About a month ago I went through the fundraising numbers for every congressional district to try to get a sense for how many districts are going to be competitive in November. And one of the biggest surprises was the stunning amount of money raised by Michael Skelly in Texas’ seventh district. This morning the Politico has picked up on the suburban Houston race, and if you’re a House junkie it is must reading. But I found something of more general interest in the article.
Texas Democrats point to a state legislative race within the district, where a Democratic state legislator unseated a two-term Republican by 10 points. And they are encouraged by the roughly 88,000 districtwide Democrats (out of 410,000 registered voters) who participated in the Democratic presidential primary in March, with one Democratic operative calling the voter information a “gold mine.”
“The information we got from the primary, there is no other way we get that information. I can’t even put a financial figure on it,” said the operative.
The long and competitive primary on the Democratic side is going to prove extremely valuable for the Get Out the Vote effort this November, and it will also provide a wealth of data on a county-by-county basis for the Democratic nominee. Barack Obama will be able to see exactly where he is strong and weak in every state, while John McCain will be flying blind in most of them.
Many Clinton supporters cite things like this to defend her continued presence in the race, and they have a good point. Yet, I want to make an additional point. Of the remaining states after Pennsylvania, none are critical to a Democratic win in November. It’s possible that in a blow-out election that Obama could win North Carolina, Indiana, and Montana, but there just isn’t that much upside to getting more organization and information out of those states when you compare it to the potential downside of negative campaigning and lost time and resources.
Some have pointed out that the downside would be largely removed if Clinton were to stick to substance and run a positive campaign. First, that’s not really true. Obama would rather campaign in Colorado and Nevada than South Dakota and Puerto Rico. Second, Clinton’s surrogates are going around saying that they don’t think a black man can win. That’s not positive, and it’s not helpful. And it’s not likely to stop until her campaign quits.
Asking her to be positive is all well and good, but it’s basically like spitting in the wind. And all you have to ask is: who has a better chance? The black man, or Hillary Clinton after taking the nomination away from the black man in a brokered convention in late August? The question answers itself.
Calling for Clinton to quit her campaign isn’t a case of the Big Boys trying to push the woman around, or denying people the right to express their opinion and cast their votes (she will remain on the ballots). It’s just a nod to reality. The better Clinton does the weaker our nominee will be. The weakest nominee possible would be a Hillary Clinton after wresting the nomination away from the candidate with more pledged delegates. She should end it because the benefits of a continued campaign (even for her) and far outweighed by the risks.