This is an excellent state of the race post from a Democratic blogger. Along with the new ABC/Washington Post poll, it should serve as a good primer going into tonight's debate. http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/4/16/81546/2075 Obama has already beaten Clinton, so why isn't it over? by cos, Wed Apr 16, 2008 at 08:15:46 AM EST Returns are coming in on election night; the race has been close and polls show either candidate could win. Now, with 83% of precincts reporting, candidate A is leading 53% to 47% over B. It's an insurmountable lead, and the race is called for candidate A. That's where the Democratic primaries are: Of the 3253 pledged delegates available, about 83% have already been voted on, and Obama is leading Clinton by about 53% to 47%. We can call the race now. Look at it another way: There are 566 pledged delegates left from states that haven't voted yet. To catch up with Obama, Clinton needs to win about 65% of those, which means she needs to average about 65% of the vote in the remaining states. She doesn't win by such margins: So far, Clinton has received more than 60% of the vote in exactly one state: Arkansas. Her second-best result was 58% in Rhode Island. Her other home state, New York, gave her 57%. If every state from now on goes as well for Clinton as her home state of New York did, she'll still lose. [ MyDD readers already know this stuff. I wrote this as an overview you can point people to. ] If every state from now on goes as well for Clinton as her home state of New York did, then she will get about 322 of the remaining pledged delegates, and Obama will get about 244, for a net gain of about 78... leaving Obama still ahead by about 80-90 pledged delegates! Remember, that's what will happen if Clinton gets a New York level win in every state. Not gonna happen. She might do that well in Pennsylvania, but the next-biggest state to come is North Carolina. We also have states like Oregon and Indiana coming. One way to look at it is this: For every state where Clinton gets less than 65% of the vote from now on, she's losing ground! Imagine you're a runner 100 feet from the finish line, and there's someone ahead of you who's only 50 feet from the line. If, in the next second, you run 30 feet while the leader only runs 25, now you're 70 feet from the finish and the leader is 25 feet from it. Sure, you just ran a little faster, but your chances of overtaking the leader before the finish have gotten even smaller. In other words, even if Clinton wins Pennsylvania 57-43, that actually puts her further away from catching up to Obama, not closer. She'll do considerably worse than that in most remaining states. It's over: Obama will go to the convention with more pledged delegates, and will be the Democratic nominee for President. What about the Superdelegates? Democratic members of the US House and Senate, Democratic governors, members of the DNC, and a few other party leaders, are automatically delegates to the convention and can vote for whomever they choose. They're called "unpledged delegates" or "superdelegates" (informally). Even though Obama will have more pledged delegates (from winning actual votes in actual states) that Clinton, if enough superdelegates vote for her, she could have a higher overall total and get the nomination, theoretically. It's extremely unlikely, for two reasons. First, for superdelegates to overturn the decision of the voters would be a major scandal. Obama's supporters would not see it as legitimate: they'd mostly feel that he won, and the nomination was stolen from him. Black voters, in particular, would rightly feel that the system is rigged against them: finally a black candidate manages to win, only to have party insiders take it away. Superdelegates know this, and of all delegates, they're the ones with the most to care about the party as a whole. They know that if this happens it will greviously wound the Democratic party, and almost ensure that McCain wins. They won't let that happen. Second, there just aren't that many superdelegates left to go, either. Of the 794 superdelegates, various polls & surveys show about 220-230 say they'll vote for Obama, and about 250-260 say they've vote for Clinton. That leaves only about 240-250 who haven't chosen yet (plus 68 who haven't been chosen yet). Clinton would have to get an overwhelming majority of those delegates to make up for Obama's 100-200 delegate lead. If those remaining 250 feel so strongly about supporting Clinton that they'd be willing to cause such a major scandal, why have they remained undeclared so long? Obviously, because most of them don't. Clinton will not get an overwhelming majority of them. What about Michigan and Florida? Michigan and Florida held their primaries too early, and according to Democratic Party rules, their delegates are not supposed to count, so they're not included in any of the counts above. Clinton's campaign is pushing to have them counted, because she won both states. If they're counted as-is, Obama gets 67 more delegates and Clinton gets 178 more, for a net gain of 111 for Clinton. That, also, will not happen. To begin with, Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan, and you can't vote write-in in a primary. No credible argument can be made that Michigan's election was fair, and there is no way Michigan's delegation will be seated as-is. They'll probably come up with a compromise, like splitting it 50/50 between the two candidates. Florida did have both candidates on the ballot, but neither candidate campaigned there, and many voters stayed home because they were