Leave the fork in her: Clinton's still done

Great Debates
1

After the Potomac primaries, I posted the Stick a fork in her thread, suggesting that Clinton was done, despite her strategy of ignoring everything else to make a goal line stand in Texas and Ohio. (To my surprise, the thread grew like none I’d ever posted to over a thousand entries.)

Well, she’s made her stand, and held Obama to a field goal, not a touchdown (to extend the metaphor probably farther than it should be). In the process, she went negative, and pulled out the red phone cliche, and he stayed mister nice guy.

It looks like she won the Texas and Ohio primaries, he’s picked up the Texas caucuses, and they’ve split the New England states. The delegate count is still unsettled, but it looks like Obama is retaining his delegate lead. After some more skirmishing, we’ll have the big battle in Pennsylvania next month.

With all that, I think Obama is going to go on to pick up the nomination.

Clinton fought her way back, playing the underdog card and getting nasty, while Obama stuck to his game plan. Obama’s favored in the few upcoming small primaries, and should pick up some more “momentum” from them.

Then we have a gap leading into the Keystone State. I think this will allow Obama to retool, and come out swinging a little more aggressively at Clinton. It won’t be all that pretty, but it will probably strengthen his campaign when he has to face nastiness from McCain. It will also keep the Democrats in the media focus while McCain will be ignored.

I think Obama will focus on Pennsylvania, make up his position behind in the polling, and take the state. At that point, Clinton will have no choice to throw in the towel.

2

The vector sum looks a bit like this.

  1. Obama retains large delegate lead.
  2. Hillary wins the big battleground states on March 4.
  3. Hillary will stand in Pennsylvania and beyond.
  4. A lot of superdelegates will be non-committal or vacillate between now and then.

In short, Obama could have put her away last night but didn’t. She can still (and will) play for momentum and hope to get bandwagon jumpers to commit (even if non-binding) to her to rebuild her ‘establishment candidate’ aura.

3

So, how are the next contests shaping up?

4

Obama is ahead in WY and Mississippi - it’s close in PA.
Obama clearly needs to retool and buck up - because Clinton is locked and loaded, so now he needs to be.

5

I’m someone who hasn’t really been watching this from the start, so I have a question:

Winning a state is ultimately meaningless outside meaning you’re either gaining or losing ground relative to the other candidate, right? It’s not like the electoral college where if you win by 51/49, you win the whole thing?

The media and discussion seems to play up the winning the state thing. But I get the impression that Clinton could win every state out at 51/49 but she wouldn’t catch up.

6

She needs to win 60% of the remaining 12 states to overcome Obama. Highly doubt that will happen. If Obama wins WY, MS, PA she will most likely bow out. If not, it goes to the convention and we wait until August.

7

I guess the comparison with Bill Clinton as the “Comeback Kid” is ineluctible. But it seems to me that a big advantage Bill Clinton had in 1992 was freshness; people were really ready for a change, and he was a new face with a strong message. Hillary Clinton doesn’t have that advantage in 2008, and Obama does; I think if he sticks to his game plan, he’ll keep building support and take the nomination.

(Note that I’ve a history of voting in primaries for people who don’t make it; in 1992 I voted for Bob Kerrey; this year I voted for John Edwards by absentee ballot before he dropped out. So obviously I’m no genius about this stuff.)

Now, I hope that the DNC is thinking hard about how to win the general election, because John McCain’s people sure as Hell are.

8

I don’t believe he could have. I think that anything other than four 60/40 wins on his part – which was never going to happen – would have given her room to say “We’re still in it.” It would be (and still is) a stretch to say that, but that’s the Clinton spin this morning.

It is unfortunate that the Texas primary is being equated with Winning The State of Texas in most media outlets this morning. By the end of the day we’ll know the caucus results and may discover that – just like Nevada – Hillary’s “win” is hollow because she actually suffered a net loss of delegates in TX. The damage to Obama’s campaign is done, however: the media are telling the simplest story, and that story says “Clinton (basically, sort of, mostly) won Texas.”

