Very nice…impressive even. You must, however, be pulling our collective legs, mustn’t you? How can the Hillary Clinton in that clip be the same person who’s currently running for the Democratic nomination?
1995 Hillary would pity 2008 Hillary.
Well, I’m not familiar with Ms. Noonan or her politics (or I wasn’t until Marley23 posted who she is), but even if she is wrong about everything else, I think she’s right that Hillary Clinton did not lose due this primary due to sexism, and complaining about it is pretty lame.
It was easy for her back then. She was on a meteoric rise with her husband to the apex of American politics and power. A bright and endless future was ahead of her. When you already have power, and the momentum is carrying you to even greater heights with every passing day, you have plenty of time for doing fun stuff like building your reputation as a statesman.
But when you’ve run out of time, and you are descending politically, you have to fight and claw at every opportunity to climb back to where you were. This can leave you looking anything from heroic to downright pitiful, depending largely on your success. Hillary can’t afford to be the woman she was in 1995. There’s no time for it. She doesn’t want to wait 8 years to run again. As she reminds us constantly, you never know what’s around the corner. Anything could happen — to her.
And this particular campaign is most likely seven days from smashing into the wall. Having made the choice of wanting more power, and having failed to achieve it with strategic foresight, she has painted herself into a corner where she finds herself desperate. She’s going through the stages of grief, hanging onto denial as long as she can.
What would it take for Clinton to be in the lead in popular votes? I understand that the total she is using for her current lead does not include the caucus votes.
It depends on how you count em…
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html
The only fair way to count would be to include every state but michigan, caucus states and florida should both count.
I would have thought the only fair solution would be to seat all primary and caucus states, except those states which defied DNC rules, despite being warned about what would happen.
Not to rehash this but there was nothing hidden about how primaries or caucuses work – all candidates knew – and there was nothing hidden about what the penalty would be for jumping ahead in the calendar.
I was talking about how to count the popular vote, not whos delegates should count. I agree with you in that regard.
What he said.
Why should any results from Florida count? They broke the rules, hence their (legislature’s) choice not to participate in the process. And surely the results aren’t even accurate, given the situation caused an anomaly in the way it prompted both candiates to conduct their campaigns in that state.
I’m glad we agree in general though.
Not to mention that the nominating process is based on delegates, not the popular vote. No matter how much Hillary screams and agitates, the popular vote is a meaningless metric under the Democratic Party rules – rules that her own people participated in creating.
Because the rules only have to do with the sitting of delegates? popular vote is simply a count of how many people voted for each candidate. Michigan is obviously too screwed up to count but i don’t see why Floridas votes shouldn’t count when all we are saying is “this many people voted for this candidate”, which has nothing to do with the rules.
IMHO, the only fair way would have been if Michigan and Florida didn’t hav completely moronic legislatures. I thought any reasonable person wouldn’t count Michigan, but lots of Hillary’s voters are uneducated (or not reasonable), so I was just regurgitating the cite. I know, I KNOW, don’t kick 'em when they’re down, but it’s SO hard not to, and they’re still making the same argument, so…
I do, however, agree with your assessment of the best way to count them as-is, but as 5-4 said, the FL results are tainted anyway. I’m just glad it’s all going to be over soon and we can move on to the general.
Yes, the DNC rules have to do with the selection and seating of delegates, but you seem to be leaving out the part of the structure that says the numbers of people coming out to vote on that particular day selects the delegates first and foremost and gets turned into something called the “popular vote” secondarilty. That process was tainted by the rule-breaking, the expected sanctions and the adulterated campaign process, which affected everything, including the true popular vote totals.
If it was a clear 10% - Clinton to 90% - Obama, I’d be saying the same thing. It’s dirty pool.
The popular votes of Michigan and Florida do count just as much as they ever have in a primary - not hardly at all other than if the counts convince individual supers to swing one way or the other. They are data points to help them decide if circumstances are extraordinary enough to overrule the pledged delegate count.
So let us assume that supers are not uniformly idiots. The vast majority understand that “being ahead” in the popular vote only by virtue of a state that was not campaigned in and one in which the leading candidate was not on the ballot and didn’t campaign in (both at the request of the DNC) is not a persuasive argument to overturn the pledged delegate results. Which is not to say that individual supers who want one candidate to win might not chooose to use that as a justification, but not many.
Now maybe, just maybe, supers would use a popular vote argument to overrule a narrow pledged delegate win (say under 100) if it was a clear fair clean and uncontestable win. But when you’ve lost the popular vote in the straight up fairly fought contested states, well then, even if the pledged delegate lead was well under 100, that dog won’t bark.
Makes sense?
After reading Al Giordano at The Field, I’m a lot calmer now.
As we all know, the only thing Hillary wants is for her to get Michigan and Florida at full strength with the 55 uncommitted delegates being just that. Any other result means that she will lose. That probably won’t happen, but we’ll get back to that scenario in a bit as to why it won’t matter. It is most likely going to be decided that There will be some kind of half-strength compromise, only HRC won’t compromise. That’s her fault though. The new number will be set, and Obama will probably have enough super-delegates in the bank to reach it immediately after the last primary. It won’t go to the convention at all, because there will be nobody left to vote. Superdelegates will choose a side. If by some miracle, Hillary would win if she had the rules bent in her favor, then she might make a stink at the convention, but I doubt it will be possible. Reading Al Giordano makes a lot of sense, because really, Clinton is going to run out of oxygen after this coming tuesday. Her last chance to exit with a modicum of grace will be after the last primary yet before Obama gets to the magic number with the remaining superdelegates. Because he will get them whether she stays in the race or not.
Oh and for the Hillary supporter(s?). Stop making arguments about who’s more electable. There is a set of rules to a game, and Obama won. If Hillary were such a great player then why didn’t she win? It’s like being a child again dealing with these people. The best way to deal with a sore loser is to ignore them, but unfortunately we can’t completely ignore her until this weekend. Where she is having supporters protest (!?) the decision made by the RBC. Yeah that’s really going to help.
It’s sad really that she doesn’t see how Obama’s playing it cool and her sending supporters to protest is really just further damaging her cause.
I’m not sure why there’s this impression afoot that Hillary may merely declare “So mote it be!” and the rules will bend to her whim. As I’ve said on so many occasions in dealing with her claims and tirades: fuck her.
Meanwhile, Obama has picked up another super: Oregon DNC Member Wayne Kinney.
Obama picks up Gail Rasmussen, vice president of the Oregon Education Association. Needs 44 more to win.
And according to this morning’s Frostbite Falls Fulminator he should pick up at least 44 committed delegates in next Tuesday’s voting. So unless the DNC moves the goalposts again. . . .