Loss of Pioneer Adds Pause to Tense Election Season

It's Lynn Neary filling in for Michel Martin while she takes some much-needed time off. I'll be blogging here throughout the week, so feel free to chime in with your thoughts.

It's always shocking when someone dies unexpectedly. So news that Ohio Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones died of a brain aneurism at the age of 58 was hard to absorb.

By all accounts, this was a woman full of life and brimming with plans for the future. The next big item on her agenda was the Democratic convention. She was supposed to be one of the super delegates in attendance. And though she was a big Hillary Clinton fan, she had already announced her support for Barack Obama. ... But she also made it clear that she didn't think Obama could win unless Clinton's supporters got out and voted for him. No doubt she would have worked hard for the Democratic nominee.

Certainly, Barack Obama will miss having her help to achieve that goal.

The convention is next week in Denver and TMM Host Michel Martin will be there to bring you great conversations and interesting insights throughout. This week, in the lead up to the convention, the news media, ourselves included, are spending a lot of time speculating on who Obama might choose. Conventional wisdom gives the nod to Joe Biden, but Presidential candidates have been known to fool the pundits so really, it's anybody guess. Some now say talks between Obama and Clinton have resurfaced.

And the candidate has kept us guessing in more ways than one. It's been a week of contingency planning as the staff of TMM has tried to be ready everyday, just in case, the candidate decided to announce while we were on the air!

... And now we're hearing it could be leaked later today, so I'd better go. We might need to rearrange the show.

Michel Martin

Tags: Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Joe Biden | Stephanie Tubbs Jones

3:31 PM ET | 08-21-2008 | permalink

comments | | e-mail

3:31 PM ET | 08-21-2008 | permalink