Obama picks up 2 more superdelegates today; Indiana Congressman Baron Hill and Iowa Congressman Bruce Braley. Apparently there are plans to announce more, as well, so it’ll be interesting to see who, and how many.
More from Congressman Hill:
With Rep. Ike Skelton and a DNC member named William George having declared for Clinton since Ben Chandler declared for Obama yesterday, the superdelegate count is again at Hillary +19.
Here’s hoping!
The count might still be at +19 but the available pool of SDs keeps on shrinking. A 50/50 split the rest of the way would easily hand Obama the nomination.
I’m pretty sure that you are right, since I have no confidence in the media to let this go, even as the hard-ons of Hannity et al for Wright become increasingly irrelevant and uncomfortable.
However, I think that Obama is as connected to Wright now as he will ever be- and the effect of continued exposure will do nothing but separate Obama from Wright- if the goal all along was to connect them and thereby make Obama seem scary and out of the mainstream, then continued focus on him as he feuds with Obama will increasingly cast Obama as the regular-folks guy in opposition to the scary black guy.
This is not what Obama’s opponents want at all, so at some point, even on Fox, I expect it to die down, to be replaced with slightly more subtle casts of Michelle Obama as a “scary black lady”. You can set your watch to it.
It would indeed. Unless Hillary does much better than expected in the remaining primaries, she needs to outdo Obama by 2 to 1 in superdelegates, and that would be just to turn the ~19 Edwards delegates into king- or queen-makers. She’d need to outdo Obama by nearly 3 to 1 to win without the help of Edwards delegates.
And it just shrunk even further: Representative Lois Capps (D-CA) has endorsed Barack Obama for President…
Interestingly, according to the end of the Hill endorsement, the Obama campaign is claiming “Hill is Senator Obama’s 246th Superdelegate endorsement.” I don’t know of that number reflects the inclusion of Braley or not (though I think it does, because the Braley endorsement was posted first), but it certainly doesn’t include Capps, who announced later, which would bring it to at least 247. DemConWatch has him at 242 with the Capps endorsement. So somewhere they have a record of 5 more supers on board than what’s been publicized.
A*fter Pennsylvania (2)
I’ve been maintaining for months that the most significant metric in the Democratic race will ultimately be the popular vote, even though the official, by-the-rules determinant is convention delegates, elected and “super.” I maintain this because the popular vote—i.e., the votes of actual human beings—has more democratic (and Democratic) legitimacy than the votes of constructed or mediating entities.
Back on February 21st, I did some complicated (for me) math, based on Gore’s half-million-popular-vote victory in the 2000 general election (a Station of the Cross for Democrats), and decreed as follows:
In this year’s Democratic primaries, the equivalent of Al Gore’s national popular-vote margin in the 2000 general election would be around 125,000 votes. So if the final difference between Clinton and Obama is more than that, it will be awkward, to say the least, for the superdelegates to take it upon themselves to reverse the voters’ choice.
Awkwardness has made big strides since then. Post-Pennsylvania, the RealClearPolitics popular-vote count is, shall we say, problematic. Depending on what you count, somewhere between 28.5 million and 30.7 million votes have been cast so far. What you make of the results depends on—well, it depends on what you count.
…In other words, Clinton would have a case. Obama would have one, too—he’d still be a little bit ahead in the popular vote according to to the rules everybody agreed upon in advance, and he would definitely be ahead in elected delegates. She would have a popular vote lead in all the count-Florida-and-Michigan categories. But neither candidate could any longer plausibly claim that he or Bottom line: the whole damn thing will be roughly a tie. And I do mean roughly.
In which case it really will be up to the Supreme Court, I mean the Superdelegate Court. At that point, maybe the best solution would be for the supers to abstain on the first ballot in Denver and then everybody can have a free-for-all. Here’s what would happen next, according to a mystifying non-explanation on the Democrats’ mystifying “Convention 101” Web page:
If neither candidate reaches a majority of delegate votes on the first ballot for president, the nomination and the race for delegates becomes competitive.
Like it isn’t already.*
Obama picked up 5, Hillary 4.
Per RCP Obama Total= 1732
Clinton= 1597.
So Obama’s magic number is 292 with 699 delegates remaining. (408 elected and 291 supers.) 187 of the elected will be determined between Indiana and North Carolina, and 4 more by Guam.
Wright throwing Obama under the bus (an odd phrase that) has been as close to an Obama implosion as could happen. This is Hillary’s chance. If she can bring down NC to a near tie and win Indiana by double digits then she has a story to tell after all. If he holds on to a double digit win in NC and near ties in Indiana after this kind of week then her story is over.
So, OK. As I put together this post in my head, it sounds really harsh, and I don’t really want it to. From our interactions recently, it seems to me that while you’re attempting to argue for Clinton, you’re also willing to present facts and not overreach…at least, not overreach too much. But these cites concerning the popular vote are getting tedious, and will remain so until after more voting occurs. So, if any of the following does come off as harsh, consider the reason to be impatience rather than intentional insult towards you. With that said, I have two main criticisms: (1) your convenient editing and (2) the actual content.
Let’s take (1) first. Your quote skips like so:
The problem is, that case for Clinton – which you conveniently edited out – is predicated on his statement:
So, your summation of the argument hinges on the unquoted proposition that she’ll win all of the remaining primaries by a 10% margin. Besides that being a ridiculous proposition (from what I gather from the news), it’s disingenous to leave it out.
