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EVEN IF ITS moniker might sound dramatic, ‘Super Tuesday’ rightly has its place as the most signficant voting day of the US primary season.
Put simply, Joe Biden would not be President Biden right now were it not for Super Tuesday four years ago.
Biden faced Super Tuesday 2020 in third place in the race, trailing both Senator Bernie Sanders and the upstart campaign of Pete Buttigieg.
He was struggling to consolidate a scattered moderate vote and was falling behind on campaign funding. He needed a big Super Tuesday and boy did he get it.
Buttigieg, who went on to be picked for Biden’s Cabinet, unexpectedly dropped out of the race ahead of Super Tuesday, clearing the field for Biden to take on Sanders in a number of states that were favourable to him.
Biden ended up winning ten states to Sanders’ four, with a big victory in South Carolina convincing many Democrats that he was the man to take on Donald Trump.
Trump himself took a giant leap towards his first nomination in 2016 by racking up seven Super Tuesday wins out of 11 to put Ted Cruz on the back foot.
Fast forward to today and while South Carolina is again significant, Super Tuesday is not.
Trump, now running as an electorally defeated and indicted former president, all but locked up his third straight Republican nomination last week with a victory in South Carolina.
South Carolina is the home state of his only remaining opponent Nikki Haley and his comfortable 60% to 40% victory removed any lingering hope she might have of winning the nomination through conventional means.
Haley is a former South Carolina governor and though she’s been spinning the 40% she won as an example of opposition to Trump, her inability to win in the state was basically the final nail in the coffin for her chances.
Haley did get her first win of the contest on Sunday when she won the Washington DC primary, but the fact that her only victory came in a Democrat-leaning jurisdiction that isn’t even a state doesn’t exactly build momentum going into today.
Democrats are technically holding a primary process too but incumbent Biden is a virtual dead cert.
How the primaries work
Presidential candidates are selected by party members who vote first in statewide elections known as primaries.
Candidates are allocated a certain number of party delegates from each state based on how well they did in statewide votes.
Those delegates then attend national party conventions and use their vote in accordance with how candidates performed in their state.
It varies state-by-state because some places use a winner-take-all system, but by-and-large the greater the margin of victory the greater the number of delegates a candidate will receive from that state.
As it stands, Trump has already amassed 244 delegates to Haley’s 43, giving him a commanding lead.
Actually up for decision today are fifteen states: Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.
Together they represent 874 delegates and if, as expected, Trump runs the table he will be nearing the 1,215 required to officially lock up the nomination.
In fact, Trump’s campaign is claiming he will win at least 773 delegates today and surpass the magic number needed to secure the nomination in about two weeks.
Momentum
Coming into Super Tuesday today Trump has all the momentum, something that was boosted further yesterday by a significan decision by the US Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court found that Colorado’s decision to remove Trump from the ballot in the general election was unconstitutional, effectively giving the former president an increasingly rare win in court as his legal troubles mount up.
His legal problems, which include a penalty from the state of New York that could top $500 bn and 91 felony counts across four prosecutions, are being touted as the reason why Haley has not yet dropped out of the race.
As the only other remaining Republican, Haley is the candidate best positioned to step in if Trump is unable to continue for whatever reason, be it legal or health-related.
The difficulty she may face after today, however, is increased pressure from within her own party if it becomes clear that Trump has already won the argument among Republicans.
Super Tuesday therefore mightn’t be as decisive as it has been in other years but it could let us know how long Haley has left before the Biden-Trump rematch is finally official.
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I hate this “traditional” bullsh!t! it was traditional to kill someone who questioned religion 500 years ago. do we still do it? No, because it’s wrong plain and simple. the majority of humans are stupid and I don’t think in humane practises like these will ever end when there is such stupidity
Sure they’re only dolphins.
That’s why Mother Nature hits them with tornadoes,earthquakes and other disasters.
Every country resents being told by other countries that some traditional practice is unethical and should cease. The world is against dolphin fishing but the stubborn Japanese refuse to change, substitute “dolphin fishing” for “destruction of peatlands” and “japan” for “Ireland” and you’ll see that the mentality is similar here. Better the change to come from within than forced from the outside.
The main difference is that peat is not herded into a tiny channel, held there for up to 48 hours, starved of food, harassed and scared and thrashing around. Peat does not die a slow agonizing death. Peat is not slaughtered while the rest of the pod watches. The only thing that is similar is that the end product is sold on.
Ye sure what do they do like?? Shag all
And to think people wonder why Fungi hangs around Kerry
It’s because we’re gentle humane folk. We rock :))
@Maurice, unfortunately I disagree with your comment, that we are gentle humane folk. Animal welfare in this country is so shocking that we should be ashamed.
Get a grip will you! We don’t go killing dolphins now do we?
@ Tony Campbell, no thankfully we don’t. We just abandon thousands of dogs, cat and horses in this country, leaving them to starve to death or have much worse things done to them.
Agreed Pauline in certain respects.
