Ironduke

I've seen Dick on Fox News... pretty creepy guy, you know, the whole toe-sucking prostitute in the White House bit. But is he right? I think PA along with MI & FL revotes could put Hillary over the top in the popular vote.
Source: RealClearPolitics - Articles - It's Still Over For Hillary

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Akshay

Even with Florida & Michigan in her pocket, Hillary isn't getting any close to the margin of even 100 pledged delegates. The delegate mathematics has been against her since over a month now & with only 11 more states to go it would need some divine intervention for her to overtake Obama.

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Ironduke

By Obama's own (original) argument the nomination should be awarded to the candidate who wins the popular vote.

Now he's starting to talk about his lead in pledged delegates, so he must be painfully aware in the event of a MI/FL revote combined with a wide margin of victory for Clinton in PA he faces a strong possibility of losing the popular vote.

Obama, in my estimation, would be especially weak in Florida having wanting the original results to not count in the first place, and vacillating about a revote as well. In Michigan the whole NAFTAgate issue will come back to haunt him (as it assuredly will in Pennsylvania as well).

The Democratic establishment in both states heavily favors Hillary as well.

Endorsement breakdown:

Michigan
Clinton: governor, 1 senator, 3 representatives
Obama: 1 representative

Florida
Clinton: 1 senator, 4 representatives
Obama: 2 representatives

The total superdelegate breakdown in MI & FL is 15-5 in Clinton's favor.

Akshay

At the moment Obama leads by over a half a million popular votes. Even if FL/MI/PA go in favour of Clinton I don't think she would be able to erase popular vote lead. So if the democratic race goes to the convention in August it is very much likely Obama would stand as popular choice in the convention not just in terms of number of delegates but also popular vote count. There is already an argument floating in California that Clinton leads Obama by only 35 delegates instead of 44 reported. If this gets validates after state certifies its election result it would shave away any hopes for Clinton to norrow the delegate lead to within 100. Michigan/Florida are lost for Clinton. I don't suppose there would be a revote as there is nobody willing to pay for the dues.

I think Clinton is now beginning to open up to the reality that she wouldn't endup as popular democratic candidate & therefore, she floated the notion of a joint ticket. Obama has already rejected the idea of running as a VP but maybe he would consider a joint ticket with him as president & Clinton as VP. If things do not improve for Hillary & she isn't able to stop the flow of super-delegates into Obama camp then she would most certainly grab the joint ticket offer maybe after the NC vote.

JAD_333

If you didn't like Hillary and Bill before, you can loath them now. Calling on Obama to get on her ticket as veep is about as smug as team Clinton has ever been, and if there is one thing people don't like, it's smugness. What's more, in PA and in the other remaining primary states, Obama will get a surge from people who normally can't be bothered to vote. Call it the "screw you, Clinton" vote.

I don't really blame her for trying. Morris is right. She's all but washed up and grasping at straws. He's right, too, about a backlash within the dem party if Clinton gets the nomination by any other means than the elected delegate route.

While his political calculus on the current Obama-Clinton tug of war is pretty much on target, his projection that Obama as the nominee automatically defeats McCain is a shot in the dark. It's what a statistician would call a naive projection. That is to say, it's correct only if there are no surprises between the conventions and election day. By surprises I mean no new issues, no new revelations, no major world events, etc. etc, nothing to call into question Obama's judgement, capability, and experience, or the converse, no positive developments that enhance McCain's attractiveness to voters.

