So the Hillary campaign still stands
April 23rd, 2008
Picture DaveMundy
Is it down now to whether she can keep raising the money?
Whether you agree with her or not you have to admire the sheer guts and determination of Hillary to stick in this race. The Pennsylvania demographics and the fact that it was a closed primary meant that the state was always going to be a “must win” for her - but was the margin enough?
Her lead over Obama was decisive but not on the scale required to seriously eat into her opponent’s overall national popular vote count lead.
For the national numbers continue to be against her and it is almost certainly the case that the only way she can get the nomination is if the elders of the party, the so-called super-delegates, decide that she is best at the top of the ticket in spite of the mathematics.
But what a decision that would be. They would be alienating a vast growing army of Obama supporters and cutting themselves off from the ever-successful Barack fundraising machine. And what would it mean for the future of the party if they ignored what had been the pledged delegate count?
My guess is that is now down to Hillary’s fundraising capabilities. Can she attract the support of donors to pay off existing debts and still compete with the the Obama operation? And can she show the party leadership that she has what it takes to produce a well-funded campaign against McCain? Barack, remember, can probably raise $2m a day.
For this reason, if no other, Barack is still a worthy favourite but Hillary is still there - and she ain’t going to give up. In the nomination betting the money has been going on her overnight.
Mike Smithson
MessageSpace Advertising
new Mississippi CD 1 special election numbers, with 96% of precincts reporting:
CHILDERS (D) 30,689 48%
DAVIS (D) 30,160 47%
This is an outstanding result for the Democrats. Methinks an indication that things may not be so dire for the Ds as some think right now (as others thought in the Spring of ‘32 and ‘92).
For her to go on the top of the ticket he HAS to be on the bottom of it or they will really risk alienating Obama fans.
One thing I disagree with is the idea that she has not made inroads into his popular vote lead. I reckon she will have gained 200k today. With Puerto Rico to come that gap can be closed (with Florida counting anyway).
Still no numbers yet for Chester County. But finally got some for Potter Co - whooptie doo!
2. I don’t think there is any way he could accept the VP, given that he is likely to be ahead in pledged delegates, state victories, and the popular vote.
The moral argument will be that she should accept the VP position.
Obama speech
An election is an an election and Clinton lost this at least two months ago. The PR system merely prolongs the agony.
I can deal with despair: it’s the hope I can’t handle….
In this case no, I think it’s down to superdelegate endorsements rather than cash. She did OK in Pennsylvania outspent 3:1, and there aren’t that many pledged delegates left to fight over. The superdelegates already know that she can raise plenty of money, but not as much as Obama, and she’s already got a load in the kitty for the general election in case they’re worried about that. And if she thinks she’s got a reasonable chance she can slim the campaign down and fund it herself if she wants to.
So the important questions are:
1) Will a bunch of Clinton-leaning superdelegates use Pennsylvania as a chance to endorse her? (Since they probably won’t have a better one…)
2) Will Obama and Dean be able to prod enough Obama-leaning superdelegates to come off the fence, or will they all stay uncommitted until the convention waiting for each other to be the first to jump?
5 - If she doesn’t overtake him in any way, shape or form she should not be the nominee, period.
Lead jumped from 8 to 10% now! I just want it to remain in single figures!
Just got some Chester numbers directly from the county elections website
CHESTER 22% of pcts reporting
Clinton 46%
Obama 54%
54/46 with 78% reporting. CNN. agreed the only and minimum requirement for supers puting her over is a PV lead. I suspect 8% tonight won’t be enough. O/C unlikely because he hates her. C/o unlikley because the maths don’t add up,
Lead flipping between 8 and 10 with 78% of precincts reporting. 154,000 votes. So I guess it is 9% really!
What a truly extraordinary election this is, in terms of indecisiveness.
It looks like Clinton’s lead is gonna be about 8-9%. If you had to choose a margin of victory that left things as they were, very delicately poised, it would be… 8-9%.
6% or less would have been poor for Hillary. 11, 12% a definite step forward.
But 8-9%. Right on the cusp. Remarkable.
3 - I project Hillary to catch up in the popular vote by 238k tonight.
Listening to Obama. Still utterly convincing and impressive.
I thought Clinton’s speech was good, but this is great.
One thing that I think isn’t said enough is that the Democratic party super delegates are probably more switched on than even saddoes like us so they can do the math.
