As Florida and Michigan edge closer to delegate reselection compromises, the Clinton campaign should see nothing but bad news ahead. With a pledged delegate deficit that even her campaign views as insurmountable, and a superdelegate lead that appears to be narrowing by the day, the primary rationale for Clinton's continued candidacy is uncertainty.
It is uncertainty that has prevented Clinton from being forced from the race by her party. It is uncertainty that fuels the mainstream media's coverage -- the only justification for describing a race that Obama cannot lose as a virtual tie. Why, the Clinton campaign argues, should Hillary concede defeat in a race filled with so much uncertainty?
But as the race moves into its final stages, and as the Michigan and Florida sideshow is resolved, the race moves ever closer to that one thing the Clinton campaign cannot afford to accept: certainty.
It appears likely that Michigan will hold a state run primary, funded by private donors. In January, Hillary faired quite well in the primary, garnering 55% of the vote. This, of course, was at a time when Clinton had blunted Obama's Iowa momentum with a victory in New Hampshire, a time when many wondered if Obama could possibly survive. It was also, as is well-known by now, a primary that excluded Obama's name from the ballot, the result of a pledge taken by both candidates, but honored only by Obama.
Without another major candidate on the ballot, Clinton still won a smaller percentage in Michigan than Obama won in Alabama, Nebraska, Washington, Maine, Virginia, Maryland, Wyoming, Mississippi, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Louisiana, among others. She ran unopposed; unopposed nearly won. Michigan is especially advantageous to Obama demographically. A win for him in the state's second effort is likely. A delegate rich victory for her is all but impossible.
Florida offers little more promise for the Clinton campaign. The vote-by-mail plan, originally floated by the state party, may not have been dead on arrival, but it was clearly mortally wounded. Neither campaign was comfortable with the option, and the entire Florida Congressional delegation expressed its opposition. For logistical reasons, neither a new primary or caucus was feasible. As of yesterday, the Florida Democratic party announced that there will not be a revote.
Senator Nelson's recent suggestion, to seat the January delegates, but with half a vote each, seems as though it will be the only viable option. In that scenario, Clinton will net only 19 delegates. To put that in perspective, Obama netted 10 additional delegates at the Iowa county conventions last weekend, an event that passed largely under the radar. Even if Clinton enjoys the support of 75% of the Michigan and Florida superdelegates, she will only gain an additional 14 delegates.
Each available option provides Clinton with too few gains and even fewer alternative paths to the nomination. Even in the popular vote count, the addition of Michigan and Florida will be insufficient for Clinton to overtake Obama.
The Clinton campaign is running out of options and running out of time. If a compromise is not reached before the convention, the fate of Florida and Michigan's delegations will be in the hands of the Credentials Committee, a committee guaranteed to be controlled by the Obama campaign. In such a situation, each delegation would be undoubtedly seated, but with a 50/50 split, netting zero delegates for Clinton. Hillary Clinton cannot afford to allow the Florida/Michigan controversy to continue to the convention, but she also cannot afford to have the chaos resolved now.
Certainty has become her greatest enemy.
A compromise is on the horizon. At this point, that appears all but inevitable. But short of a miracle, or at least a major unforeseeable event, the locomotive that is Hillary Clinton's campaign is coming perilously close to running out of tracks.
Reference Ford's assessment of Bill as a "sex addict".
Fact 1. Hillary Clinton has 1242 pledged delegates, plus approximately 237 superdelegate endorsements, for a grand total of 1479 votes so far for the convention this summer.
Fact 2. Obama has 1413 pledged delegates, plus approximately 208 superdelegate endorsements, for a grand total of 1621 votes so far for the convention this summer.
Fact 3. One of the candidates needs to garner *at least* 2024 votes to take the nomination uncontested.
Fact 4. There are only 552 pledges to be assigned from the remaining states.
Fact 5. Obama needs 403 out of the 552 remaining pledges pledges to get the nomination straight up. That's 73% of the votes in all of the remaining contests.
