Pennsylvania
All week the pundits have been saying that Hillary Clinton needs a double digit victory in Pennsylvania to keep her campaign alive. So it seems totally fitting--given the way this election has gone so far--that she would end up winning by exactly 10 points, just enough to keep the primary race going, but not enough to change the math in any significant way.
It will take a few days before we really see what impact tonight's results will have on the race. My guess is that once the focus of the news media shifts from tonight's vote totals to the overall delegate and vote totals, it's going to become increasingly clear that Clinton's victory tonight was too little too late. And at that point, I suspect we'll see more superdelegates breaking toward Obama and more pressure on Clinton to explain how exactly she plans to win this thing without tearing her own party asunder.
It will take a few days before we really see what impact tonight's results will have on the race. My guess is that once the focus of the news media shifts from tonight's vote totals to the overall delegate and vote totals, it's going to become increasingly clear that Clinton's victory tonight was too little too late. And at that point, I suspect we'll see more superdelegates breaking toward Obama and more pressure on Clinton to explain how exactly she plans to win this thing without tearing her own party asunder.
posted by A.L. at 10:48 PM
13 Comments:
I hope you're right. I paid attention to some of the coverage this past week, and I just felt like Hillary was doing her best to act like a politician -- say the right thing, the right inflection, to the right people and at the right time. She is leading in those few big delegate states, but compared to Obama's coverage, he's leading throughout many different geographic areas: the South, the Midwest certainly, the Southwest.
Hillary won by appealing to roots established in her home state, really. That doesn't mean much when one's competency to run the country is in question.
Its hard not to see Hilary's jubilation as just a veneer. What she's proven is that she is no more ready to accept reality in these elections than George W. Bush is in Iraq. Every minor victory is touted as a major advance, even though the writing has been on the wall long time past.
What has happened here is that Obama could have clinched the nomination, but did not this time around. On the other hand, a major landslide for Hilary (margin 20+)would truly have provoked doubts and killed him off untimately. That did not happen. No matter what Hilary says, her margin (9 to 10) is just barely enough by her own standard to keep her in the fight.
Obama's strategy now should be to virtually ignore her (while not being disrespectful or arrogant) and focus on McCain as if he was the main opponent (which he is). Let his team work with superdelegates behind the scenes.
Talking past Hilary will no doubt irritate her no end, but it should bring more superdelegates in behind him. Eventually Hilary will have to face the facts.
I agree that it is difficult to see how Clinton wins the nomination at this point. However, I would point out that Clinton’s argument that she would run better in the general election than Obama is a lot stronger than people seem to think. If one looks at the electoral map and focuses on states that are reasonably likely to be competitive, she has a very distinct advantage over Obama. She is much more likely to win Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and has an edge in New Hampshire, New Mexico and Nevada. By contrast, Obama is more likely to put Virginia and Colorado in play, and may run better than Clinton in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. (Lets say they run the same in Missouri, although I suspect Clinton would have the edge there). Overall, Clinton’s chances of winning the general look significantly stronger than do Obama’s, although there is no doubt that either could win (or lose).
MLS,
I'm really interested in how you can make the claim that Clinton is "much more likely to win Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania." The available polls -- and the primary results -- don't seem to bear out your claims.
According to Real Clear Politics, the average poll results are as follows: Pa. (Obama plus 2.2 over McCain, Clinton plus 6.2 over McCain), Ohio (McCain plus 2.6 over Obama, Clinton plus 5 over McCain), Florida (McCain plus 11.7 over Obama, McCain plus 0.3 over Clinton).
More importantly, Clinton won all three primaries by a substantial margin. This might not be as important if it seemed very likely that Obama would win the vast majority of Clinton’s voters in the general election. However, this does not appear to be the case. A significant part of Clinton’s base, particularly working class whites, are resistant to Obama, and the exit polls are showing that a very large percentage will either vote for McCain or stay home if Obama is the nominee. If Clinton is the nominee, Obama’s voters are more likely to vote for her.
Some have argued that Obama could make up this difference with a greater appeal to independents and moderate Republicans. The problem is that McCain also has a strong appeal to these voters (as well as to Latinos, another constituency not exactly head over heels with Obama), and Obama’s Reverend Wright and “bitter” controversies may very well tarnish his image with these groups.
Obviously, many things can and will change over the next few months. But based on the information we have now (which is all anyone can go on), Clinton has a significant advantage over Obama in these states.
AL said:
All week the pundits have been saying that Hillary Clinton needs a double digit victory in Pennsylvania to keep her campaign alive. So it seems totally fitting--given the way this election has gone so far--that she would end up winning by exactly 10 points, just enough to keep the primary race going, but not enough to change the math in any significant way.
The latest results (99% reporting) is that Clinton won by 9.4%, so she did not get the double-digit victory that she's been claiming this morning.
Clinton will be the nominee. It makes me sick to my stomach, but she will be. Her "I won the big states" and her "he can't close the deal" arguements will close the deal. Both are bogus of course. The reality is that she is in, and of the machine, and the machine will pick its own. Obama is an outsider and too likely to upset the applecart. The political machine is not going to put him into a position where he can do that.
