Super Delegates - Seemingly Clinton’s only chance
Posted by: McQ
And, as expected, she'll do whatever it takes to corral enough of them if you believe her spokesman:
But Clinton will not concede the race to Obama if he wins a greater number of pledged delegates by the end of the primary season, and will count on the 796 elected officials and party bigwigs to put her over the top, if necessary, said Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson.
"I want to be clear about the fact that neither campaign is in a position to win this nomination without the support of the votes of the superdelegates,'' Wolfson told reporters in a conference call.
"We don't make distinctions between delegates chosen by million of voters in a primary and those chosen between tens of thousands in caucuses,'' Wolfson said. "And we don't make distinctions when it comes to elected officials'' who vote as superdelegates at the convention.
"We are interested in acquiring delegates, period,'' he added.
Pretty darn straight-forward, isn't it? And, of course, the campaign wants FL and MI delegates seated as is - no do overs.
But if the Clinton strategy rests on Super Delegates, she may be in more trouble than she knows according to Ron Fournier:
The remaining 796 delegates are elected officials and party leaders whose votes are not tied to state primaries or caucuses; thus, they are dubbed "superdelegates."
And they are not all super fans of the Clintons.
Some are labor leaders still angry that Bill Clinton championed the North American Free Trade Agreement as part of his centrist agenda.
Some are social activists who lobbied unsuccessfully to get him to veto welfare reform legislation, a talking point for his 1996 re-election campaign.
Some served in Congress when the Clintons dismissed their advice on health care reform in 1993. Some called her a bully at the time.
Some are DNC members who saw the party committee weakened under the Clintons and watched President Bush use the White House to build up the Republican National Committee.
Some are senators who had to defend Clinton for lying to the country about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Some are allies of former Vice President Al Gore who still believe the Lewinsky scandal cost him the presidency in 2000.
Some are House members (or former House members) who still blame Clinton for Republicans seizing control of the House in 1994.
Some are donors who paid for the Clintons' campaigns and his presidential library.
Some are folks who owe the Clintons a favor but still feel betrayed or taken for granted. Could that be why Bill Richardson, a former U.N. secretary and energy secretary in the Clinton administration, refused to endorse her even after an angry call from the former president? "What," Bill Clinton reportedly asked Richardson, "isn't two Cabinet posts enough?"
And some just want something new. They appreciate the fact that Clinton was a successful president and his wife was an able partner, but they never loved the couple as much as they feared them.
Never count the Clintons out. They are brilliant politicians who defied conventional wisdom countless times in Arkansas and Washington. But time is running out.
An amazing situation for the person all thought would waltz into the nomination a few short months ago. It's even reduced Bill Clinton to whining about press coverage and politics of personal destruction, something of which he is intimately familiar:
CLINTON: - to refer to my daughter in the way he did. It was representative of the kind of blatant, careless, crass, cruel remarks that are altogether too common. And I wouldn't use disrespectful language referring to General Petraeus or anybody else. But I think that it is remarkable how many sexist things have been said in this campaign that have not been reprimanded. Hillary never complains when people say things about her or me. But when he involved my daughter, she complained, and I think it was the right thing to do.
Yeah, well, I think you ought to put a little ice on it, Bill. It'll be all right.
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QandO
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The Quadrennial Running of the Potomac Stakes
Posted by: Dale Franks
Race those horsies! Race them! And, as we move into the backstretch, the numbers look like this, from Real Clear Politics:
REAL CLEAR POLITICS ELECTION 2008
Democrats Obama Clinton
Total Delegates 1272 1231
Pledged Delegates 1116 989
Popular Vote 9,326,079 8,638,911
Popular Vote (w/FL) 9,902,293 9,509,897
Popular Vote (w/FL & MI) 9,942,375 9,860,138
National RCP Average 44.6% 44.3%
Republicans McCain Huckabee
Total Delegates 819 240
National RCP Average 48.0% 28.2%
General Election Democrats Republicans
Obama vs. McCain Obama 47.7 McCain 43.7
Clinton vs. McCain Clinton 45.3 McCain 46.7
A couple of things jump out at me.
First, in pledged delegates, it's difficult to see how Clinton can end up with the most pledged delegates in the states that are left. As NBC News runs the numbers:
The NBC News election unit hard count stands at 1078 to 969. If you factor in the unallocated pledged delegates, our estimate rises to approximately 1128 to 1009 in Obama's favor (margin of error +/- 5 delegates). Toss in the superdelegates and Obama's lead is 1306 to 1270 (again +/- 5 delegates). What does this mean? For Clinton to overtake Obama for the pledged delegate lead — which we think is the single most important statistic for the superdelegates to decide their vote — she'll have to win 55% of the remaining delegates. Assuming next week goes Obama's way in Wisconsin and Hawaii, that percentage rises to 57%. Toss in likely Obama victories in Vermont, Wyoming, Mississippi, Oregon, Montana, and South Dakota, then Clinton's percentage need tops 60% of the remaining delegates available. And this is simply for her to regain the pledged delegate lead.
In other words, to go into the convention with more pledged delegates than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton must win all of the remaining primaries with 55% of the vote, which hardly seems likely. If Obama wins the states he's expected to, then Hillary must win 60% of the delegates in the states she does win. That seems even less likely. In fact, it looks nearly impossible for her to regain the lead in pledged delegates, absent a complete collapse of the Obama Campaign.
She really does have to pin her hopes on the superdelegates, and she has to hope that they'll give her their votes even if she has fewer delegates than Obama.
Second, I'm not sure that's good news since all the current indications are that Obama will siphon off enough independent voters to defeat John McCain this fall. At this point, Hillary looks like the weakest candidate in the November election, and Obama looks like the strongest.
"President Obama." You may want to get used to the sound of that.
I've already added the words "Barack" and "Obama" to my spell-check dictionaries.
Finally, what does Mike Huckabee think he's doing? It is literally impossible for him to win the nomination. To do so would require that he win 123% of the remaining delegates. Conversely, McCain can do so by winning only 35% of the remaining delegates, which is way under the general expectation. The only possible explanation I can see is that he thinks there's a chance that McCain won't get the delegates required for a first-ballot nomination, and that the convention will settle on him as a compromise candidate, since he's the only one remaining in the race against McCain.
But how does he expect McCain to come up short in the delegate count? By what sophistry of reason does he think he has a chance to take 65%+ of the remaining delegates and deny McCain a first-ballot nomination? If McCain walks in with 1192 delegates, it's over.
Does he think we're only days away from McCain losing it at some public event and begin railing against the Freemasons and the Illuminati? Or, is he just trying to set himself up for a 1012 run against Obama?
It's mystifying.