Fact 6. Hillary needs 545 out of the 552 remaining pledges to get the nomination straight up. That's 99% of the votes in al lthe remaining contests.
Fact 7. There are 794 (out of a total of 4047) superdelegates, of which 445 are already in play. That leaves only 349 superdelegates sitting on the fence.
Fact 8. All the remaining unassigned pledged delegates and all the remaining unaligned superdelegates taken together are 901, enough taken together to give either candidate the nomination.
Since 100% win and endorsement for either candidate is a ludicrous proposition, let's examine what percentage each of the candidates would require:
Hillary: total delegates (pledged and super) 1479. She needs 545 more delegates for the win, or 60 percent of the remaining.
Obama: total delgates (pledged and super) 1621. He needs 403 more delegates for the win, or 45% of those remaining.
Finally, let's look at the relative wins of the candidates. CNN has a scorecard that tracks all the primaries and caucuses at http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/#D. There are menu choices and tabs that will take you to each of the state contests, where you can examine the percentage of the vote that went to each candidate. Here's the interesting fact summarized from all that data:
The calculation of all votes percentages taken across all contests for all the states so far yields an average of approximately 55% vote for Obama, and approximately 40% for Hillary. (The remaining 5% went to the other candidates while they were still in the race.)
Clearly, the 45% of remaining delegates that would put Obama over the top fall well within the AVERAGE performance he has shown so far. On the other hand, Hillary's anemic 40% of the vote does not give any indication that the 60% of the remaining pledges that she needs will simply swing her way.
There's a solid basis for the complaint that Hillary's continuing the contest is hurting Obama's chances in the general election, while adding nothing to her chances to win. If she succeeds in convincing enough people that he can't win the nomination, she'll still lose, but the stigma to Obama just might carry over into the general election.
I just wish the superdelegates would get off the fence and put this farce to an end!
Fact 1. Hillary Clinton has 1242 pledged delegates, plus approximately 237 superdelegate endorsements, for a grand total of 1479 votes so far for the convention this summer.
Fact 2. Obama has 1413 pledged delegates, plus approximately 208 superdelegate endorsements, for a grand total of 1621 votes so far for the convention this summer.
Fact 3. One of the candidates needs to garner *at least* 2024 votes to take the nomination uncontested.
Fact 4. There are only 552 pledges to be assigned from the remaining states.
Fact 5. Obama needs 403 out of the 552 remaining pledges pledges to get the nomination straight up. That's 73% of the votes in all of the remaining contests.
Fact 6. Hillary needs 545 out of the 552 remaining pledges to get the nomination straight up. That's 99% of the votes in al lthe remaining contests.
Fact 7. There are 794 (out of a total of 4047) superdelegates, of which 445 are already in play. That leaves only 349 superdelegates sitting on the fence.
Fact 8. All the remaining unassigned pledged delegates and all the remaining unaligned superdelegates taken together are 901, enough taken together to give either candidate the nomination.
Since 100% win and endorsement for either candidate is a ludicrous proposition, let's examine what percentage each of the candidates would require:
Hillary: total delegates (pledged and super) 1479. She needs 545 more delegates for the win, or 60 percent of the remaining.
Obama: total delgates (pledged and super) 1621. He needs 403 more delegates for the win, or 45% of those remaining.
Finally, let's look at the relative wins of the candidates. CNN has a scorecard that tracks all the primaries and caucuses at http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/#D. There are menu choices and tabs that will take you to each of the state contests, where you can examine the percentage of the vote that went to each candidate. Here's the interesting fact summarized from all that data:
The calculation of all votes percentages taken across all contests for all the states so far yields an average of approximately 55% vote for Obama, and approximately 40% for Hillary. (The remaining 5% went to the other candidates while they were still in the race.)
Clearly, the 45% of remaining delegates that would put Obama over the top fall well within the AVERAGE performance he has shown so far. On the other hand, Hillary's anemic 40% of the vote does not give any indication that the 60% of the remaining pledges that she needs will simply swing her way.
Assuming that voters in each camp will refuse to support the other candidate is the exact kind of fallacious divisive thinking that should be avoided.