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JAD_333

I don't think Obama suffers in Florida or Michigan just because he played by the rules in bypassing their primaries. And I don't blame him for being a little hesitant to support a late reprieve by letting those states to hold a primary afterall. I can see Clinton agitating for the primaries. She's got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

But let's look at it from Obama's POV. All the candidates develop an early strategy for winning the delegates they need to get nominated. If their party has decreed that two state primaries will not be recognized, candidates intending to honor the party's decision will factor that into their strategy. Thus, all of their effort will be directed at legitimate primaries. Time passes. Now it's near the end of the primary campaign and one candidate's strategy has succeeded. He is ahead in the delegate count and close to having a lead the second best candidate cannot overcome. But wait. Forces in the party urged on by a governor in the other party want now to let those two states have a primary afterall. Whoa. You mean after executing a successful strategy while honoring his party's earlier wishes, the leading candidate must now be confronted with 2 unexpected primaries. Well, if I were number 2 like Clinton I'd be all for it. It's probably my only chance to close the delegate lead. And if I were the republican governor of Florida I'd be all for it too, because if Clinton is the candidate, McCain stands a good chance of winning. The stench coming from the dem party leadership is overwhelming. I take Obama's side in this, although as a republican I'd love to see Clinton pull off this thievery. The dems are close to self-destructing again.

Ironduke

I don't think he suffers in Michigan, I do think he suffers in Florida. Furthermore I think Hillary can warp this whole thing to make it seem to many in those states that Obama didn't want to allow them a revote. I don't blame him either.

In Michigan, I think he suffers because of NAFTAgate. She can point across the Detroit River at Hamilton, Ontario and the Ford, GM, and Chrysler manufacturing plants and stick it to Obama.

I mean, imagine Hillary giving a televised speech (to be replayed ad infinitum) saying she'll fight for industrial workers and so on, and then say, "While I'm here, Senator Obama is right across the border telling the Canadians his talk about NAFTA is just political posturing. Don't take it seriously, he tells them." I think that could produce a 300,000+ vote margin in MI alone.


On a matter of principle, I'm not sure whether it's right to allow MI & FL to have revotes, but from a political standpoint, I'd love to see Clinton snatch the nomination from Obama as if she were snatching a lollipop from a baby.

Newsweek can release another issue titled "Their Will Be Blood" but with different faces.

JAD_333

I'm with you in hoping Hillary pulls it off...but what I don't want to see is a Clinton-Obama ticket. If I were Obama, I'd have to think hard about refusing to run in the #2 spot. I doubt he'd want to, but he'd still be a young man next time around if they win and he'd probably sail to a nomination with heavy backing from shakers and movers as thanks for saving the 2008 ticket. Can you imagine him in the white house (OEOB) getting pushed around by Bill the way Hillary did to Gore.

Ironduke

She won Ohio by 230,000 votes. She can pull off wins of 200,000 - 300,000 votes in each of the three.

lwarmonger

But not in North Carolina or most of the other states... popular votewise it will still probably be about even or a little in Obama's favor.

Ironduke

I believe she's favored in Indiana, West Virginia, Puerto Rico for sure. Kentucky may favor her as well. She won Tennessee.

If you add the delegate totals for those four states, that's 207 delegates.

Obama will probably win Montana, Guam, North Carolina, and South Dakota, which total 202 delegates. I infer from the similar delegate totals the two voting blocs have nearly the same population and would cancel each other out.

Polls I've taken a look at seem to indicate that Hillary may have a chance of closing some of the vote gap in North Carolina (biggest Obama favored state left), I don't think he'll win it by the margins Hillary will win her races.

In the post-Pennsylvania race, I see the popular vote breaking down evenly, perhaps even breaking a little toward Hillary.

Hillary adds the Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida margins to that. She needs to close a 700,000 vote margin, most of it in those states. Ohio delivered her 230,000 votes. I see those three delivering similar margins... Florida's first primary netted her 300,000 votes.

ZFBoxcar

Polls give him a large lead in Indiana, although there are still a lot of undecideds.

Indiana Polls - 2008 Primary Presidential Election Results Exit Poll

Ironduke

That's one poll, and I've never heard of the polling agency. I doubt its veracity.

ZFBoxcar

Alright, fair enough. It was the only one I could find on google. Do you have any more reliable polls for Indiana?

Ironduke

No, but I can look at its demographics. The demographics that favored Hillary in Ohio are more pronounced in Indiana. Less black and a big industrial sector.