)
WATCH ONLINE: It is expected that either all or some of the following channels will be streaming their election day coverage for free online: CNN, MSNBC, FOX NEWS, ABC, and CBS.
You can also watch The following channels in a very good quality via Livestation: Aljazeera English, BBC World News, BBC Arabic, Bloomberg, C-Span, DW-TV, EuroNews, France 24, ITN, Russia Today (English), Rusiya Al-Yaum (Russia Today), BBC World Service (Radio), DW-Radio.
Livestation also includes many user added channels, you can simply either search by name or check the channel list available.
Bottom Line: We in the Middle East can’t vote, and the majority do not believe that the election is clean, seriously we all are set in thinking the US Elections is rigged, just like 2000. We do not believe that it is fair, especially that there is no equal coverage to other parties other than Democratic party and the Republican part. Most of us do not give a crap and most of us think it is just BS. But I am sure that most of people in the middle east, Arabs, Asians, Europeans, South American, Muslim and Christians will watch.
Some have watched the American elections since last year as if they are watching a reality TV show, a bit longer than American Idol I guess, and some watched it seriously following each and every article written about it. Some believe that it effects all of the world and some believe it will only affect Americans. I believe the whole world have hated the past 8 years, they hated Bush’s foreign policy and domestic policy, in the end all will watch and will wait to know who is the next president for USA hoping change come to Washington and we start seeing some difference in the way things work. Some might laugh and call it naivete, and some will call it hope.
In my opinion Tina Fey amazingly played the role of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the accent, the voice and the style. I can bet that during the first few words no one could differentiate between them. Amy Poehler as usual played Hillary Clinton. The sketch was really funny, something I do not usually say about SNL sketches. This was the opening sketch of the premiere of SNL’s new season.
The star of “Nation of Whiners” Phil Gramm who is a former U.S Senator and Lawmaker from Texas who is also a past presidential candidate have stepped down from his role as a co-chairman for Mccain’s Campaign. This is after his controversial comments on the economy and calling USA a “Nation of Whiners”.
Here is the clip of Phil Gramm’s “Nation of Whiners”:
Here is how the story broke on Countdown, actually it was 2 minutes before the start of Countdown on AP:
Olbermann: Sen. Barack Obama is going to suffer political attacks no matter how he votes on the FISA bill but he can still stand on principle and score a political win by promising to take advantage of a loophole in the bill.
I was trying to find a video that would summarize the primaries, showing the highlights of what happened during the five months. Yesterday I was watching COUNTDOWN and was amazed on how they made a video of just what I was thinking. The way they combined events was clever and funny in sometimes. Watch……
The first thing Barack Obama talked about after his latest victory, clinching the nomination, was his grandmother, he wished that she was with him. So how did his family celebrate? actually many Kenyans celebrated.
I was watching HARDBALL with Chris Mathews just a minute ago and MSNBC announced that Rep. James Enos “Jim” Clyburn will be endorsing Barack Obama, this means that Barack Obama now only needs 39.5 delegates to clinch the nomination.
We know she cant do it, the media know it, The experts know it, she knows it. It is not doable, she is waiting for a miracle, she is waiting for some unusual big thing to happen, because now even if she is asking to seat Florida and Michigan delegates she still wont get it.
She is so desperate her website now directly redirects to the donations page!! I donno who in his right mind would bid on a broken horse? She is still in it, til the end.
I know, you are sick of this, I am not an American and I cant vote and and and ……. and I am pissed that this thing is still going on. I find it weird, very weird that she is still not dropping out.
People ask me why I follow the American elections, and I tell them, have you seen what happened in the past 8 years ?!
Although I hate to admit it, the world, and I mean the WORLD is effected by who gets to be the president of USA.
The WORLD does not need this kind of president:
The WORLD needs a smart, well educated, DEMOCRATIC President. A President that knows when to use diplomacy effectively, and how to solve problems without quickly reaching to military action.
So we know that Hillary is old news, we know she is playing in the injury time, and she cant do anything.
So my advice to all who are refreshing reddit over and over and over again, and to all who is visiting all sort of news sites, blogs, to all who has the TV fixed on a news channel, don’t wait, don’t waste your time, it wont happen. Not now, maybe when all the states vote, maybe, but who knows maybe she will fight all the way. And by doing that she is hurting herself and her party.
This MEMO was sent by the Campaign manager David Plouffe to Superdelegates, basically stating that the only way to win the nomination is by the number of delegates won.
As I said before, I guess that Barack Obama has locked the nomination. We will be seeing number of Superdelegates endorsing him and within days it will become official.
And that is why I really think Hillary is going to give up today and not tomorrow, she is lending her campaign money million after million and yesterday she must have realized that there is no hope in winning this. If she stays and keep lending money to her campaign she will be only hurting herself and her party.
Read the MEMO after the jump….
There are only six contests remaining in the Democratic primary calendar and only 217 pledged delegates left to be awarded. Only 7 percent of the pledged delegates remain on the table. There are 260 remaining undeclared superdelegates, for a total of 477 delegates left to be awarded.
With North Carolina and Indiana complete, Barack Obama only needs 172 total delegates to capture the Democratic nomination. This is only 36% of the total remaining delegates.
Conversely, Senator Clinton needs 326 delegates to reach the Democratic nomination, which represents a startling 68% of the remaining delegates.
With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days. While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or its millions of supporters, volunteers, and donors.
We believe it is exceedingly unlikely Senator Clinton will overtake our lead in the popular vote and in fact lost ground on that measure last night. However, the popular vote is a deeply flawed and illegitimate metric for deciding the nominee – since each campaign based their strategy on the acquisition of delegates. More importantly, the rules of the nomination are predicated on delegates, not popular vote.