Why are they not pushing Obama over the top?
I can understand Clinton supporters not coming out yet but why would Obama leaners be staying schtum?
Remember before Ohio we were told about a 50 strong block to mass annoint. Where are they?
1 - The MS election was almost won outright by the Democrat. It’s 49-47 with 99% reporting. Looks like a run-off on May 13th. In some ways an even worse result for the GOP, means they will have to spend money defending it but the Dems can easily outspend them.
7. its NOT an election.
(a) 20% of delegates are ex officio and can do what they want.
(b) its being framed by the media narrive which is more driven by percentage vote than actual delegates
(c) its spread over (so far) 4 months and possiblely 6 which makes momentum king.
Conclusion ? its an electoral college and while as a big fan i accept her chances ar 25% max this isn’t over yet.
Last couple of percentage seem to have broken a lot for Clinton. Looks like heading up to 10 points properly now.
17. It’s always possible the Obama campaign is holding them back so they get momentum going into the convention. Or that they do genuinely believe in letting the primary season run and letting all the voters have they say before they wrap it up.
Obama’s speech not fantastic either - more tonal variation, but rambling. Hillary now 55-45 ahead (actually, not due to rounding), but Chester still an enigma.
19 - And not a single super delegate can’t change his/her vote in Denver.
Well, maybe one super delegate can’t…
19. But the bigger the pledged delegate lead, the bigger chunk of superdelegates Clinton needs to persuade her case. The SDs are individuals, not a bloc that is going to plump for one or the other, and they will consider all the factors differently.
14. But “things as they are” is Obama has won the nomination clearly, as he had over a month ago. So why is she still in it?
It’s like Cambridge being 2 length behind in the boat race with half a mile to go. It only looks close from the Skycopter…
14. spot on. exactly what I said many moons/threads ago.
In search of a new narritive. If Obama can’t beat Clinton can he beat McCain?
Clinton campaign: $500K this evening
“How much she raises tonight will be a key factor in her strength going forward.”
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0408/Clinton_campaign_500k_today.html
Here are major PA counties with significant votes left to report:
LACKAWANNA 65% reporting C = 74%
LEHIGH 45% reporting C = 60%
NORTHHAMPTON 64% reporting C = 60%
BUCKS 41% reporting C = 64%
CHESTER 22% reporting (but not on CNN) O = 54%
DELAWARE 75% reporting O = 51%
MONTGOMERY 26% reporting C = 51%
DAUPHIN 71% reporting O = 62%
LANCASTER 29% reporting O = 52%
YORK 61% reporting C = 55%
FAYETTE 47% reporting C = 80%
WESTMORELAND 78% reporting C = 69%
Mike. I think your comments set in bolder type are crucial.This has been a nail biting contest and Hillary has made some valid arguments about her being “the winner” in terms of winning the big states, being almost tied in the Popular Vote, Florida and Michegan not being counted etc.
BUT. And it’s a big BUT. The rules were set out before the contest. Obama will win the PV and the elected delegates. It would be a seismic mistake in my view for the SDs to give her the nomination when he is the obvious, albeit narrow winner, as defined by the original terms of the contest.
She spoke well but there were hints of conciliation. If she wants the VP position he will now find it hard to deny her. I was struck by your comment at the end of the last thread that “the dream ticket” bet could be attractive. It would reverse all the divisive effects of the nomination campaign and reward both candidates for their efforts.
22. If you go to the Chester County website, it says Obama is winning 55-45.
But the number of votes is actually not that large, despite the sizeable nature of the county (I guess it is white, wealthy - and Republican).
So it probably won’t matter that much. I think Hillary might just edge a double digit lead now, which is psychologically positive for her, if not a blowout.
Nice speech. Agree with Nick, not fantastic…
MISSISSIPPI CD 1 special election
with 99% of precincts reporting:
CHILDERS (D) 32,376 49%
GREG DAVIS (R) 30,923 47%
result: May 13 runoff
29. Can you imagine how angry Bill would be if his wife was in the White House and he wasn’t!
16. Only if you’re already a convert. There are plenty of Americans who don’t see their country in the same relentlessly negative light as Obama. They may think it’s headed in the wrong direction, but I don’t they want the kind of full-blooded liberalism (in the American sense) that Obama and Pelosi undoubtedly believe in, and would at least try to implement.