told it wouldn't count. A compromise is likely there too. Who decides what is to be done with Michigan and Florida? A committee at the Democratic National Convention, whose membership will be proportional from the pledged delegates: in other words, a committee with a majority of Obama supporters. There's no way they'll give Clinton the full 111-delegate advantage that comes with counting the entirely unfair Michigan primary. However, even if they did, 111 still probably won't be enough to overcome Obama's advantage. He's 160+ ahead of Clinton now; she's not likely to whittle that down to under 120 in the few states left. Is there any way Clinton can win? Yes, there are still two possible scenarios in which Clinton gets the nomination, both very unlikely: - The "Spitzer" scenario: Something very big and very unexpected happens that destroys Obama's viability as a candidate, or forces him to drop out, before the convention. Even if that happens after the last state has voted, superdelegates would still switch to Clinton en masse, and she'd get the nomination. Note, however, that for this scenario it doesn't matter whether Clinton is still running. She could suspend her campaign right now, and she'd still be in position to step back in and accept the nomination if something of that magnitude occurred. - The convention fight scenario: Clinton keeps camapigning all the way to the convention, whittles down Obama's lead to below 140, and tries to get superdelegates to put her over the top. She can do this with her strategy of racial division. As I explained, this is also very unlikely, but it's the only thing she has left to try for. Should Clinton drop out? Obviously this question would make little sense if the outcome were still unclear. I wouldn't want any candidate dropping out until it became clear that they couldn't win. But since it is now clear that Clinton can't win by continuing to campaign, it's a reasonable question to think about. So here's where I switch from factual argument, to opinion. Contested primaries have a lot of advantages. Voter registration drives, activating local networks, volunteer recruitment and training: Obama will benefit from having to campaign for votes in more states, particularly swing states like Pennsylvania and Oregon. And since Clinton is using a lot of McCain's arguments against Obama, he's also getting practice in dealing with those. On the other hand, McCain's arguments are getting extra credibility coming from a Democrat, and McCain is getting extra time to establish his message and identity for this election, so it's a mixed bag. And there's that racial division Clinton is exploiting, which also does long term damage. For Clinton's own sake, she'd do much better to stop campaigning soon. The longer she stays in this when people can see she has lost and is only campaigning for a convention fight, the more enemies she makes in the party and the more bridges she burns. For example, if she wants to become Senate Majority Leader sometime, she's hurting her chances. But from my point of view, as someone who doesn't particularly care about Clinton's future prospects, I think on balance having a primary in Pennsylvania at least would be good. And possibly a few more. Rather than Clinton abruptly dropping out, I think we'd be much better off if she lost some more primaries. Speaking as someone who wants to see Obama become president, the best thing would be for Clinton to lose more votes. Not good for Clinton, but good for the Democrats and for Obama. Why you should still vote If you want a Democratic president and were planning to vote in an upcoming primary, you may wonder: Why bother? If Obama has already won, does it matter? Yes, it still matters, because Clinton is still campaigning. By doing so, she is preventing Obama from getting a lock on the nomination by getting enough pledged delegates for a solid majority even without superdelegates. As I described above, there's only one thing she could still be campaigning for: a convention fight, where she can get enough superdelegates to overturn the pledged delegate plurality, and ensure that she will be the loser in November. The closer to Obama she gets, the more likely she is to think of that as a resonable option; the further ahead of her he is, the more likely she is to give it up. So you're not voting on whether to nominate Clinton or Obama - as far as the primaries go, that choice is made. What you're voting on is the probability of Clinton trying to take it to a convention fight she would likely lose. If you want her to try that, vote for her; if you don't want her to try that, vote for Obama. In other words, if you want a Democratic president, you should vote for Obama, regardless of which candidate you prefer.
The blog is silly from the perspective of anyone but an Obama supporter. Obama has a significant lead, but it's nearly mathematically impossible for him to wrap it up, and there's 4 months left before the candidate is decided by the rules set by the Democratic Party. Clinton owes it to the millions of donors and tens of millions of voters that supported her to do everything within the rules to gain the nomination. There's another scenario that the author forgets, and it's just as legitimate. Obama doesn't have to have one big Spitzer-type scandal to lose support. He could have a slow meltdown in support among superdelegates fueled by many significant bad reports over the next four months. Hillary Clinton dropping out now would be like forfeiting when you're down 10 with 2:00 to go. The author is acting like she's down 10 with 2 seconds to go.
