I was reading an article on ‘doing the math’ with regards to delegate counts and Clinton draging this race out past Mississippi. The variables are many, but one constant is Obama’s 11 straight wins and his lead in overall Delegates especially the Pledged Delegates. If the races are close tomorrow, meaning if Clinton does not smack the ball out of the park and take a clear lead, the race will essentially still be where it is today on March 3rd: Obama ahead in pledged delegates and ahead in overall delegates.
The polls are already showing this is highly unlikely - basically there’s no way she can do it.
My question is this: If Clinton just stays status quo and after Tuesday’s primary she is still more than 50 pledged delegates behind, will her staying in the race effectively nix any momentum the Democrats have to secure the victory in November? A tangental question to this, why would she choose to do that to her own party?
I see one potential good side effect: a surge of voter registration in the remaining primary states. That could help in Congressional races come fall.
My fear is that this potential good could be outweighed by negative campaigning from the Hillary camp, which boils down to her doing the Republicans’ work for them. Hillary’s spending of Democrats’ campaign contributions to raise the negatives of the likely nominee is not a good thing. Besides which, negative campaigning will make it harder to bring the party together in the fall.
It’s March 3, for goodness sake! Six months until the election.
She is what, 110 delegates behind Obama. Hardly a landslide at this time.
If she wins in Ohio and Texas tomorrow, it may not be a new ballgame, but its certainly enough for her to continue.
Obama will get the nomination. there will be a lovefest at the convention, and with any luck and logic, Obama will be the next POTUS.
It is a good thing Obama supporters are not running his campaign. He seems to have the perspective and objectivity about himself and the history of US elections that many of his supporters lack.
I get it, I was just listening to Geaorge Stephanopolos do the math, then I went and read the Slate Article - and it’s hard to argue with numbers. Granted these are hypothetical until tomorrow is over, but I don’t see a landslide coming out of thin air either.
If the Democrats can get this thing settled relatively calmly by the convention, I think they’ll be fine for the remaining months of the campaign. By this I mean there’s very little perception of one or the other being “cheated” by backroom dealings and the convention itself remains the same infomercial it has been for years. The nominee will have plenty of time to make up any ground they lose to McCain in the mean time, and I doubt they’ll throw anything worse at each other than McCain could or would.
As for Clinton, I really just don’t think she’s all that delusional. Her campaign has certainly been flawed, but I don’t think that implies anything other than poor strategy and bad advice from Penn. If she sounds detached from reality recently well… That’s just because an honest assessment of her situation isn’t really something she should be saying in front of the cameras and her volunteers right now.
At the moment, I think she’s hoping for a miracle turnaround in the next week. If it doesn’t happen, she’ll likely drop it.
I doubt Hillary will win, but I don’t really think she’s totally out of it yet. Things have swung around a considerable amount already in the primaries, there’s certainly a non-zero chance that Hillary will win by a decent amount in OH and TX, and the wind will start to blow in her direction again, and she could indeed win by large enough margins to make her the nominee. Mind as well name this thread If Obama drags this out….
I actually think its in Obama’s favor to have a drawn out primary race (assuming he’s the eventual nominee, and the convention itself is fairly conciliatory). First, Hillary isn’t going to come up with any dirt that the GOP won’t find once the general election campaign, and I think its better to get that stuff out early, give Obama a longer time to respond and let it become “old news” by the time the general election rolls around. Also, Obama’s experience in running contested campaigns is fairly limited, fighting a close primary election will give him and his team practice for the general election. McCain is going to take a lot more to beat then Keyes did.
She thinks she’s a better candidate and potential president then Obama, and the country would be better off if she is elected, and so she’s hanging on while there’s still some hope of her winning. It’s not like she’s shy about listing the reasons why.
So I just did some math with the numbers on wikipedia. There are currently 1001 pledged delegates left. After tomorrow there will be only 557 delegates left. Assuming that Hillary doesn’t do what she really has to do (huge victory) we can safely assume that she doesn’t close in within 90 delegates of Obama, and he would certainly make that up in Mississippi and in Wyoming later on, so we’re back to her 110 delegate gap. Now this is being favorable, since Caucuses favor Obama, and Texas also is going to be giving out 60 some odd delegates that way.
So for her to even tie Obama in pledged delegates she needs to win 389 delegates out of 557 (69 percent!) in the remaining contests after Texas. Let’s assume she wins 20 delegates tomorrow which Obama somehow doesn’t make up in Mississippi. She still has to win 369 delegates out of 557 (66 percent).
People are looking at the numbers of delegates that they have ammassed already. It’s true that if you look at it that way then it does look like a miniscule lead, but the important thing is to see just what kind of percentages she’d need to overcome a tie or even favorable (+20 delegates) tomorrow.
A tie essentially puts her in Huckabee land. If she doesn’t win big then she will be essentially be hoping for a miracle which could only be a huge Obama blunder which makes the Super Delegates go back to her. That’s really all she can hope for because she can’t get 66 percent in every state from here on out.
2 ways to look at it. If both keep running the Repubs can not concentrate of one candidate.,keeps them guessing.
The other way is if they find a way to actually do damage to each other. That is a big advantage for McCain or Huckeberry.