Obamas “Fire wall” if i have to make his case for him is this. That on the second ballot no delegate is pledged and on current form his platform performance would blow her off the stage.
so to 6/5. am i right in saying its just Indiana.NC ? when is kentucky?
19. It’s the 21st Century and belive me, it IS an election. The superdelegates are just make-weights, who will back the popular winner. Inconceivable otherwise…
35. Same day as Oregon, May 20. Puerto Rico also has a sizable share of delegates.
32. any response to my earlier question? if the the D wins how will he/she vote as a super delegate?
17: Why are they not pushing Obama over the top?
OK, imagine you’re a superdelegate, dependent on the support of your fellow Democrats and donors, who are split down the middle. Here are your options:
1) Go with the person with less votes and risk the wrath of your consituents.
2) Go with the person with less connections and risk the wrath of your donors.
3) Keep your mouth shut until the thing has already been decided by everybody else one way or another, and in the event that it goes to the convention undecided either call in sick or hide in the toilet during all the contentious votes.
34 “There are plenty of Americans who don’t see their country in the same relentlessly negative light as Obama.”
Total horsepoop.
36. whats the “popular winner? delegates? PV ? PV with FL ? PV with MH ? both ? “popular winner minus extra scandal? polling evidence that she can win big EC staes and he can’t?
Obama 80% chance Clinto 20% chance but this is NOT over.
Yes, I think it’s going to settle at 55-45 - CNN now recording Chester and up to 83% overall.
Obama’s speech improved as it went on - noticeably focused on the next two primaries in IN and NC.
39. Precisely true. Not much fun to back the wrong guy for president, and then end up looking an idiot, and get ignored for perks and jobs - when the other candidate sweeps into power.
The supers are waiting, like all good careerists, to see which they should vote on a selfish basis. Trouble is there isn’t going to be a decisive winner - until they make their minds up.
39 - Are you sure you’re not a superdelegate yourself? Because what you say is totally correct.
41 nicely put
37 - She’s going to get the 10 points. The next set of opinion polls for NC and Indiana will be very interesting.
Rod and Socrates are right that bar some big unseen event Obama will win the nomination but you’ve got to admire HRC.
Obama could have knocked her out of the race in NH, on ST, in OH/TX and now in PA and she has lived to fight another day.
The show moves on to IN and NC. I would say she has to win IN to carry on and that will be very difficult given Obama’s spending power. However the odds are now much lower that this goes to June. Even if she loses in IN and NC she is polling very well in KY. Still, she will run out of road eventually.
He’s done really averagely in the suburbs.
Euuu, 4am! That’ll do me. Good night all!
43 - They all want to back a winner but what happens if she catches up in the PV? Then there IS no winner to back without them making their minds up.
On the PV after tonight HRC will be c. 600,000 behind including caucuses but excluding MI and FL. If you exclude caucuses and include FL that comes down to about 250,000. This latter measure is the only one Clinton has a conceivable chance of winning (and she is still dependent on Puerto Rico even then). I don’t think SDs would buy it but the CLintons would certainly try to pursuade them.
Indiana will be crucial. If she can win that well she is right back in it. If Obama takes both IN and NC then. hmm…
And on that fearsomely uninsightful note, I am to Bedlam. Zz.
OBAMA SPEECH
The guy sounded angry.
Why the counties Obama is winning are going for him:
Philadephia = African Americans
Dauphin (Harrisburg) = state workers
Chester, Delaware = suburban Philly (but why not Bucks and as yet Montgomery?)
Lancaster = not really sure
Centre = State College = Penn State University GO NITTANY LIONS!
Union = Bucknell University
52 - I concur that she needs to win Indiana to stay in. She could also do with making sure that she doesn’t lose NC by a total blowout (say over 10-12 points)
BO speech on the radio ( not ideal) and i suspect only the poorer first half. However. very poor and a bit like the philly debate. irritated by not winning.
41. The delegate winner under the rules, which is Obama however you slice it. The SD’s know this, which explains Clinton’s SD lead plummetting by 3/4 since the start of this campaign.
By the time all the primaries/caucuses are over in 6 weeks time I predict the SD’s will be balanced nearly 50/50 - in other words, irrelevant.
