More on the inevitability of defeat --- Clinton Rallies, But Does It Matter? Hit with phone attack ads, scrambling to explain mysterious NAFTA meetings with Canadians, and pelted by a suddenly awakened press corps, Barack Obama is on the defensive for the first time since the days after the New Hampshire primary. Polls show Hillary Clinton widening her lead in Ohio and reclaiming enough lost territory to make Texas a dead heat. But this late in the ball game, math is at least as important as momentum. And the latest delegate numbers show Obama, despite all the recent headlines, heading for a tipping point in securing the Democratic nomination. In attempting to counter Obama’s lead in popular votes and states won, the Clinton campaign has argued that superdelegates should be free to exercise their own judgment in deciding where to cast their lots, however pledged delegates are allocated. Problem is, superdelegates have been drifting away from Clinton ever since Super Tuesday. Every week, Obama has picked up a clutch of them, while Clinton has lured hardly any. Clinton’s superdelegate lead over Obama, nearly 100 on February 10, has shrunk to just 46, according to Democratic Convention Watch, which maintains handy lists of exactly which superdelegates are supporting which candidates. The Clinton camp has also been holding in reserve the results from Michigan and Florida, where Hillary’s name was on the ballot despite DNC sanctions against those states for holding their primaries too early. But between Obama’s string of victories and his gains among superdelegates, his lead over Clinton is almost enough to survive even if Michigan and Florida are counted. Consider this best-case scenario for Hillary: Freeze the superdelegates where they are and add all of them, plus all the committed delegates from Michigan and Florida, to the pledged delegates. Pretend Michigan’s 55 uncommitted delegates (which resulted from anti-Clinton votes) don’t exist and forget John Edwards’s 25 delegates, too. Do all that, and Clinton leads Obama, but by just 1,468 to 1,453. Sometime soon — maybe not Tuesday night, but perhaps after Mississippi on the 11th or when another handful of superdelegates reading swing-state polls declare for Obama — that fifteen-delegate lead is going to vanish. And then Clinton will be out of trumps. Hillary will have to significantly outgain Obama in pledged delegates in April and May for any of her side arguments about superdelegates and excluded delegations to even matter. Just something to keep in mind, whatever narrative emerges after tonight. —Peter Keating http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/03/clinton_rallies_but_does_it_matter.html
All these mathematically eliminated talk annoys me. There are still couple months for this to finish. Things might happen that can change the dynamics dramatically. If Obama really believe this kind of BS, he can stay at home and play with his kids.
To say that's a rather biased article is an understatement. I'm not sure why in the world, unless you have an agenda to push, you would focus or make the lead of your story about the elected delegate count. Superdelegates matter and will be counted. It's the equivalent of writing a game story about the Super Bowl after the third quarter.
If the overall popular vote total shows Clinton ahead (definitely possible), a very legitimate argument could be made that a majority of voters decided Clinton should be the nominee.
If superdeligates must follow the popular vote -- or the pledged deligate count -- why have them at all? It's a little late to be changing the rules.
Obama leads by 288,000 if you include Florida. Pennsylvania is slightly larger than Ohio, and last night, Hillary picked up about 229,000 votes in Ohio alone from a 10-point margin. So it's certainly possible that Pennsylvania could swing the popular vote to anybody's game heading to the final weeks...
By the way, Gallup's national tracking poll mirrors the shift in Texas and Ohio. Clinton takes a 48-44 lead nationally after trailing 50-42 late last week... and this isn't factoring in any momentum boost that might have taken place last night. http://www.gallup.com/poll/104788/Gallup-Daily-Clinton-48-Obama-44.aspx
So Clinton needs to keep Mississippi and Wyoming Close, win Pennsylvania by similar margins as in Ohio, and add Florida vote totals (or assume that the vote would remain similar in a new primary) just to make the popular vote anybody's game before North Carolina and Indiana...
What we learned from March 4th...... 1) A cat has nine lines. 2) There's six more weeks of winter. 3) Apparently, it takes five Democrats to screw in a light bulb -- one to hold the bulb and four to turn the chair. 4) Hillary is such a snake, she will find a way to steal the nomination.
It's all going to come down to Pennsylvania. The Mississippi and Wyoming vote totals will be so low that a slight swing in PA (instead of 10, maybe 13-15) would more than make up for that difference. As for Florida, if/when there's a re-vote, there would likely be one for Michigan as well. I don't think Hillary would win Michigan by as wide of a margin as she would win Florida, but combine the two and I think she would likely gain around the same margin that she would right now from simply adding the current Florida vote total. That's why I'm using it as a frame of reference... That said, yes, Hillary has to win Pennsylvania by double digits to even have the slightest chance for this scenario to work.
