I wish Congress would grill Karl Rove as strenuously as they grilled Roger Clemens today. But I want to talk about something else. According to what I saw John King say on CNN and according to the Obama campaign, there is no realistic way that Hillary Clinton can catch up and tie or take the lead in pledged delegates. To do so, she would would have to win the remaining contests by an average of about thirty points. Now, Mark Penn, Clinton’s chief strategist, has issued a memo called The Path to The Nomination. And he says quite clearly that the nomination is about votes and delegates.
Again and again, this race has shown that it is voters and delegates who matter, not the pundits or perceived “momentum.”
But there is no plausible way for Clinton to wind up with the most delegates…at least not the delegates that are selected by a vote by ordinary citizens.
Now, I understand that the Clinton campaign is not yet willing to concede the election and that they need to be able to provide a rationale for why they are soldiering on. So, I don’t object to Penn’s memo on the politics, but I still think there is a problem. The Clintons really do understand that they cannot win the pledged delegate count, but they are going to try for a brokered convention. Let me point out a few things here:
1) Despite perceived wins in New Hampshire and Nevada, Clinton tied and lost those contests, respectively, in the delegates awarded. While Obama is perceived as the winner in Missouri, the delegates were distributed equally. Obama has received more delegates in 22 contests, Clinton has received more delegates in 10, and they tied in two.
2) So far, Obama has received 9,326,079 popular votes to Clinton’s 8,638,911.
3) Obama has a (realistically) insurmountable 1116-989 pledged delegate advantage.
It is conceivable that Clinton could take over the popular vote, but not realistic that she could take over the pledged delegate vote or the advantage in contests won. And maybe her potential to close the delegate gap and overtake the lead in the popular vote is enough reason to stay in the contest through March 4th. But she is, at this point, still banking on winning a brokered convention. And she’s banking on winning despite a deficit in the pledged delegates.
I’ll grant her the right to go forward to the March 4th contests with this slim justification. But after March 4th there is a caucus in Wyoming on March 8th (which Obama will probably win) and a primary in Mississippi on March 10th (which Obama almost definitely will win), and then there is a six-week layoff until the Pennsylvania primary. I submit that Clinton should not go on to Pennsylvania even if she wins in Ohio and Texas on March 4th, unless she can make a compelling argument that she is so deserving of the nomination that it is worth a brokered convention where the will of the pledged delegates will be overturned.
really think they are waiting for Ohio and Texas, or are they waiting to see if they can convince the party to seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan?
Another question : If McCain dies on the campaign trail, who becomes the front runner? Normally I wouldn’t be so morbid, but his ‘victory’ speech the other night left me and everyone I was watching with thinking he’s hanging on by a thread.
Huckabee raised (ever so tactfully) the question of something happening to McCain as a reason he was staying in the race. Hillary might well offer the same reasoning before this is over. Of course, Edwards could easily get back into the race in the event one of the other candidates was no longer running, as he only “suspended” his campaign.
Yeah, I was thinking that’s probably part of the reason why Mittens suspended his campaign too.
I just can’t envision her conceding anything unless she is forced to (by whom I don’t know). Remember, the conventional wisdom says the Clintons never loose, and I fear they take this as the gospel truth. Aside from the ego issues involved, it is more than likely that they’ve promised quite a few favors to quite a few people over the past eight years, thus the aura of grim desperation surrounding the campaign right now. I hope you’re right, but I’m expecting fireworks at the convention.
I imagine that a delegation of superdelegates could privately meet with her, and give her the bad news, and suggest that she drop the thing.
Yes, I think this is what will happen. Superdelegates and high-profile endorsers will revoke their support and tell her to quit. Of course it could also get to the point where they run out of money and the donations dry up… followed by being booed at under-attended rallies. If she goes on to Pennsylvania, she could find it to be pretty embarrassing… people throwing tomatoes and various fruits at her, etc.
Also available in orange.
Hillary winning a brokered-convention after losing the pledged delegate race would be much akin to hunting rabbits with a shotgun – you may gain your prize but the mess that you’re left with isn’t really worth having…
Reality.
All this angst in the blogosphere about what Hillary should or shouldn’t do – it makes me feel like I did before New Hampshire when a little part of me wanted her to pull it out.
The reality is that if no one has enough delegates to clinch the nomination the rules don’t say that the person with the most pledged delegates automatically wins by default. The reality is that Hillary Clinton has just as much right to try to win this nomination by getting superdelegates to vote for her as Obama does. Those are the rules. The fact that you don’t like her or the system doesn’t change that reality.
You will argue that it would be better for the party if this didn’t go on to a brokered convention. Yes.