When Clinton finally concedes they’ll move massively behind Obama. That is their function - make-weights…
So the next few states are probably decided like this one was, but there’s still the arguments that can be put; when Clinton can only rely on SD’s mathmatically, Obama’s campaign can claim that she’s more out of it than before.
CNN referencing the Clinton reference to the website and the outreaching remarks about Obama.
It’s still looking like Obama is srtonger, I’d be tempted to call it for him but I’m very new at this!
Sorry if I should have introduced myself or anything, but I’m taking a long overdue trip to bed now! Love the website, the debates and many of the constructive points made!
CLINTON’S ODDS
are better now — and will be growing — for she proved tonight that Obama cannot reach the Reagan Democrats of the suburbs… bleu-collar, uneducated gun-owners church goers…
Final Mississippi CD 1 Special Election
100% pcts reporting
CHILDERS (D) 33,138 49%
DAVIS (R) 31,066 46%
Childers missed getting a majority by 409 votes. Hence the May 13 runoff.
Hang on to yer hat!
Oh and the other thing, as someone else said, is that pastergate and bittergate seem to have been put to bed too!
61
How come? Clinton might win tonight by double-digit!
OBAMA’S COALITION
Obama seems now unable to grow his basics - the black vote and upscale white people.
61. no pastorgate and bitter gate are whats keeping her in this. And the hope of another.
55/45 with 90% reporting. CNN
I’m off to bed now - thanks for all your company tonight. Just to leave you on a cliffhanger for those wondering about double digits, I’m now projecting Clinton at 54.96% a lead of 9.92!!
66. That will be 10% for the press and just about enought for the press.
..and the figure of closing the popular vote gap by over 200,000 sort of sounds better than say 195,000…
if Obama is the nominee, how wil he do in the swing states against McCain?
That’s the only question that matters in this race.
I am starting to be hopeful that the answer is “not well”.
You have to admire Clinton? Well if you admired Hitler has he invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Both are/were futility squared.
Mike, when you started a thread after the Texas and Ohio results were in, you asked “Who is writing off Hillary now?” I put my head above the parapet and got shot at a few times. But it’s the same situation. Yes, you and others will probably make some money out the changing odds on her nomination prospects, but let’s face it, the game is up for her and as Rod Crosby has said, it was two months ago.
The only problem is that with Hillary being of the old energy, youi know, last millenium, and seeing herself as one of the main flag-bearers against the new energy of Obama, she is not the slightest bit interested in how much she damages his chances of winning in November. She knows she can’t win the nomination, unless she really is *that* stupid, and that’s about the only thing I do give her credit for, but as far as she is concerned, it’s more important that Obama loses, period.
And to anyone suggesting a dream ticket of Clinton as Obama’s running mate, let me give you a shake! For God’s sake wake up! You’re having a nightmare!
RodCrosby, a couple of questions about your spreadsheet if you’re still around:
1) You’ve got Obama losing Indiana by 10%, the same as Pennsylvania. Does that still seem right, or do you think it will end up being closer?
2) Seeing its uncanny accuracy in the last couple of races, I’ve been wondering whether the relationship between the spreadsheet and the actual results might be causal rather than predictive. Could you test it out by putting Mike Gravel in there as the winner of the Guam caucuses?
[40] SSI responded: 34 “There are plenty of Americans who don’t see their country in the same relentlessly negative light as Obama.”
Total horsepoop.
Well, there are plenty of Americans who don’t share BHO’s vision for his country - they’re called the GOP. Nonetheless, if this ain’t gonna be a Donkey year, I don’t what a Donkey year looks like.
Question for all you experts - if we restrict the delegate total to just those states that voted Democrat or where the Dems were within say 5% in 2000 or 2004 does it make any difference?
69. McCain is a Republican - that means he loses in Novemeber, whoever the Democrat nominee is.
73: Can’t claim to be an expert, but the situation you describe would presumably be an overwhelming win for Clinton. (Although if that was the way the thing was decided Bill Clinton wouldn’t have been elected in the first place, so you’d never have heard of Hillary…)
But why would you do that?
75. It’s the right question and one Hillary’s team will no doubt be relentlessly asking superdelegates.
To win the election, any candidate needs to win their own core states and a majority of the swing states, which Jon defines well for the Democrats at [73]. It doesn’t matter if Obama would do much better than Clinton in Wyoming - both would lose to McCain by a long way. On a betting note, it’s perhaps worth remembering that most of the big wins have been for Clinton (I remember New Hampshire and California particularly well
), apart from Obama’s recovery before even Iowa took place.
