To be a winner you have to win. And Tuesday night Hillary Clinton unreservedly won three out of four states. Barack Obama, however, has won twice as many primary and caucus states overall, leads substantially in the popular vote and continues to hold a mathematically insurmountable lead in elected delegates.
For two or three days, the Clinton campaign will spin itself -and the media--silly, breathlessly celebrating her overwhelming victories in Rhode Island and Ohio and her squeaker in Texas.
After the confetti is swept and the champagne bottles are tossed a more sober reality will take hold. Not just that her net gain of delegates this week will be, at most, in the single digits. But worse. There is no plausible scenario in which Clinton can win the nomination. At least not democratically.
Seven more weeks of campaign slog through Wyoming, Mississippi and into Pennsylvania. And then maybe tack on six more weeks, if you can believe it, into Indiana , West Virginia, and a handful of other states and into Puerto Rico on the 7th of June, quite literally into D-Day. Whatever the outcome, even if Clinton wins all 16 remaining contests -and some of them by veritable landslides, she will still be dozens of elected delegates behind Barack Obama.
She will not be the winner because she will have not won the majority of elected Democratic delegates. Clinton will be exactly where she was the night before Ohio and Texas: in second place and with no way to become the nominee unless enough unelected Superdelegates defy the popular will of the electorate and throw her the nomination (or unless you somehow believe that she can every coming primary with a 20 point margin).
Indeed, as Jonathan Alter has pointed out, Clinton can't win an elected majority even if she triumphs in what are now likely to be re-scheduled primaries in the cranky states of Michigan and Florida. Again, we'd be back to the Superdelegates and, therefore, back to a dicey game of chicken by the Democratic Party elite. How many Superdelegates are willing to politically die, or willing to spark an intra-party party civil war, just to save Clinton's bacon?
"The 1968 Chicago convention would look like a picnic compared to what Denver would become," a long-time political biographer said on election eve, predicting a youth uprising at the site of this summer's Democratic Convention if the election is thrown to Clinton. "This isn't 40 years ago," he said. "Now, everyone's got a car. And everyone who believed in the change that Clinton scoffs at would wind up surrounding that convention."
Maybe. Maybe not. Who am I to predict that the Democrats are too smart to self-destruct in what should be, by all other measures, a watershed year? The more steely-eyed amongst us, then, would do well to psychologically prepare for the nomination going, somehow or another, to Hillary Clinton. Which means, in turn, that Democrats ought to simultaneously prepare to be beaten by John McCain.
Clinton regained her footing this past week primarily by running a classic, Republican-style campaign of negative, fear-based ads. She blanketed the airwaves with a detestable spot that, stripped to its core message, warned that if Obama were selected, your children could be murdered in their beds in the middle of the night. Somewhere up above (or more likely from down below), departed GOP mudmeister Lee Atwater is cracking a grin.
The spot worked so well - with exit polls showing that voters who made a last-minute decision went in droves for Clinton-- that she couldn't resist reprising the line during her Tuesday night victory speech delivered to a cheering throng in Columbus. "When that phone rings at 3 a.m. in the White House," she said. "There's no time for speeches or on on-the-job training."
Perfect. Clinton's done McCain the favor of cutting his best general election campaign spot for him. All he has to do is cut her answering the phone out of the last 5 seconds of the ad and splice his own mug in there instead. If Clinton succeeds in making what's politely called the "national security issue" the center of the campaign by arguing she's a safer choice than Obama, then why wouldn't McCain argue that he's even better than she? McCain's already begun that effort. If Hillary's nominated, he'll most likely succeed.
http://johnnydoom.blogspot.com/2008/03/hillary-vows-to-change-campaign-stance.html
Voters can still choose to support one or the other candidate, and Clinton can still choose to continue running, as is any citizen's right and privilege in the U.S., but there are simple things called facts to be reckoned with. The simple fact is that Clinton can only get the nomination if superdelegates give it to her despite most voters giving it to Obama. Despite her handful of high-profile victories, Clinton has lost the majority of voters, the majority of states, and the majority of proportionally-awarded regular delegates. This is not something she can reverse with grand gestures, cockiness, confidence, or fear.
On what does she base her foreign policy experience? What crisis has she ever fixed? What war or conflict did she help avert? What treaty did she negotiate?
Why can't anybody answer those questions??????????
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stop watching tv.
1) the classic Red Phone is only going to ring if President Medvedyev wants to TALK about the issue (rather than let his Bears do the talking for him),
2) so-called "terrorists," likewise, will let the crisis speak for itself,
3) lacking such a fait-accompli, an issue of concern will allow days, in which to address the level and type of response.