To answer the question: The reason it isn't over is because her last name is Clinton, she's married to a former president of the United States and that makes her part of a powerful, intimidating political machine that wants to live on and feed at the government trough another 8 years.
Maybe it's not over because the superdelegates are not ready to commit to Obama because they're afraid he can't win the general election. His recent comments in San Francisco aren't helping matters.
They're not particularly hurting matters either. Since those comments the race is unchanged in PA (where she's up somewhere around 5-10%) or NC (where's he up 10-15%) and he's gained ground in IN. Nationally, he's improved since his recent comments. Two weeks ago they were neck and neck; now he is up about 10 points across the board. Here are the latest numbers, from polls conducted mostly after the remarks. ABC/Wash Post: Obama by 10 Gallup: Obama by 11 Rasmussen: Obama by 9 Zogby: Obama by 13 As for super delegate worries that Obama can't win, they have reason to be more worried about nominating Hillary. ABC/Wash Post finds Democrats consider Obama more likely than Clinton to win by an astounding 62-31%. And the same poll shows Clinton's unfavorables at 54% compared to Obama's 39.
They don't seem to be hurting matters either. It is hard for Hillary to make a case for Obama to not win in the general election more than she can, when he keeps winning states. She doesn't really have an argument, and having Ferraro threaten Pelosi and other superdelegates with not fund raising for them if they don't vote for Hillary doesn't seem to show the party that she has what's best for Democrats in her mind. Add to that her making statements that McCain would be more prepared than Obama, and calling Obama the second coming of Ken Star just add to that perception. Hillary isn't showing the party and the super delegates that she really deserves her votes. It would take a lot for the Super delegates to over turn the will of the people, and Hillary isn't giving them a lot of reason to do that.
The blog is obviously written from the perspective of an Obama supporter, but there are myriad arguments as to why it's not silly, each of which you fail to address. Here's another: This thing isn't going to a floor fight without some radical surprise happening first. Every leader of the party, including some prominent Clinton supporters, has said this should be over in June or July. Super delegates will be strongly encouraged to register a preference when all the voting is done on June 3. Short of a game changing scandal (and neither Wright nor Rezko nor the "bitter" thing have risen to that criteria), they will not break overwhelmingly for Hillary. In fact, with Democrats saying in today's poll that they consider him more electable by a 31% margin, it's impossible to even guess at a reason why (under even the most extremely favorable conditions) a group of people who have been undecided this long would do so, particularly for such a long-shot of a candidate. And then there are the rumors that the remaining supers privately favor Obama and have waited to say so out of deference to the Clinton camp which has asked for one more last chance to persuade them. There is zero evidence that this is working and much evidence it isn't. Since Super Tuesday he's up about 60 supers and she's down about 5. From whence is her miracle supposed to arrive? Can anyone even speculate about that anymore? The arguments in the blog are sound as well. If you disagree with them you should say why.
weslinder: I wanted to address your basketball analogy too. The problem with it is that the rules and opportunities for scoring an unlikely upset are profoundly different in presidential primaries than they are in basketball. The blog post above lays out what Hillary needs to score a comeback and the math is far more daunting than that which can be made up with something akin to missed foul shots and quick 3 pointers on the other end. Historically, there are hundreds or thousands examples of upsets in the basketball scenario you describe; in presidential primaries there are zero. Hillary would kill to be down 10 with 2 minutes to go. The fact is, she just isn't. Look at the math above and try again.
It might. They should have set the rules that way before the primaries started. Which can neither be required, nor be binding. So it is virtually meaningless. Most undecided Super delegates are politically savvy. They'll care a lot more about what the general public thinks in August than they do about what Democrats think in April. Political preference in April of people who don't vote until August doesn't mean much. Rumors about that preference means even less. All of the arguments are centered around the fact that Clinton cannot gain enough delegates to win before the convention. Well, neither can Obama.
One other thing. The calls for Clinton to drop out have only come since she the momentum has turned in her direction (even if it is slight). The extended primary season for the Democrats has given them tremendous additional media coverage. Unfortunately for Obama, that media coverage is much less favorable than it was in February. If he were getting favorable media coverage, and winning primaries (even if he weren't gaining enough delegates to put Clinton away) his supporters would be eating it up.
