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  • Still over for Hillary?

    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.
    It's Still Over For Hillary
    By Dick Morris

    The real message of Tuesday's primaries is not that Hillary won. It's that she didn't win by enough.

    The race is over.

    The results are already clear. Obama will go to the Democratic Convention with a lead of between 100 and 200 elected delegates. The remaining question is: What will the superdelegates do then? But is that really a question? Will the leaders of the Democratic Party be complicit in its destruction? Will they really kindle a civil war by denying the nomination to the man who won the most elected delegates? No way. They well understand that to do so would be to throw away the party's chances of victory and to stigmatize it among African-Americans and young people for the rest of their lives. The Democratic Party took 20 years to recover from the traumas of 1968 and it is not about to trigger a similar bloodletting this year.

    John McCain's nomination guarantees that the superdelegates wouldn't dare. A perfectly acceptable alternative for most Democrats, McCain would harvest so large a proportion of Obama's votes if Hillary steals the nomination that he would probably win. Even putting Obama on the ticket would not allay the anger of his supporters; it would just make him complicit in the robbery.

    Will Hillary win Pennsylvania? Who cares? Even if she were to sweep the remaining primaries and caucuses by 10 points, she would move just 60 votes closer to Obama's total of elected delegates. And she won't sweep them all. Even if Hillary wins Pennsylvania, the largest prize up for grabs, Obama will probably win North Carolina, which is almost as large. He's likely to win Mississippi and Wyoming and has a good shot in Oregon and Indiana. The most likely result of these coming contests is that Obama will be roughly where he is now, about 140 elected delegates ahead of Hillary.

    Suppose that Hillary will carry those states by enough to offset Obama's delegate lead. The proportional representation system makes a knockout impossible and so mutes relatively narrow victories as to make them almost inconsequential. Little Vermont, with 600,000 people, gave Obama a net gain of four delegates, half of what Hillary won from the Texas primary, a state with 20 million residents. Even after Hillary won big-state victories in Ohio and Texas, she drew only 20 closer to Obama's total of elected delegates.

    Hillary won't withdraw. That much is for sure. The tantalizing notion that 800 insiders can offset a season of primaries and caucuses will drive both Clintons to ever-escalating rhetoric. Will their attacks hurt Obama? Likely all they will achieve is to give him needed experience in the cut and thrust of media politics.

    Left out of the entire equation is poor John McCain. Unable to get a word in edgewise and unsure of which Democrat to attack, he will have to watch from the sidelines as Hillary and Obama hog the headlines. If the superdelegates deliver the nomination to Hillary in the dead of night without leaving fingerprints at the crime scene, McCain's nomination will be worth having. If Obama prevails, it won't be worth the paper on which it is written. The giant killer, Obama will have soared to new heights of popularity and McCain won't be able to bring him back to Earth in the nine weeks that will remain.

    Suggestion for Obama:

    The next time Hillary uses the recycled red phone ad, counter with one of your own. When the phone rings in the middle of the night, have a woman's voice, with a flat Midwestern accent, answer it and say, "Hold on" into the receiver. Then she should shout, "Bill! It's for you!"

    Because with Hillary's complete lack of any meaningful experience in foreign affairs, and her lack of the "testing" that she boldly claims, she'll be yelling for Bill.
    Source: RealClearPolitics - Articles - It's Still Over For Hillary
    "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

  • #2
    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.
    If at first you don't succeed, call it v1.0!

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Akshay View Post
      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.
      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.
      "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

      Comment


      • #4
        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.
        If at first you don't succeed, call it v1.0!

        Comment


        • #5
          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.
          To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education - Plato

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Ironduke View Post
            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).
            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.
            To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education - Plato

            Comment


            • #7
              I don't think Obama suffers in Florida or Michigan just because he played by the rules in bypassing their primaries.
              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.
              "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

              Comment


              • #8
                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.:))
                To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education - Plato

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                • #9
                  At the moment Obama leads by over a half a million popular votes.
                  She won Ohio by 230,000 votes. She can pull off wins of 200,000 - 300,000 votes in each of the three.
                  "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Ironduke View Post
                    She won Ohio by 230,000 votes. She can pull off wins of 200,000 - 300,000 votes in each of the three.
                    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.

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by lwarmonger View Post
                      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.
                      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.
                      "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        I believe she's favored in Indiana, West Virginia, Puerto Rico for sure. Kentucky may favor her as well. She won Tennessee.
                        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

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by ZFBoxcar View Post
                          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
                          That's one poll, and I've never heard of the polling agency. I doubt its veracity.
                          "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

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                          • #14
                            Alright, fair enough. It was the only one I could find on google. Do you have any more reliable polls for Indiana?

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by ZFBoxcar View Post
                              Alright, fair enough. It was the only one I could find on google. Do you have any more reliable polls for Indiana?
                              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.
                              "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

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