I can't argue that, but it sure is fun feeling like John Randolph of Roanoak. He was once described by his fellow assemblymen as "a lone Indian shooting arrows wildly in every direction."
Funny considering if you asked Registered Republicans 4 months ago which of the serious candidates would they least like to have on the ticket the nominee they actually got would have won by a landslide. The guy could only poll about 35% in his own party--the field was just ugly enough that was a winning formula. I don't think this is a reasonable way to portray it at all. If Obama doesn't join the VP (in the event Hillary gets the Nom) he substantially increases the odds McCain would win. That I hope would not be inconsequential to Obama even if he had personal distate for who his boss would be. Think of it this way, if LBJ didn't sign on with Jack Kennedy (who would have lost to Nixon otherwise) think of where our civil rights would be? This wouldn't just be a choice between ambition (taking the VP) vs some ideal form of integrety (not taking it) as if in some vaccum. I agree this is harder to forsee. But Obama might just say given overwhelming turnout (and massive more votes in primaries for either candidate than McCain) maybe we should just combine political forces and steam roll them. Honestly Obama-Clinton (which I prefer over Clinton-Obama) is just fine for me. Hurt with some independents, probably, but cement the Latino vote, women's vote, and those concerned about inexperience in the executive branch. The net gain in political machines and investment (financial and emotional) of such a broad spectrum within the Dem party may far outway losing some in the middle. Wouldn't that be ironic that Rush and TJ and those folks sent a Clinton back to the oval office but this time as a VP--they don't realize how close they are to doing just that.
Here is an email I received from Barack's campaign. They are not worried nor should they be. The delegate count is still very strong in their favor. ------- Our projections show the most likely outcome of yesterday's elections will be that Hillary Clinton gained 187 delegates, and we gained 183. That's a net gain of 4 delegates out of more than 370 delegates available from all the states that voted. For comparison, that's less than half our net gain of 9 delegates from the District of Columbia alone. It's also less than our net gain of 8 from Nebraska, or 12 from Washington State. And it's considerably less than our net gain of 33 delegates from Georgia. The task for the Clinton campaign yesterday was clear. In order to have a plausible path to the nomination, they needed to score huge delegate victories and cut into our lead. They failed. It's clear, though, that Senator Clinton wants to continue an increasingly desperate, increasingly negative -- and increasingly expensive -- campaign to tear us down. That's her decision. But it's not stopping John McCain, who clinched the Republican nomination last night, from going on the offensive. He's already made news attacking Barack, and that will only become more frequent in the coming days. Right now, it's essential for every single supporter of Barack Obama to step up and help fight this two-front battle. In the face of attacks from Hillary Clinton and John McCain, we need to be ready to take them on. The chatter among pundits may have gotten better for the Clinton campaign after last night, but by failing to cut into our lead, the math -- and their chances of winning -- got considerably worse. Today, we still have a lead of more than 150 delegates, and there are only 611 pledged delegates left to win in the upcoming contests. By a week from today, we will have competed in Wyoming and Mississippi. Two more states and 45 more delegates will be off the table. This nomination process is an opportunity to decide what our party needs to stand for in this election. We can either take on John McCain with a candidate who's already united Republicans and Independents against us, or we can do it with a campaign that's united Americans from all parties around a common purpose. We can debate John McCain about who can clean up Washington by nominating a candidate who's taken more money from lobbyists than he has, or we can do it with a campaign that hasn't taken a dime of their money because we've been funded by you. We can present the American people with a candidate who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with McCain on the worst foreign policy disaster of our generation, and agrees with him that George Bush deserves the benefit of the doubt on Iran, or we can nominate someone who opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning and will not support a march to war with Iran. John McCain may have a long history of straight talk and independent thinking, but he has made the decision in this campaign to offer four more years of the very same policies that have failed us for the last eight. We need a Democratic candidate who will present the starkest contrast to those failed policies of the past. And that candidate is Barack Obama. Thank you, David David Plouffe Campaign Manager Obama for America
What we learned from March 4th is negative campaigning without a quick and decisive response works wonders. I expect Obama's camp to be more aggressive going forward. If he allows Hillary to put him in a box from now on, then he doesn't deserve to be president. The same way Bill Clinton learned from Dukakis' campaign, Obama should learn from what happened to John Kerry. It's one thing to not throw the first hard punch. I admire that stance. It's another to not hit back. If Obama is the latter, he should just go home so I can vote for McCain.