Dude, you are clearly way too invested in Obama to look at this objectively. Hillary still has a shot at winning, so there is no reason she should get out. No one is going to to “irreparable harm” to the Democratic party. Let this thing play out over the next few days, and everyone will see where to go from there. Yeah, we get it that you want Obama to win. But there are still lots and lots of people who favor Hillary.
And I say this as someone who would much prefer Obama to get the nod than Hillary.
I disagree. I think** Phlosphr** should make three, maybe four threads before the results for tomorrow come in. Minimum. That way we’re all sure where he’s coming from and who he supports.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but to my mind it seems to be shaping up that neither candidate will have sufficient delegates going into the convention…no? Assuming this is correct then it is going to be a matter of politics at the convention with Obama perhaps having a small lead going in…but with the super delegates pretty much split atm…no? Which means Hillary has a shot…assuming my assumptions and read on the situation is correct.
Why exactly SHOULD she throw in the towel at this point when she could still win? Unless you are losing big time (Huckleberry Sin for instance really ought to throw in the towel…the only thing he could count on is McCain kicking the bucket due to extreme old age), there is always a shot. Obama COULD have a Dean moment still…or something nasty might surface about him. Or voters might just have a change of heart…maybe Hillary cries again and that turns them about? Who knows. Point is, as long as she stays close she is still in this thing.
Quite the opposite I imagine. The Democrat race is INTERESTING. Unlike the 'Pubs who McCain is basically strolling in to assorted yawns from the crowd, people are excited and fired up about the Dem race. Man…don’t you get it?!? They are EXCITED ABOUT THE RACE! That translates into motivated troops come November…instead of voters falling asleep and asking if we are there yet mummy.
Seriously…chill out. Let Hillary have her shot. Let her keep people focused and interested in the Dem candidates. Let BOTH of them continue to get the word out to crowds that are actually awake and listening to what is being said.
John this isn’t a question of who I want to win, although I readily admit I prefer Obama by a wide margin. It is a question of what scenario gets each of them there. For Clinton there are few plausible paths to the nomination being behind 152 pledged delegates. Assume that she wins well tomorrow, enough that she gets 60% of the available delegates. That’s unlikely but let’s play it out. She’s still behind by 78 pledged delegates. That’s banking a lot on her next big state, Pennsylvania, to get it close enough that she can try to win a bloody brokered convention. And maybe she could call enough old favors in to do it, even if she’s behind the delegate count a bit and the popular vote. But it would only be after a mangled mess and with a new energized generation of Democratic voters feeling terminally disenfranchised. Do you see her winning by means of super delegates overcoming anything more than minimal difference in pledged delegate and popular vote count, or by way of seating MI and FL, as having any result other than causing the party significant harm?
That is her best case. That is her shot at winning. She wins it, but at a sizable cost to the party.
Is there a path to her victory that isn’t that harmful to the party at this point? Well you’d need to get her having gotten at least to within a dozen pledged delegates and being very close in the popular vote to not have that kind of result in the voting populus. That could happen if Florida and Michigan rerun and she blows him away in both in addition to taking 60% plus of the available delegates tomorrow. But somehow that seems highly improbable.
Alternatively Obama can tie or better tomorrow and get enough super delegate support in the following several days to end it and get the party moving along to the next phase.
As a person who lives in a state which has never had a primary that mattered since he became an adult, I would have to agree with you. I am actually thinking about voting Clinton in the interest of actually having a convention that means something. It’s still pretty unlikely I will vote for her, since it is in the party’s interest to have a candidate selected by that time. Plus, I’d be pretty uncomfortable if she won, partially with my support, given to her in order to game the system for my entertainment.
Actually, nine months. I find it quite sad that the parties allowed the primary process to become so compressed so damn early in the season. McCain effectively won the nomination in February! How absurd is that.
What the parties and the states have managed to do is is not healthy at all for the process, IMHO. That may be a rant for another day.
Additionally, while I support Obama, I kind of hope Hillary has a big day tomorrow. Having it end this early, with the candidates so untested, worries me.
From a personal perspective, I can say there’s no path left available to Hillary that would get her my vote in November. And I’m ordinarily a safe Democratic vote.
If she had emerged from the nomination process with a majority in elected delegates, I would vote for her. But getting the nomination by using superdelegates to overturn the popular will would earn her my enmity. And that’s really the only way she can get the nomination at this stage.
So how many more threads do people want me to post?
I agree with you folks, my level of devotion to Obama is high and it’s shown not just here but at home and at work. I’ve got no illusions that he’s going to have a Deam moment, and unfortunately I have let my wont for Obama cloud my clear judgement of the race at large.
Mea Culpa.
That being said, I don’t believe there is anything wrong with backing a candidate. Clinton has her voracious fans as well. I’ll stick it out until November and with Og’s help Obama will be our next POTUS. But I think in the end it’s in my best interest to tone it down. [sup] after the results of tonight’s primaries of course[/sup]
I say there’s nothing wrong with her staying in to see what happens for a bit. Stranger things have happened.
I think the race is good publicity for the Democrats. Having two people fighting for the job instead of one taking a victory lap with a dumb dog nipping at his heels is better publicity. Heck they should keep Hillary in for the good cop, bad cop aspect of it.
But I believe and I hope that things break clearly for Obama tonight.