Stricter controls needed in relation to the holding of equine bloodstock within geographical regions.
Horses have no place in large towns or city regions.
Registers exist for sexual and child offenders. Same should be said for animals.
0 tolerance for abuse of herd and bloodstock & here the clinker, the statement that I’ll be red thumbed for:
Tighter control in relation to dogs in built up areas.
Uncontrolled roaming, excessive barking and non compliance of owners when asked to address an uncomforting situation.
Should have gone to specsaversTony
That makes no sense! You rant about horses and dogs on a story about dolphins?? I think you should of went to specsavers
@ I agree with all the points you made.
Animals stay around fellow animals
Tony, can you scroll up and read Paulines reply to my first comment in relation to how cruel us Irish can be to animals. My reply was justified. Whilst it has nothing to do with dolphins as you correctly pointed out it was a directional example of how even in this state we too have to evolve and learn to treat animals with better respect.
At the moment, the murderers in Tajii are selecting up to 250 dolphins who will either be sold to Seaworld and their ilk, or who will be killed. Those who’ve already died through starvation and/or exhaustion are sadly, the lucky ones. They’ve trapped a rare albino dolphin calf, whose mother had already died. There is nothing ‘traditional’ about such barbarity. Japan should hang it’s head in shame.
A time honoured revenge for what whales & dolphins did at Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
It was chicken and cow!
“The fishermen in Taiji say the hunt is part of their village tradition and call foreign critics who eat other kinds of meat hypocritical.”
What is tradition about hunting them in motorboats…..or leaving them trapped in the cove for 4 days without food while the young ones are captured to be sold to marine parks….Ive been watching the live stream for the last 3 days on and off. Its disgusting.
Got a link?
http://livestream.seashepherd.org it starts around 10.30pm/11pm irish time
It’s disgusting that waterparks around the globe now this.
If it was tradition to hoarde stray ponies, dog’s and cats to a field then whack them to death……. Would it be Ok?
Hairy Japanese b@stards.
Uncivilised lot have the planet ruined
They know that basically the entire world is horrified by this and wants them to cease the practice, yet they remain steadfast in their intent to keep it up regardless. Stubborn bunch.
Due to the high mercury content the meat isn’t even safe to eat
That’s disgusting, f€@king japs
Time for another nuke
Ha
I wouldn’t critize them for eating dolphin meat but I most defiantly critize them on the manner in which they are killed, it is horrific and inhumane.
True. Dolphin is very tasty, but needs to be caught and killed in a more humane way than that!
Filthy b@starts.
F#%k off back to China ya Japanese bol#%cks..
Mmmmmm. Dolphin n chips n a can of coke.
I’d love to put a few holes in them boats
Oh it’s traditional is it, oh that’s fine so. Anything goes in the name of culture.
Hate saying it but any wonder why Japan gets hit with tidal waves and earthquakes natural disasters.
Well its definitely not cos they kill dolphins.
Weather systems and fault lines? No wonder really .
How many people who post condemnation here, truly stop and think how that steak came to be on your plate, those leather gloves on your hands or that ham in your sandwich? Sure, this slaughter of dolphins is barbaric, but so is the whole animal commodity industry, just on a much larger scale.
@ Adrian, for most people the beef, pork or poultry products that they eat are widely accept as agreeable animals to eat. But what they don’t realise is that a lot of the treatment these animals receive in slaughter houses is just as bad as the way these dolphins are being killed.
Can you provide proof of this happening with in Irish abattoirs ?
No, I can’t. Can you provide proof that all the meat you eat came from animals raised and killed “humanely”? Besides, it’s not just about the abbatoir stage, there are many opportunities for farmed animals to suffer before their throats are slit. Despite the horrific deaths endured by these dolphins, at least they were free most of their lives. We’re horrified by what happens out in the open in other cultures, yet never seem to want to see what happens closer to home.
@ Chris, up until 2010 Slaney Meats were killing cattle in the Kosher method.
I come from a farming background and have been to abbitors and seen animals being stunned incorrectly, being still conscious as they are strung up and their throats cut.
Karma karma a chara,god of sea pay back.
F@€k you whale, fu£k you dolphin!
A little known fact , Dolphins gang rape their females, not so cute now eh?
E e eeee eeee ee eeeee eeee eeee eeeee eeee ee
Translation =
Jump in de wata wit me I slap u in face wit flippa fin slanty zipa
What happens in Taji is horrible , but such an outburst from mrs Kennedy is almost laughable tweeting how heartbreaking the cull is, on other hand has no problem with drones dropping bombs on innocent people all over Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan!!
Just to be clear don’t agree with the slaughter of dolphins just want to point out hip overact of the us!
Of course the US only slaughter Iraqi s and Afgans.
As a group, I despise those sea shepherd guys, they are far too close to Eco-terrorists in my eyes.
The Japanese whale and dolphin hunting is disgusting thought.
Thought?
Ruddy predictive text.
What’s wrong with this? Everyone benefits so I’m all for it
have your say