The RedPhone@3AM meme is as fictional as the TickingBombJustfiesTorture meme, if less morally corrupt.
Lastly, don't EVER forget that
4) it's US who have made the world as dangerous to Americans as it is now. WE made sure that we're hated the world over, by explicitly disdaining our manifold opportunities to discuss our differences in a civil fashion with other nations. Reacting out of fear and hate, to threats from others, will only make our situation worse, in regards to the opinions and actions of other peoples.
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stop watching tv
makes a hypocrit of himsilf by what he actually said in his book..Audasity of Hope"..according to Joe ; ....Obama admitted himself in his book that he
was priivy to American Intelligence he might have voted the same.......but of course he Obama was tring to get elected to the state senate..(Not
the US) in a very liberal area...where all they wanted to hear was anti war......hell John Kerry, John Rockefeller, Chris Dodd, Tom Daschle, Ben
Nelson...all of them Obama supporters and they all voted just as Hillary did on Iraq in 2002. Obama had a state senate job a part time job at
best...and he wouldn't even commit himselves to a position there...by only voting present.......saving himself from any scruitiny that could have
come his way , had he actually done his job, and taken an actual position. So it is easy to say I would have, or I did.....but you cant say I voted
against the war from the beginning if you were NOT entitled to vote as you were not a senator til Jan 2005
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-wilson/obamas-hollow-judgment_b_89441.html
If that happens... as an independent I will vote for McCain, not because I agree with him in most issues, but because he displays the talent to reach across the aisle, not to the extent that an Obama could, but far surpassing the Clinton model of my way or the highway. George W Bush failed in his Presidency because he could never reach consensus with the American people on any issue, but of course he doesn't care about consensus. Hillary Clinton will never form consensus, her campaign numbers prove that fact!
What we need in a President is that elusive ability to form consensus and that is what Independent voters will flock to in November.
The answer is all she cares about is being president and to heel with the country. You shouldn't want anything that much.
I love politics!!!
She will do just fine, but there are those of us that will find it difficult to vote democratic if she is not the nominee, but we will finally do the right thing -- because no one wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, or to put McCain in there.
Either way, she will do fine, thank you. GO HILLARY!!!
Yet another poll, this one by SurveyUSA that interviewed 30K people, shows, surprise, surprise, Obama beats McCain.
In old fashioned political terms: "just talk to the cab drivers."
In pollster terms, the Clinton negatives are so high that she can't possibly win in the general election.
This has all been known for quite some time.
There will be no Perot, to help her win in a general election like her husband won. On the other hand, given that her ostensible experience begins with her work for McGovern, she'll at least be familiar with the concept of being crushed.
Nor is it likely that McCain will pull a "Poland is free" blunder like Ford, although we can hope the Hagee thing will be the equivalent.
If she comes up with the nomination I think Hillary's supporters can wave signs and shout "woo! - go Hillary!" all they want from now until election day and then face the music on Nov 12th. We all will.
Children being murdered in their bed?
Thanks for the post... we're all just a little "dumber" because of it.
And the comments wow.... no one told anyone to pull any names of any ballot in Michigan. I think that was a dumb move, makes no sense, and why would anyone do such a thing? (Good judgement I guess???) There were Democrats on the ballot in MI in addition to Clinton. 44% went uncomitted.
Everyone was on the ballot in Florida. Obama ran national cable advertising. Clinton won.
I'd like to say that no matter which candidate you are for .....it's this kind of crap that makes me hate being a Democrat. I blame Howard Dean and his 50 stake screw this election up strategy. Texas is a joke. Primaries and Caucuses, some people can, some people can't. It really is a disgusting way to run a democracy.
When we were a younger country, people would have gone to Washington D.C. and excercised their constitutional right to remove these people.
I'll tell ya where it ends. It ends with another dem loss in November. You DLC folks. You need and intervention. This is NOT the way to lead.
You need to get it through your head that neither one of them can win without the Super-delegates.
There is no rule that says if you are ahead, and neither candidate can reach the magic number, the the one with the lower no. of delegates should step aside.
No, the rule is that if neither party can reach the magic no., that then the Super-Delegates can use their power to endorse with their vote, either candidate they want, the one they feel is best qualified, and this vote is not to be based on the popular vote, or the delegate counts -- it is an independent vote.
She is not cheating. What are you afraid of -- that she will win fair and square? SHe is no wussy -- she will not quit which is exactly what you should want in a President.