Sen. Clinton appears well-positioned to burn the barn down. A little more race-baiting, a little more fear-mongering, a few more spin-doctored half-truths could at least light the match. If the match does get lit, I'm betting it'll be used to ignite a flame-thrower, just to make sure.
IT IS TIME FOR THE DEMOCRATS TO PUSH CLINTON OUT OF THE RACE.
Pardon? On the contrary, it is well-known that Obama CHOSE to remove his name from the ballot and persuaded Edwards to do the same in an effort to genuflect to Iowa and New Hamphsire and make Clinton look bad. You are also incorrect about the pledge - the pledge the candidates signed was to not campaign in Michigan or Florida, which Clinton honored. Obama ran TV ads in Florida citing as the excuse that it was a national commercial and they couldn't tell them one state not to run it.
Look, as a Clinton supporter I don't disagree with your larger premise which is that uncertainty is becoming certainty, and not in her favor. But a part of the reason for that (not ALL but part) is bloggers and reporting like yours and the narrative that has been created that she has played dirty and he has not. All of the twisting of the Florida and Michigan debacle is ridiculous - it was those states that "broke the rules", according to the DNC, not the people of those states. The people don't care about the crazy infighting or reasons why our primary calendar needs to genuflect to Iowa. In spite of that, Clinton signed the pledge and stuck to it. Don't try to make the reality of her probable loss of the nomination about anything more than it is.
Hillary Clinton did not remove her name from the ballot.
Tell me, how could it possibly be, that Hillary Clinton participated in the Michigan primary without violating her pledge not to participate in the election?
Remember this?
"Hundreds of thousands of people have already voted in Florida and I want them to know I will be there to be part of what they have tried to do to make sure their voices are heard," said Clinton just before jetting to Sarasota and Miami for events held there at the time a few days before the vote.
Is it or isn’t it campaigning? Or does it depend, maybe, on what the definition of “is” is? LOL.
And did or didn’t Hillary Clinton get back to Florida again to claim a win on the evening of the vote?
As for the TV ad, even the Clinton’s campaign did eventually acknowledge that it’s not possible to buy 49-state coverage—the only alternative, buying state by state and market by market would be the too much of a complex process, and hardly workable either considering that buying an ad in, say, the state of Alabama would also result in its being viewed in most of Florida. Also note that the South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Carol Fowler said unequivocally---when asked by the Obama campaign before the national ad was purchased---that she did not consider this to be in violation of the pledge made to the early states. All of which the Clinton campaign had been made aware of and understood. In view of this, all the indignant act and all the posturing on the part of the Clinton campaign seemed perfectly disingenuous and---more bothersome to me---shows an utter contempt for the people it was performed for---but for all the admiration I have for Hillary Clinton (or used to---she's been slowly losing me, beginning with her vote on the Iraq resolution in 2002), I am beginning to suspect that Hillary Clinton is and always will be a patrician who plays the kind of game patricians play, and that like all patricians she never had much respect for the intelligence of the people.
Hillary Clinton might still win this nomination. She has made her case loud and clear: This is a Machiavellian world and she is better at this than Obama can ever expect to be, so maybe she should be the Democrats nominee---I think that she will - Jack Nicholson said it best, clearly she has more cojones than anyone, she is not afraid to get her hands dirty, and so "she is the best man" for this job.
That said, I don't have to like it. And I still prefer the politics of Hope over the politics of Machiavelli.
People like Machiavelli, Karl Rove and Hillary Clinton tell us over and over - and prove it - that there is no place for people like us in politics - and I guess people have been proving them right at every turn, and so, then, it should come as no big surprise to anyone as people become more and more cynical and there is possibly yet again a return to the previous trend of less and less people interested in voting in future elections (I know I am becoming one of them.) But then again, Machiavelli had a pretty low opinion of the masses, and this is what it's all about: I am sure they'll find a way to keep people involved by getting them sufficiently angry about superficially divisive issues that will keep them artificially pitted against one another.