Tuesday, March 4, 2008

previous entry | main | next entry | TrackBack (0)


Open Super Tuesday II thread

Me, I'm just going to watch some episodes of House on the DVR for the next few hours, but the rest of you feel free to comment away on tonights primary results.

I can't resist one thought, however. Howard Fineman blogs "Win or lose, pressure on Clinton to exit will mount" over at Newsweek:

It's no longer a question of what Hillary herself thinks—she wants to stay for the duration, a close friend of hers tells me—but whether and when the leaders of the Democratic Party unite, publicly and privately, to tell her to get out if she wants to have a future leadership role in her own party.

As my colleague Jon Alter convincing showed today—calculator in hand-there is just no way, barring some kind of cataclysmic event, that Clinton can overtake Sen. Barack Obama in pledged delegates. Obama won't have enough of them to clinch the nomination on that basis alone, but she can't catch him....

[I]f Clinton continues to the next stage-if the results tonight allow her to fend off those telling her to quit—the next round is going to be a lot nastier. It's going to get into Obama's South Side Chicago roots; into some of the wilder statements of his longtime minister, Jeremiah Wright; and into the not-so-sly raising of doubts about Obama's religious beliefs.

Does Hillary really want to go there? Maybe not, which is why I think some of her own supporters (and maybe even some of her own campaign aides) would just as soon that this thing end tonight.

Here's the thing, though -- I think the mainstream media has underestimated the number of core Hillary supporters who would be unbelievably pissed by the optics of the Democratic "establishment" -- read, mostly men -- telling Hillary that her time on the stage has ended. Trust me, these people do exist, and they exist in significant numbers.

So my prediction is that any kind of stage-managed effort by the Democratic Party leadership to nudge Hillary Clinton aside will end in disaster. Either Clinton will refuse the overtures, declaring herself to be a "fighter" for the upteenth time -- or she will step aside in such a way that it costs Obama significant slices of the Democratic demographic come November.

UPDATE: Wow, CNN's numbers are screwy on Texas. As of 8:45, Obama and Clinton combined have nearly 800,000 votes, with less than one percent reporting. Unless the illegal immigration and ballot fraud problems are a lot worse than I thought, those vote counts are way too high.

posted by Dan on 03.04.08 at 08:22 PM




Comments:

UPDATE: Wow, CNN's numbers are screwy on Texas. As of 8:45, Obama and Clinton combined have nearly 800,000 votes, with less than one percent reporting. Unless the illegal immigration and ballot fraud problems are a lot worse than I thought, those vote counts are way too high.

Blitzer pointed out - roughly 10 minutes ago - that it was because a lot of early voting took place prior to the Texas primary. Perhaps there are just a large number of us Texas expats (assuming absentee ballots count as early voting).

posted by: matt on 03.04.08 at 08:22 PM [permalink]



There can't be any doubt that were the situation reversed with Sen. Clinton holding a small lead that Sen. Obama had only a slight mathematical chance of erasing, the Clinton campaign would be pulling out all the stops to secure Obama's withdrawal from the race.

In this case, I'd be very surprised if Clinton withdrew as long as there was the smallest possibility that she might win the nomination. From her point of view, the Democratic Presidential nomination is something she is entitled to, something Bill Clinton owes her for all he put her through and the party owes her for all she put up with from him. This sense of entitlement can be a powerful motivator, as the Bushes have shown us over the years -- and American voters are sometimes more accepting of it than one would think.

Obama needs to campaign as the underdog to sustain his lead through the end of the primary season. He can assume nothing about the disqualified delegates from Florida and Michigan; the likelihood is that the Clinton campaign will make a major push to seat all of them once the primaries are over. He has been tentative in challenging Sen. Clinton's extravagant claims of vast experience, and that has to stop. He has talked from time to time about telling Americans uncomfortable truths, and in the face of Clinton's relentless pandering it might be time to consider actually doing it.

Obama and his people need to understand that he could still lose this race. There will be some discussion in the next couple of news cycles about delegate counts and how they favor Obama, but the way today's primary results will appear in the media will show Obama taking a big hit from a revived Clinton. He'll need to take the initiative back.

posted by: Zathras on 03.04.08 at 08:22 PM [permalink]



Look, the Democratic nomination does NOT go to "the candidate who has the most delegates." It goes to the candidate who amasses 2,025 delegates, if I've got the number correct. And even if Barack finishes the primary season slightly ahead of Hillary, he won't have that many. That's when the bargaining begins -- and if Hillary truly can argue that she's won major states, where Barack can't close the deal, then she has the better claim on the nomination.

posted by: temoc94 on 03.04.08 at 08:22 PM [permalink]



Everything starting with the quote in this post is italicized, (rest of blog entries on the main page).

posted by: Mike on 03.04.08 at 08:22 PM [permalink]






Post a Comment:

Name:


Email Address:


URL:




Comments:


Remember your info?