There is still a long way to go and while Obama is still rightly a very strong favourite, there are question marks about his stamina, his ability to perform when things aren’t quite going his way, and his support in the key states as against Hillary.
For the superdelegates as a whole to overrule the pledged vote would take a lot of nerve, and that action itself may be sufficiently damaging to prevent it happening short of Obama’s campaign going badly wrong between now and August, but it’s worth remembering that in effect several hundred superdelegates are already on record as planning to do exactly that. While they’re not exactly making their decisions in isolation - they’re well aware of how their vote fits into the dynamics of the race - they are all each going against the popular vote. It can still happen for her, though I don’t think it will.
76: not only that, but surely you want a candidate who can win Republican states!
California, New York: these states will vote Democrat if the candidate was a donkey with a rosette.
The key thing here is to remember “the super delagates are not a block”. They will not vote en-mass. They are just another primary. And one that will probably split 55/45 for Hillary. Which - again probably - will not be enough.
76; Jon Corzine effectively said that he’d defect to Obama if he won the popular vote.
76: I can just about see why someone might want to take a look at who was popular in the primaries in the swing states and extrapolate from that (although it’s a hell of a stretch from who wins most votes among Democratic primary voters against another Democrat to who wins most votes overall against a Republican).
But the post at 73 seems to be even crazier, in that if I read it right the thought is that you count non-swing-states that the Democrats won convincingly while ignoring the ones they lost convincingly. This makes no sense at all, except as a justification to convince gullible low-information voters. And the super-delegates won’t be gullible low-information voters. Likewise, assuming that the map in the next election has to be the same as 2000 and 2004 is the kind of dumb mistake I can’t imagine these people making.
Of course if they want some kind of justification for not following the pledged delegate lead they can find one; As you say, hundreds already have.
If Obama can pick up North Carolina and Indiana, Hillary has to let go. Dragging it out to the final conference will make the Democrats look divided and will seriously reduce the time available for taking down John McCain.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
79. Sure, there are a lot of assumptions in there, and it is a jump to assume that the more popular Democrat in a state among Democrats (sometimes - depending on the nature of the primary / caucus) will be the best candidate to take on the the Republican, but there must be some sort of linkage.
Having just done some basic numbercrunching, the following list gives the electoral votes available in the states won by each Democratic candidate in the primaries, broken down by the results from the 2004 election:
Rep 10%+: Obama 80, Clinton 28 (Texas’s 34 not allocated as unclear who won)
Rep 5% to 10%: Obama 24, Clinton 6 plus Florida (27)?
Rep under 5%: Clinton 25, Obama 16 (Nevada’s 5 unallocated as unclear who won)
Dem under 5%: Clinton 25 plus Michigan (17)?, Obama 19
Dem 5% to 10%: Clinton 70, Obama 22
Dem 10%+: Clinton 47, Obama 44
I fully recognise that there are all sorts of problems with this kind of approach. In addition to those mentioned earlier by Edmund and others, two others are that it doesn’t take account of the size of the win in any state or the nature of the election (caucus, closed primary, open primary) and hence who could vote.
Even so, Obama’s lead in the safe Republican states is pretty striking, whereas the others are all fairly even, except for those in the moderately safe Democrat group, but that is wholly accounted for by California, which was itself a tight contest.
One other thing I noticed while doing this exercise was that all of the remaining states (apart from Oregon which is a Democrat marginal), were won by the Republicans in 2004 by at least 12%.
Why have superdelegates if their votes are predetermined by events? Or are they just there now to negate the potential “kingmaker” role of third candidates?
The Low Road to Victory
New York Times
Published: April 23, 2008
The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.
“The rhetoric should be over and work should begin. Bring my Son home from Iraq. Help my neighbors save their home. Bring gas prices down so my co-workers can keep their jobs. … Let’s get this nomination race to the finish line for all of US.”
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.
If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.
On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.
If that was supposed to bolster Mrs. Clinton’s argument that she is the better prepared to be president in a dangerous world, she sent the opposite message on Tuesday morning by declaring in an interview on ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president: “We would be able to totally obliterate them.”
By staying on the attack and not engaging Mr. Obama on the substance of issues like terrorism, the economy and how to organize an orderly exit from Iraq, Mrs. Clinton does more than just turn off voters who don’t like negative campaigning. She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama.