With 6 weeks of campaigning and with the media and the GOP assisting her in constant negative attacks on Obama, all Clinton could manage to do is win by slightly less than her margin in Ohio in a state that heavily favored her demographically. She's toast after May 6.
Jayhawk, the math belies your (understandable) expectation that Hillary and the machine will win. Short of Dean and the rest of the Party leadership turning into mush, the delegate count continues to be the metric the Democratic Party uses to choose their candidate. Period. She can spin this however she wants to, but the metric doesn't change.
Having said that, the superdelegates need to get off their respective butts and make a decision. There's no reason to wait.
I've been railing for the past two
months about the absurdity of this popular vote spin coming from the Clinton Camp and how it's seeped into the media - but this post puts it in a much simpler, coherent fashion than the arguments I've been trying to make:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/23/01152/2705
Pass it on to as many Obama higher-ups as you can. These talking points should really be hammered by the
Obama camapaign. It's a great way to attack without going negative.
----------
Popular Vote: Listen Up, Obama Surrogates
by PocketNines
Tue Apr 22, 2008 at 10:00:27 PM PDT
Dear Obama Surrogate,
You are going to be on cable news shows in the next two weeks, and you are going to be confronted with the notion of the popular vote being a legitimate measuring stick.
I must say that thus far I have been generally very unimpressed with you as a group. You flub around, you let yourself get bullied by giant assholes like Joe
Scarborough and you never make super-easy points.
So listen up, I am going to make this easy for you. Do not screw this up. Use the three obvious points, and use concrete examples, which I have helpfully provided for you. If you do not say these three
things, you are a total failure as a surrogate.
Point Number 1: If the popular vote determined the nominee, no candidate would ever go to Iowa or New Hampshire. They'd spend all their time in big urban areas all over the country from the outset of the campaign, racking up raw numbers. What would be the point of even visiting New Hampshire if you could camp out in Brooklyn? Concrete Example: Barack Obama
would not have spent only a day and a half in California before the Feb 5 primary. He would have never gone to Idaho. Duh.
Point Number 2: If the popular vote determined the nominee, no state in its right mind would ever hold a caucus, instantly disenfranchising itself. Concrete
example: Minnesota-Missouri. Minnesota gets credit for 214K votes, and Missouri gets 822K votes, but they each get 72 delegates. Is Missouri's voice 4 times more important than Minnesota's?
Point Number 3: The arbitrary distinction between who gets to vote in these primaries is nothing like the general election, where everyone registered gets to vote. In the primaries, sometimes it's just Dems, sometimes Dems and Indies, sometimes anyone. Concrete
example: Texas gets a million more votes than similar overall population New York (2.8M to 1.8M), even though New York is far more Democratic, simply due to this arbitrary restriction on who can vote (NY = closed, Texas = open).
Overall point: regardless of the fact that Obama will win the popular vote, it is completely illegitimate in this race. THIS IS NOT LIKE POPULAR VOTE IN THE GENERAL ELECTION.
Think you can remember this, Obama surrogates? I mean, re-read it if you have to. Rehearse in front of
a mirror. Get a buddy to critique you.
I heard Chuck Todd say that superdelegates think popular vote is the real measuring stick. That is so unbelievably asinine that if it's true, it only demonstrates how badly you, the Obama Surrogates, have failed.
Get your shit together and start making these points.
You're welcome.
I FORGOT:
I am waiting for the first Obama surrogate to say, with mockery dripping, that (even in its dishonest spasms of stupidity for including Florida and Michigan
where the candidates for office did not even campaign but had a name recognition buzzpoll) the Clinton
argument requires that Obama gets zero votes in Michigan. Then demand that an opposing Clinton
surrogate own that intellectual point implicit in their argument.
Update (rewritten for clarity):
In the spirit of stating your opponents' best argument for them up front, then dismantling it, lay it out this way:
When the Clintons and their surrogates deceptively argue for the popular vote, they appear at first glance to be making a simple, moral, populist argument, that all votes are equal. Right? That's
the implication, and why it rolls off their tongues so easily.
But where is the inherent morality in open versus closed primaries that arbitrarily limit turnout and
whether Republicans and independents get to pick the
Democratic nominee in some states but not others?
Are caucuses inherently immoral? Many states chose them as their form of selecting a nominee.
Is it moral to alter the game strategy only after the fact?
Make the opposing Clinton surrogate make a moral case that Minnesota = 1/4 of Missouri, because their
argument insists that it should. Make them argue from a principle standpoint that Minnesota = 1/4 of
Missouri. Make them argue that. Put them in that position. It'll expose this whole can of worms.
MLS,
I think all the "match-up" polls are crap at this point. They might be worth something come November, but at this point they're simply exercises in computation, providing no worthwhile data.
As for the other things you quote, it's a little odd that you seem to discount all the large margins by which Obama won.
Sure, if you squint just right, and you ignore reality, you can make a case that Clinton should win.
I, for one, will not vote for Hillary Clinton, for one simple reason: bush, clinton, clinton, bush, bush, ... -- this series should not have, as its next term, clinton. Not in America.
Jon Stewart made precisely the same point.
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