Don’t Be Starting The Coronation Yet
- 03.26.2008 - 2:40 PMHillary Clinton, for the second day in a row, prompts us to think long and hard about Reverend Wright. In a Time interview she says:
Well that’s really up to the press and the public to determine, but I was asked specifically today what I would do if I had been in a similar situation and it was obviously a personal opinion of mine and I said, you know, I would have left because that would not have been something I was comfortable with. But it’s very personal and I think people are kind of thinking about it and are trying to determine what they believe about it.
Given Clinton’s polling fetish, you can bet that she’s sees good reason to keep nudging the story along, despite the conclusion from liberal pundits that everything is fine, perfectly fine, for their favorite son.
And there’s no sign that Clinton sees the handwriting on the wall on the delegate front. She reminds us:
We’re both going to be short, and when you think about the many millions of people who have already voted, we are separated by a relatively small percentage of votes. We’re separated by, you know, a little more than a hundred delegates. I’ve won states that Democrats need to win in the general election in order to win the White House and obviously the strategy on the other side is to try to shut this race down, but I don’t think voters want that.
What’s her ace in the hole? Why, Michigan and Florida of course. If you thought Bush v. Gore became a rallying cry for “voter disenfranchisement,” wait until the street rallies over “delegate stripping” get under way. Clinton declares:
And there’s additional problems of Florida and Michigan, because I still don’t see how the Democrats don’t figure out a way to make sure their votes are counted. And I don’t understand what Senator Obama was afraid of when I agreed and the DNC signed off on a re-vote in Michigan and he said no. So we’re just going to keep this process going through these next contests.
So the Clinton game plan is clear: bank on Wright being a game changer, don’t for a moment show any inclination to pack it in and, if all else fails, raise one heck of a fuss over the “lost” delegates. This thing isn’t close to being over.
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March 26th, 2008 at 3:01 PM
Yeh, if the DNC leadership thought that Obama was such a clear cut winner, they’d be pushing Hillary over the gang-plank already since that’s what the liberal pundits are clamoring for. I think Hillary is turning out to be a real street fighter, more than any of us thought. And the spectacle is riveting.
The Clinton haters in the Democratic Party all began to come out of the woodwork when Obama went on his winning streak earlier in the season. “We never really liked them but had to pretend to because they were so powerful.” That’s what one anonymous party leader commented when Hillary superdelegates began to jump ship over to Obama.
Well, sir, we now can see that Hillary and Bill never really liked you or your party either. Since they are putting her political ambitions first over the welfare of your party, which looks increasingly dim for November.
March 26th, 2008 at 3:04 PM
I’m curious if anyone contributing to this blog knows the answer to this question — If no delegates from Florida and Michigan are seated at the convention, does the number of delegates needed to win the nomination remain the same? In other words, if the total number of delegates shrinks, does the winner need a majority of the new number or the old number? If it’s a majority of the original number, then eliminating the Florida and Michigan delegates would make it harder for either side to win on the first ballot.
March 26th, 2008 at 3:37 PM
Larry,
The total the media is now using to win is based on no delegates from Florida and Michigan being seated. 2024 is the # without those two. If they do end up being seated, the new number need to win in 2208, I believe.
Ellen also makes a good point. If Obama was such a surefire winner, the Super Delegates and the poobahs would have already coronated him and pushed Hillary to the side. They clearly have doubts about him, and the Wright thing only heightened those doubts.
All the Obama sycophants in the media and the blogs talk about how she can’t win, how anyone else who lost 11 straight contests would have been ignored and forced to withdraw, how the math makes it impossible, etc…
Conversely, if he really had it wrapped up and is the inevitable winner, than what does it say about him that having won 11 straight contests by an avg of 30% or so, having got adulatory and fawning coverage for 2 months, having been crowned the nominee by the media, having vastly outraised, out-advertised, and outspent her…he got clobbered by 10 points in THE swing state of the last election and got a whopping 34% of the white vote and a staggering 27% of the white democrat vote, and this was before Wright. In just about any other situation, said candidate would have won Ohio easily. It shows that either Obama is weaker than thought or Clinton is stronger or both. In either case, it shows that he hasn’t wrapped this up by a long shot.
