Hillary Clinton and John McCain Go To New Hampshire And Get Them Some Delegates

The ‘eventual candidate’ Senator Hillary Clinton actually won something, going up to the New Hampshire primaries and landing in first place.  Senator Barack Obama ran a closed second and former Senator John Edwards came in at a distant third place, as Clinton proved too much for the other candidates.  Her support came from a variety of places, but she pulled well with women (47%), those over the age of 40, those with no college degree, and those who make less than $50,000 a year.  Those groups all overlap somewhat, so Clinton essentially got married women to vote for her while Obama edged her in the male vote, those with a college education, and those was make more than $50,000.

The one thing I noticed by checking out the exit polls was that Edwards supporters largely supported Barack Obama second after their own candidate.  Clinton voters mostly looked at Obama unfavorably, 10% of Edwards voters believed that Obama would be the best commander in chief. Independents also went for Obama, while Clinton won pure Democrats.  Clinton’s bread and butter were elderly married women.

On the other side, Senator McCain won convincingly over the other Republican candidates. He pretty handily took most of the votes, even taking as much of the ‘born again’ vote as Mike Huckabee. He also got the moderate Republicans and the independents to vote for him, and apparently got the biggest chunk of those who oppose the war in Iraq.  Go figure.  An interesting thing I noticed was that Huckabee and Romney supporters were fairly diametrically opposed to each other.  Those who worried the most about illegal immigration went for Romney, as did the most conservative.  Voters essentially stayed away from Huckabee, the winner of the Iowa Caucus.

Oh, and Ron Paul got the easily duped.  Did his speech suck, or what?

Four Game Losing Streaks Are No Good, Boy

Your Philadelphia 76ers decided to up and lose 4 games in a row this past week, dropping games to the Utah Jazz, Los Angeles Lakers, Denver Nuggets and the Milwaukee Bucks. They went 2-4 on their West Coast trip, showing many of the flaws that keep this team from becoming a playoff team, and exposing it for what it is…average in the Eastern Conference. Like many of the also-rans in the East, if they were in the Western Conference they’d likely be lucky to win 30 games. They’re just too young and too devoid of bonafide NBA-starter level talent to be able to compete night in and night out with the good teams of the NBA, let alone the great ones.

Tonight’s contest at home was actually against the Milwaukee Bucks, but they fared no better. The Sixers had a horrendous night shooting the ball, scoring only 83 points at a 40% clip. Willie Green and Lou Williams were the two worst offenders as they shot a combined 9-31 from the floor (0-8 from the 3 pt line). Someone tell these guys to pull up once in a while and try to feed someone else. Or maybe tell Cheeks to give it up and give young Thad Young a few minutes instead of these chumps. What has Lou Williams done that could be considered an improvement over last season besides simply get more minutes? He doesn’t seem to have great court vision, doesn’t have a great shot, and doesn’t really help anywhere else on the court. He can run the floor well, but that’s just one good quality. His season shooting percentage of 42.2 is matched by Willie Green’s 42.8. They are only eclipsed by youngster Rodney Carney (37.5) and Kevin Ollie (23.8).

Andre Miller, Sam Dalembert and Andre Iguodala all bring something to this team. They are bonafide NBA starters, as evidenced by their play this season. Iguodala has the potential to take it the next level and become a star, and Dalembert is finally able to stay on the court for prolonged periods without interrupting the flow of the game through fouls and some goofy positioning. And Miller is having his best season since 2001-02 in regards to scoring, and is shooting 49.2%. That qualifies for 6th best in the league among guards, 5th among point guards. The Sixers may be trying to trade him, but right now he’s the glue holding this anemic offense together.

All in all, the Sixers are sort of floating around. They aren’t horrible enough to get a ton of ping pong balls, but they aren’t good enough to make it worth it try to sneak into the playoffs. The future of this franchise is in the hands of Ed Stefanski….let’s hope he makes the right moves.