Hillary's flaming crashes the last few weeks aren't helping her either. In fact, doubts about her have grown more than doubts about Obama. If anything, stretching the Dem contest a couple more months has been beneficial for Obama because it's helped prepared him for the general election. On the other hand, Hillary has buried her image and credibility and the Dems should thank heaven she wasn't crowned after Iowa only to be crash and burn in the general election. If Hillary had somehow been dignified and "presidential" while Obama dealt with his controversies, she might have a point. But she was not and does not.
This is the biggest flaw in your entire (and entirely flawed) premise. Obama can win enough delegates to clinch before, on or around June 3 when a bevy of super delegates will announce their preference. And I repeat that if there was any likelihood that Hillary enjoyed the massively outsized support among uncommitted supers she'd need to win, they would have said so by now. If there was ever a time to do that, now would be that time. There are zero reports from any any quarter that she enjoys any advantage among that group (and many that she doesn't) -- let alone the massive one she needs. I'm not saying it's literally impossible for her to win. I'm saying it very nearly is. And if she has any argument for how she actually can win (or if you do), other than it's not mathematically impossible, she or you should say what it is. And she should say it fast. Obama's gonna pick up two more super delegates today.
weslinder has already done an excellent job responding to the blog but to summarize the contests isn't over because according to Democratic party rules its not over. To me it sounds like Obama supporters are frustrated and fearful that as the nomination contests drags on there is more potential for their candidate to get weakened. That's understandable from that standpoint but that's not what the Democratic rules say.
I don't think Hillary should drop out. She should make like Huckabee and stay in, but run a benign campaign. That way she helps the party rather than hurt it, and is still in the race should some earth shattering scandal unfold. That would actually probably win more super delegates than her current strategy because that would show them that she cares about the party and not just her own ambition. I think the calls for Hillary to drop out only started after she started praising the GOP candidate above her own party's campaign, and it was obvious that she had the potential to use a scorched earth policy. Her "momentum" was never a surprise. Nobody expected Obama to win Ohio or TX, and he ended up doing far better in TX than anyone thought he would. Going back to a basketball analogy TX and Ohio are Hillary's Kobe Bryant. She's expected to do better once Kobe enters the game, but if it still didn't help her cut into the margin she's losing by in a significant manner, then it isn't all that important in the long run.
He cannot mathematically win enough pledged delegates. If he can win enough super delegates then the contest will be over but to quote Yogi Berra "It ain't over until its over."
The calls to drop out started towards the end of his 11-state winning streak, at which point it became clear that it was basically impossible for her to win. People were already doing the math then, and even factoring in 20 pt wins in PA/TX/OH, the math didn't work for her. It only grew once she went into attack mode and started focusing on pulling him (the eventual nominee) down instead of building herself up - because at that point, she started doing potential damage for the party. Notice how little you hear about "substance" from her now. That said, I disagree with the initial post. At this point, it doesn't make sense to drop out - she's come this far. If she were going to drop out, it should have been before TX/OH, or had she lost one of those two on election day. If she was committed then, nothing has changed to make her drop out now. She'll win PA comfortably, so that will continue. If she loses NC/IN, that's an opportunity to drop out. If not, it's only a few more weeks until all the primaries are done, so she might as well stay in until the end of the primaries. The superdelegates will weigh in then and end this within a week of that, so it'll be over then regardless.
I'm not sure what the point is here. No one is arguing the race legally is over. If it were, things would already be done. Of course the race isn't technically over. Even the GOP race isn't technically over - Huckabee could try to convince McCain's pledged delegates to switch over and pull a massive upset. But when it's functionally over, it's reasonable for candidates to realize that. And Hillary hasn't - she's still on a destructive path. She still thinks she has a chance to win, but she can't, barring the massive Spitzer-level scandal, no matter how many "but if this and this and this" scenarios people come up with. Her chances w/o that scandal are about the same as the Huckabee scenario. The reason Obama supporters are annoyed is that it simply wasting money and time that could be committed to a general election because Hillary doesn't see the reality staring her in the face. As FB mentioned, if she ran a different kind of campaign as Huckabee did during the end of his run, that would be far less destructive to the party and not a big deal. But in trying to polarize the party to turn people on Obama to create a scenario that's simply not possible, she's just screwing the Dems in general.