Consider what will happen if Hillary wins as expected in PA by anywhere from 10 to 15 pts. Once that happens, I think she wins in IN. Obama would need 40+% of the White vote to win in IN and based on the #s from OH, PA, MO, Hillary’s win in PA, and the support of Evan Bayh, that just is unlikely to happen.
In NC, as long he gets aound 33% of the white vote he wins, which he should be able to, given the Triangle area there. A current poll by NC-based PPP has him getting 40% of the white vote and that’s post-Wright. If you look at his totals of the white vote in the South, it’s interesting. He got 52% in VA, and 43% in GA, pretty good. But in SC he got 24%, 25% in AL, 26% in MS, 30% in LA, 26% in TN, 16% in AR. So is NC more like VA and GA or more like SC and AL and MS? I think it’s more like the former.
Still, such a result. Hillary wins in PA and IN, not mention easy wins in WV and KY, guarantee that this goes to the convention, and guarantee that there will be a war over Florida and Michigan.
And for those who think WV doesn’t matter, if Al Gore had won WV he’d have been the President regardless of what happened in FL, same with NH, so WV is an important state for the Democrats to be competitive in.
The fun is just beginning and for Republicans it will only get better.
March 26th, 2008 at 3:41 PM
Hillary is also counting on the fact that Obama’s 20 year pastor is a gift that keeps on giving and giving. Today he was quoted as calling Italians “garlic noses.” You can bet I wasn’t the only one who emailed a copy of that article to all my Italian relatives.
And it’s still almost a month until the PA primary. Backed firmly into a corner Hillary will use anything her oppo researchers have as the days progress. Obama has apparently been pretty careful in his statements and writings but it’s impossible that he hasn’t said or written something controversial about some ethnic group which can be neatly tied back to his pastor’s rantings.
March 26th, 2008 at 3:46 PM
Larry: Unless Marc Ambinder got it wrong a few weeks ago, the 2025 figure presumes that MI and FL are not included. Until and unless the Party changes its ruling, MI and FL don’t exist in the Democratic delegate universe. I believe that the majority of MI and FL potential Super-Delegates are also currently excluded from voting privileges and therefore from being included in the totals.
A little-remarked factoid that might conceivably matter if the Democratic race got Bush v. Gore close - i.e., very highly unlikely - is that even the precise number of delegates total can’t be known until the Convention (under the Call to Convention rule). That’s one reason why youl’ll sometimes see different tallies of SuperDs given as approximate rather than exact figures.
March 26th, 2008 at 4:03 PM
Maverick has positioned himself to the right of Bush on the economy, potentially enabling Hill to steal the center. She had enough free time on her schedule to call Mav a Hoover, as I have predicted. Meanwhile she’s enjoying that swing state windfall courtesy of Rev.Wright. Mav is correct in the abstract re the economy — capitalism is bi-polar enough without taxpayers subsidizing the mood swings — but let’s see if he really starts a ruckus as the government’s slow-motion, sub-rosa mortgage bailout prevents a pre-November catastrophe that would doom his candidacy.
March 26th, 2008 at 4:14 PM
One more weakness of Obama’s that the media hasn’t really touched on is with Hispanics. If you look at the numbers from states with Hispanic populations(CA, TX, FL, AZ, NV, NM, etc…)Obama gets around 33% of the Hispanic vote, and that’s in Democratic primaries. Bsuh got around 38/39% vs Kerry in ‘04 and I think McCain could get that and probably surpass it by at aleast a few points vs Obama. If McCain pulls 40% of the Hispanic vote and Obama can barely top 40% of the white vote(Kerry got 41 and Gore got 42, even Bill in 96 only got 43) it will be awfully tough for him to win, even with 100% of the black vote.
March 26th, 2008 at 4:19 PM
Ragin Cajun and CK MacLeod, thanks for the answer to my question.