Just as the Presidential election in November will be decided by the electoral college, not popular vote, the Democratic nomination is decided by delegates.
If we believed the popular vote was somehow the key measurement, we would have campaigned much more intensively in our home state of Illinois and in all the other populous states, in the pursuit of larger raw vote totals. But it is not the key measurement. We played by the rules, set by you, the DNC members, and campaigned as hard as we could, in as many places as we could, to acquire delegates. Essentially, the popular vote is not much better as a metric than basing the nominee on which candidate raised more money, has more volunteers, contacted more voters, or is taller.
The Clinton campaign was very clear about their own strategy until the numbers become too ominous for them. They were like a broken record , repeating ad nauseum that this nomination race is about delegates. Now, the word delegate has disappeared from their vocabulary, in an attempt to change the rules and create an alternative reality.
We want to be clear – we believe that the winner of a majority of pledged delegates will and should be the nominee of our party. And we estimate that after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries on May 20, we will have won a majority of the overall pledged delegates According to a recent news report, by even their most optimistic estimates the Clinton Campaign expects to trail by more than 100 pledged delegates and will then ask the superdelegates to overturn the will of the voters.
But of course superdelegates are free to and have been utilizing their own criteria for deciding who our nominee should be. Many are deciding on the basis of electability, a favorite Clinton refrain. And if you look at the numbers, during a period where the Clinton campaign has been making an increasingly strident pitch on electability, it is clear their argument is failing miserably with superdelegates.
Since February 5, the Obama campaign has netted 107 superdelegates, and the Clinton campaign only 21. Since the Pennsylvania primary, much of it during the challenging Rev. Wright period, we have netted 24 and the Clinton campaign 17.
At some point – we would argue that time is now – this ceases to be a theoretical exercise about how superdelegates view electability. The reality of the preferences in the last several weeks offer a clear guide of how strongly superdelegates feel Senator Obama will perform in November, both in building a winning campaign for the presidency as well as providing the best electoral climate across the country for all Democratic candidates.
It is important to note that Senator Obama leads Senator Clinton in superdelegate endorsements among Governors, United States Senators and members of the House of Representatives. These elected officials all have a keen sense for who our strongest nominee will be in November.
It is only among DNC members where Senator Clinton holds a lead, which has been rapidly dwindling.
As we head into the final days of the campaign, we just wanted to be clear with you as a party leader, who will be instrumental in making the final decision of who our nominee will be, how we view the race at this point.
Senator Obama, our campaign and our supporters believe pledged delegates is the most legitimate metric for determining how this race has unfolded. It is simply the ratification of the DNC rules – your rules – which we built this campaign and our strategy around.
Yesterday Barack Obama won big in North Carolina, he smashed clinton by more than 15 points. While in Indiana Clinton was a able to have a modest 2 points win over Obama. So In NC Obama wins 56% to 42% for Hillary and in Indiana Clinton wins 51% to 49% to Obama.
Bottom line Obama has even more delegates now than ever, he needs less than 300 delegates to lock the nomination, she needs to win 80% of the upcoming delegates, which as we know is impossible.
Everybody knows it was all over for Hillary months ago, but the media just wanted to keep the competition alive so they would have something to do. Have panels, interviews, polls, projections and discussion after discussion after discussion.
But I promise all of the media that they will be very busy in the general election, and after November they will go back to cover Paris Hilton and Britney Spears showing their stuff.
“With leads like this now, if you throw in Michigan and Florida, as is, then Obama would still have about 150,000 votes and he would still have 100 delegates, pledged delegate, lead.” - Chuck Todd
Tim Russert delivered the bottom line effectively: “We now know who the democratic nominee is going to be and no one is going to dispute it”
“Some were saying that North Carolina would be a game-changer in this election. But today, what North Carolina decided is that the only game that needs changing is the one in Washington, DC” - Barack Obama
Here is Barack Obama’s speech after the win in North Carolina:
And you can just feel in his speech that he has fully switched now to the General Election mode, he know that whatever is going to happen he is the nominee and therefor he will start to focus on McCain.
Logically, today we are seeing infront of our eyes, the new President of USA. That is if the dems does not screw it up.
I wont be exaggerating at all if I say that the whole world will be watching carefully on the 4th of November 2008, wishing their favorite candidate win. The latest international polls have favored Barack Obama, and the USA polls gives him around a 12 to 13 points lead. But the race is not over, many factors play part here, McCain was down before and ended up winning the republican party nomination, then there is the Bradley Effect. 
It has been announced that “ORBIT NEWS 1″ will feature:
While “ORBIT NEWS 2″ will feature famous political commentators from MSNBC: 
CNN: The best source in my opinion, great panel of analysts and they have the resources to produce an astonishing full day coverage of the elections. Were very good in covering the primaries.
You can also watch The following channels in a very good quality via Livestation: Aljazeera English, BBC World News, BBC Arabic, Bloomberg, C-Span, DW-TV, EuroNews, France 24, ITN, Russia Today (English), Rusiya Al-Yaum (Russia Today), BBC World Service (Radio), DW-Radio. 
I was watching HARDBALL with Chris Mathews just a minute ago and MSNBC announced that Rep. James Enos “Jim” Clyburn will be endorsing Barack Obama, this means that Barack Obama now only needs 39.5 delegates to clinch the nomination.
We know she cant do it, the media know it, The experts know it, she knows it. It is not doable, she is waiting for a miracle, she is waiting for some unusual big thing to happen, because now even if she is asking to seat Florida and Michigan delegates she still wont get it.