Mr. Obama is not blameless when it comes to the negative and vapid nature of this campaign. He is increasingly rising to Mrs. Clinton’s bait, undercutting his own claims that he is offering a higher more inclusive form of politics. When she criticized his comments about “bitter” voters, Mr. Obama mocked her as an Annie Oakley wannabe. All that does is remind Americans who are on the fence about his relative youth and inexperience.
No matter what the high-priced political operatives (from both camps) may think, it is not a disadvantage that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton share many of the same essential values and sensible policy prescriptions. It is their strength, and they are doing their best to make voters forget it. And if they think that only Democrats are paying attention to this spectacle, they’re wrong.
After seven years of George W. Bush’s failed with-us-or-against-us presidency, all American voters deserve to hear a nuanced debate — right now and through the general campaign — about how each candidate will combat terrorism, protect civil liberties, address the housing crisis and end the war in Iraq.
It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs.
On the measure of pledged delegates, PA was not great for Hillary. She has only picked up a net gain in the range 8-12. That was some 27% of the remaining pledged delegates. Before PA she needed 66% of those left to decide. The measure of her failure in PA is that after PA, she now needs to get 72% of those remaining pledged delegates.
And no way does that happen. In two weeks time we have Indiana (which has 84 delegates to award) and North Carolina (which has 134). It is likely that following those two, Hillary will have made no net gain - and given Obama’s likely blow-out win in North Carolina, she will actually have gone backwards - over the eight weeks since Mississippi.
Ride the media-driven uptick if you must - but reality sets in the morning of 7th May.
So NickP got it completely wrong (3-4% lead he said) again.
84 - Indeed. And to overturn that deficit in pledged delegates she needs an impossibly large proportion of the remaining supers.
Haven’t read through the thread so I’m probably repeating what others have said but I said it would be 9% and it was, if only I’d put money on it.
Anyway, treading water in these primaries isn’t good enough for Clinton. The one area where she bests Obama as regards beating McCain is the Appalachians (Ohio partly, PA the same, West Virginia etc), Obama has already shown that he beats her in the Midwest, the pacific North west and the South West. She isn’t pulling enough ahead, delegate wise any increase for her is derisory, hardly worth the millions of dollars spent by her supporters.
To be a winner she needed two votes for every one for Obama (i.e. a 30% plus lead), she may get these in Kentucky and West Virginia but not pulling out that sort of win in PA and not being likely to in NC, OR and IN means that anything she does is meaningless.
It still won’t get through to her though, the concern is that she will try and manufacture more ways to ‘obliterate’ Obama and drag her party into another decade or so of oblivion. Over to you DNC.
51 - PV totals are ignoring many Caucus states where Obama beat Clinton convincingly. You can’t accurately state the popular vote.
88 - No but I’ve seen estimates. Media outlets are reporting the ‘Popular Vote’ and you can bet your last dollar that if Clinton can get ahead on ANY measure she will use it as an argument for the SDs and for legitimacy. It might not be right, or fair, but this is politics.
Incidentally, I think you could easily argue that Clinton has been unlucky. If Florida and Michigan were re-run, or had run on ST, then Clinton would probably have cut the Obama POV lead by c. 300/400k and his delegate lead by c. 20/30. She would have still been behind but it would have been a lot closer.
89 - If Michigan and Florida had been on Super Tuesday there would have been no draw. It would have been a big big night for HRC. California, New Jersey, Michigan, Florida, Massachusetts all going the same way would have been viewed as a barnstorming, defining night.
God alone knows why the Florida Democrats shot themselves (and their candidate) in the foot.
Great debate here as usual but what does this mean to the betting? The odds have barely shifted; Obama eased slightly, Hillary cut marginally and McCain in a bit as well.
Gore was down to 25/1 on Betfair earlier this morning (to be Democratic candidate) but has drifted back to 28/1, where he was yesterday. Surely he’s an option if the superdelegates want to keep their heads under the parapet? And if that’s the case, wouldn’t the Dems be handing the elections to McCain on a plate?
Can anyone explain why Puerto Rico has a primary when it doesn’t vote in Presidential elections?
And I was rather surprised to hear the term reagan democrats again, if they’re still voting for the GOP surely they’re core republicans by now.