But your summary then butchers the ending bit also, not even including the ellipses that indicate edited content. Now, that edited content is supposed to show that, even if the remaining primaries split evenly, the popular vote remains a “virtual tie”. A noble sentiment, but that brings me to (2)…
Hertzberg may be an accomplished political observer. I’ve never heard of him before, so I can’t really comment on that (although his bio seems somewhat respectable). By his own admission, his arithmetic is pretty weak, so I decided to give it a once over. I first went and looked at the numbers near the end – if you’ll notice, he gives the following numbers (my formatting changes):
Well, that’s odd; that means that there were only ~10K caucus votes. But in fact, it’s not really odd…it’s just flat out fucking wrong. There should be ~110K caucus votes, as found if you look at some of his other numbers (or go back to the source at RealClearPolitics). But OK, it’s just one mistake, a misplaced decimal point. I’d be willing to let it go; after all, what’s 100K votes between friends (snerk)? But really, think about the premise of that last group of numbers. Does it pass any semblance of critical analysis? It does not, and let me spell out why:
If the remaining primaries split evenly, then each candidate will receive the exact same number of additional votes. If that happens, the difference between their totals, as they currently stand, doesn’t change. And yet, if you’ll compare the numbers given at the article’s beginning with those at the end, you’ll find a swing in Clinton’s favor of ~250K votes! At least, that is, in the categories I bothered to check; after finding that was the case in the first 3 that I examined, I didn’t do the rest.
You complain about accurately obtaining popular vote estimates from caucus results. Really, if it’s accuracy that you’re after, cites that use flawed methodolgies from an admitted maths dunce should be discounted before you even think about posting them. Please, please, PLEASE do at least a cursory job of critical analysis and stop wasting everyone’s time…especially mine. Thanks!
Well, at least we’ve dispensed with that nonsense. Apparently none of the totals excluding MI are virtual ties anymore, at this point.
Dig, Clinton may end up with a case yet.
Wright’s fifteen minutes of fame tour is seriously hurting Obama’s narrative. Obama chance to be the transformative president has hinged upon his ability to reach across demographic groups - that most could find something to identify with him about. That he is a solidly religious man who also respects the secular foundations of this country was part of that cross-demographic appeal. That coupled with an articulate deliverance of a hopeful vision of the future of this country. Wright has made Obama’s religious background a negative and begins to make Obama’s narrative more divisive than uniting.
If Hillary can stay alive through the next set (again, near tie, say under 5% in NC, and win by as much in Indiana) then her going by those 10% margins the rest of the way is doable. The Rules Committee surprisingly is stacked in her favor. He might be Hardinged yet but it wasn’t Hillary who did it, but his own pastor.
DO you think Wright will have that much effect come next Tuesday? I find it very hard to see Obama being hurt that much by this. I know it sucks but I hardly think it will cost thim the nod.
At last, some good news for Obama.
That’s a big shift. WOW! Very nice indeed.
There are a lot fo upper tier dems who are pulling for Obama, I dare say more than Clinton. And his gain over the last several months is unprecedented by Clinton, and a lot of supers understand that.
The problem for the Democrats is that dumping Obama b/c of Wright is an even more unacceptable outcome. Remember Wright’s infamous line, “An attack on me is an attack on the black church!”? Bullshit, of course.
Black voters, though, won’t see it that way. There is already an anti Hillary backlash among black church members due to recent events. There is just no way the Democrats can win the Presidency or in Congress without support from black ministers in key districts. That’s why many Democratic politicians, including Bill Clinton, have sought Wright’s approval in the past.
Wright isn’t stupid. Vain, egocentric, histrionic, but not stupid. His recent speeches have caught the Dems in a kind of pincer movement. They can’t dump Obama now, because it will be seen as due to Wright. Dumping the first credible black presidential candidate because of his relationship with a hugely popular black minister is just not something the Democrats can do.
Not to mention the fact that dumping the front runner because for some bullshit manufactured reason would be incredibly stupid and spineless.
Phl, I think that there is a very good chance of it. And all Hillary has to do is to be smart enough to stay out of it - stay focused on her issues-that-matter and let all the pundits keep playing Wright over and over again on their own.
Thing is Wright hurts Obama’s main themes. Wright accuses Obama of dishonestly disavowing him. That hurts Obama in so many ways all at at once and especially with the independents and soft Republicans who he needs desperately in five days and in the general.
And Below, some of those core Black voters may be less enthusiastic about Obama as a result as well … Wright’s rhetoric really isn’t so unheard of in Black church’s and in American Black communities - Obama acting as if it is and angrily responding to it as if he is shocked by it may evoke some roll-eyes there. Oh, not enough to lose votes, but enough to lose enthusiasm.
Cosmo my doom and gloom scenario presupposes that she has, because of this, really caught up in the popular vote, uses a Rules Committee stacked with her supporters to get MI and FL seated and Obama not managing to find his game between now and then. He by some meaningful measures would no longer be a solid front runner and “electability” is not a bullshit manufactured reason. I still doubt it will occur but my confidence in its impossibility is very shaken.
So please note, Bob, I’m not contradicting you this time - the sky may be falling after all.
But again, if he can survive this then he is unstoppable.
I’m banking on your last statement being true. I find it hard to believe the dem frontrunner will wither away into oblivian and the Clinton machine will take over. There are a lot of upper tier dems who really do not want to see that happen.
Yes, that’s true and I have said so before. That’s specifically why I said (bolding added):
I do believe in presenting the facts and acknowledging when and where they hurt one’s case. I’d make a terrible politician. 