But the responsibility for seeing that this doesn’t go to a brokered convention isn’t a burden that falls on only Hillary’s shoulders. It’s Obama’s responsibility too.
He needs to win.
It is impossible for him to win on points. He can only win with a knockout.
Stop letting him off the hook and putting all the onus on Hillary to ‘do the right thing.’ There’s plenty of time after March 4 to write these ‘do the right thing’ posts.
Right now the onus isn’t on her it is on him. If after the string of victories he is having, he can’t beat Hillary Clinton in a head to head contest in Ohio or Texas and knock her out, then part of the responsibility for the ensuing mess has to be his.
I partially agree,
What’s beyond question is that this is the process. She has a right to be tenacious and that’s actually a good thing. If the system breaks down and we’re in trouble then I think we’re better off blaming the process and not the candidates, both of whom obviously want to win.
I went over to read the comments to this in Orange. And I was struck by the Obama True Believer who keeps repeating : but we can’t let this drag on!
That’s exactly the line that the Bush campaign fed to the media in Florida in 2000. Polls showed that the American public was actually remarkably patient about all the recounts and were willing to let the process take what time it needed. They weren’t in a panic. But the Bush campaign kept feeding the line to the media that we couldn’t let the process drag on! It needed to be settled now!
Look where that got us.
There’s something to be said for going through the process even if the process is flawed. There is plenty of time left in this process before it’s time to panic. It will probably all work itself out with a candidate that everyone agrees is legitimate before the time to panic ever arrives. Waiting until after Pennsylvania would not be the end of the world.
Yeah, I’ve been rolling my eyes over it.
I’ve been this way and that between supporting Clinton and Obama but this thing with media’s pundits declaring the next JFK because he’s just so darn “charismatic” is just a lil creepy to me.
I’ll be perfectly happy with Obama as pres but I can do without the messianic fervor (not that i think anyone here is going that far)
The criterion that will (or should) decide which candidate will survive a brokered convention is simply this: Which candidate has a better chance of winning the general election? To that end, the people who decide these things need to look at three factors (that I can think of, anyway):
You can look at other things like momentum and excitement generated, but they’re hard to quantify.
The reason you ask these questions is, you want to know who has the best chance of defeating McCain. Period. If Clinton has better odds of beating him than Obama, she should get the nod, no matter how much you or I or anyone else likes Obama. But if, let’s say, the numbers say that Clinton can win in Pennsylvania and Ohio and Obama can turn Texas and enough states that would otherwise vote red, like Mississippi or Colorado, and can generate enough electoral votes to offset what Clinton would be able to do, he should get the nod. (Some states, like California and New York, are going to vote for the Democratic nominee no matter who it is.)
Yeah, it’s complicated, and someone’s going to be pissed no matter how transparent the process is. But when it comes right down to it, the “cold equations” should prevail, not sentimentality, loyalty or other subjective criteria.
According to those living in Hillaryland:
We are an empire now, and we make our own reality… a reality where I’M the EMPRESS.
Her authoritarian ways, dependency upon strict personal loyalty and subservience, and assigning blame to others is an echo of the loyal Bushies and their unitary executive. The Empress of the Arabies can bathe in Middle Eastern oil, and rinse in AIPAC money, but it still won’t cleanse the stain on her character.
Clinton thinks the election is about her.
She is wrong.
when you have to drop ticket prices from $1,000. to $250. to attract attendees, realty dictates that what you have on your hands is a crumbled broken empir.
I am watching Morning Joe right now… and Andrea Mitchel is DESPERATELY trying to justify Hillary’s existence in the race. Pathetic. We know where her support lies. Um, might I suggest that she’s a racist? I think so, anyway.
On the surface, I would suggest that no, she’s probably not racist. It’s probably a combination of the desire to see a woman in the White House and Andrea herself maintaining her relevance in today’s media scene. She’s comfortable covering the Clintons. She knows with Hillary in the White House she’ll have a job for the next 4 years at least.
With Obama – who knows? Does the country moving on to the next generation of politicians / politics in general mean we are ready to move on from the likes of Andrea and Timmeh and Chris and Bill-O and George as well?
Hillary = job security for these people.
Barack = who knows what else will change?
But – sometimes I must admit I wonder if some of these fine folks representing our ‘elite’ media are just a tad racist as well…
Does the country moving on to the next generation of politicians / politics in general mean we are ready to move on from the likes of Andrea and Timmeh and Chris and Bill-O and George as well?
Oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please…
Its a good post Boo and you make some interesting points BUT, it doesn’t matter. Regardless of who wins, the downward spiral that this country on can’t be stopped. Go read the Harpers’ Horton article. It is quite the summary and I can’t rebut it. After the Senate collaps re FISA and the bullshit Horse and Pony show in the House, this country is finished as the great experiment. The Constitution has been destroyed and regardless of who takes the WH in November, the country has been placed on a path to its final destruction. The FISA vote will be determined as the final straw. The fact that the Dems couldn’t protect the basic Constitutional protection of Individual Privacy is the greatest disgrace in our history.
She will not win the total pledged delegate count.
But – I submit if she eeks out wins in TX and OH she will continue on.
And the media will encourage her / pretend it’s all so ‘unknown what will happen’ in order to keep the story alive.
If Obama wins either state on March 4th, she will bow out gracefully.
If Clinton wins both, onward to PA!
Don’t you want to be able to help play kingmaker? I’ll be a blast – enjoy it!
Hillary has no respect for the rules or pledges she signed unto.
MSNBC:
This is something I suggested in the aftermath of New Hampshire.
We know that the election results in New Hampshire didn’t match the exit polls. Exit polls are used to determine the honesty of election officials overseas, but for some reason (election fraud?) they now aren’t used in America when they diverge from “official counts.”
Kucinich funded a partial recount. It was incomplete because it only covered a few towns. Additionally, the Secretary of State didn’t allow the recounters to compare the voter sign-in rosters versus the total number of votes, a very quick way to figure out fraud. Nor did the SoS allow examination of uncounted or mismarked ballots. Or to allow examination of the memory cards in the Diebold voting machines to see if they’d been tampered with (these machines are easily tampered with).
What has been found out and yet not covered in the MSM is that certain locations show wildly inaccurate results. There is no logical explanation, for ex, why Clinton would get a couple hundred extra votes at one polling place while Obama is undercounted.
Now, imagine that Clinton has emerged from a brokered convention with the nomination, maybe with the help of some delegates from the tainted non-primaries in Michigan and Florida, and suddenly nine months after the fact someone manages a full recount in New Hampshire that shows fraud favoring Clinton. No matter that she and her campaign may not have been in a position to have thrown the election her way. How does America react to a candidate with so many negatives after she has been proven to have cheated to steal the election?
Ugly, ain’t it? But that’s the way the game is played.
She hasn’t given up on the goal of getting Florida delegates seated.
If she lets that challenge smoulder until all the states have had their primaries/caucus the angst wouldn’t necessarily create any anti-Hillarybullying votes.
It becomes a Bill question where you label Hillary a ‘sticker’ who is willing to honor a cause with a good fight or when that honor morphs into a Machiavellian ends justifies the Rovian means.
Someone said to me yesterday “what reason does Hillary have to stay in to the end if she keeps losing?” and I pointed out that she would do it because she’s “a sticker”.
Already had one pres that was a sticker. Ready to move on eh?
I would make the argument that it is not an advantage for the Democrats to settle on a candidate 6 months before the convention. People, including Howard Dean, are saying it would be a disaster if the nomination fight goes on into May. I think just the opposite. The best thing for Obama would be if the nomination was in doubt when the convention opens.
Suppose Clinton reads your post and says, Booman, you are so convincing, I have decided to drop out tomorrow. Fine. Now Obama is the nominee and the Republicans get to unleash their Swift Boaters. For 9 months of incessant attacks.
But isn’t there going to be negative campaigning from the Clinton camp if she stays in the race? Of course there will be. But it will be mild compared to what will come after her, and in fact, whatever attacks Clinton comes up will to a certain extent neutralize the Swift Boats when they do attack after the convention. If the Swift Boaters come up with something similar to an attack that Clinton had already made, but sexed up, the reaction of the voters will probably be that this is old news, Obama has already responded to this. And if it’s not new, it ain’t news, so the media won’t be amplifying the attacks by repeating them.
The other reason for not settling this thing six months ahead of time is that things can change in six months. Maybe, Bernanke’s remarks today notwithstanding, we are in a deep recession in August. Maybe that makes Clinton’s poll numbers go way up. (At the moment, although it doesn’t seem that way, the Obama advantage in a national head to head matchup with Clinton is tiny, within the margin of error.) Maybe Obama’s star quality turns out to be ephemeral. A lot of things can happen, and I don’t think it would be wrong for the superdelegates to put more stock in August poll numbers than in February primary results. I would say rather that that was the actual function of the superdelegates.
So, essentially, what Yogi said.
If you drift over to TalkLeft you will see a different reality. They are giddy with polls that show that Clinton will smash Obama. Really.
OT: I really hate VISTA. I installed three programs, got them authorized and on my iLok and now they’re all invisible. I know that they’re there on my computer but they’re gone.