Ohio is embarrassing, and a frightening harbinger of Pennsylvania. There is a lot of PA between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh where all people want from a Democratic candidate is the promise of a handout and a return to days which they remember as better, where a scary TV ad actually scares people, and where a woman using her husband’s name to make history is considered a bold feminist.

The math is still on Obama’s side, but the media love a close race and they will switch sides as many times as they have to in order to prolong the bloodshed.

9

Congratulations, you’re paying attention. This is exactly what is going on. The Democrats do not have “winner-take-all” primaries, so it is only the net delegate gain in each state that matters. The popular vote gets you headlines, but it’s entirely possible to win the popular vote and fall behind in delegates. You could, for example, win all of the districts with an even number of delegates 60/40… which gets you 60% of the vote and exactly half of the delegates. If you then lose five or six districts with odd numbers of delegates – even if you only lose them 51/49 – you’d be behind by five delegates.

Hillary is about 100 delegates in the hole, with about 550 delegates left to be claimed in the primaries and caucuses remaining. She would need to win every one of those by 60/40 or better to pull even with Obama by the convention. In the last two weeks there have been a number of articles which said essentially “the math is against her.” Google “Clinton math delegates” and see what you find.

Nonetheless, the media will play up the “She Won Texas” angle, and headlines will say things like “Clinton Wins Texas And Ohio - Stays In The Race”. NPR even said this morning that winning Texas “earned her the right” to stay in – that’s bullshit, frankly. She has the right to stay in as long as she likes, but the math is even more against her now than it was yesterday. She still needs to grab a 100-delegate margin, but now she has half as many delegates from which to harvest such a lead.

10

In short she’s worse off now than she was yesterday in terms of delegates.
In short, she’s got the psychological advantage until the media blitz calms down and people really see what’s happening and come to that Ah Ha moment on there own where they say - Oh…so she’s not ahead…

11

It’s all on PA now. If Obama gets thumped in PA (OH ended up being just on the margin of that, IMHO), I think the supers, along with the seated MI and FL delegations, could possibly hand over the nomination to Clinton. And they’d have a point. There is an argument to make for letting the battleground states settle things. Of course, there’s also an argument to be had for the supers overturning the result of the actual votes.

PA is way too far in the future to predict at the moment. If you’re a registered PA Democrat with a landline, God help you, your mailbox, and your phone.

12

There’s also an argument to be made by letting the total popular vote settle things, but we can’t let good sense get in the way of politics. I’m behind Obama until the end, but I still have issues with the delegate process.

13

Except that the delegates aren’t equally proportioned through the states. Wyoming has 12, Penn has 158, so winning by 100% in Wyoming won’t really help her that much, while she could loose Wyoming by 100% and make it up by winning Penn with by a few extra percentage points.

I still think Obama is the most likely nominee, but I don’t think things are as grim for Hillary as your analysis suggests.

14

Speaking of Texas, it’s looking as if it’s not going to be a win for either, but a draw - Clinton winning the primary, Obama the caucus. How will the press play that? And what’s the delay in the caucus results? CNN is stuck at 36% reporting.

15

To elaborate, using the numbers from the wikipedia Dem primary page, if she breaks even in the other states, but wins 60/40 in Pennsylvania, NC and Indiana (the three biggest states left), she comes within 8 or so delegates of Obama. The little states don’t really matter as far as helping her catch up or putting her further behind.

16

And don’t forget, if the Fl and Mi delegations are seated (which could happen), they alone could change the entire dynamic, changing a 100 delegate Obama lead into a tie once again.

17

Strictly speaking, the primary assigned 2/3rds of the delegates and the caucus assigns 1/3rd. So it may or may not be a draw depending on how the caucus goes, but it’ll be narrow either way. Right now it’s too early for the press to care very much about the margins. That’ll take a few days I suppose.

18

At least according to one columnist, Obama will win because of the fundamental law that Bugs Bunny always beats Daffy Duck.

19

Not over yet. I think a lot of people started voting for Obama because they sensed he had momentum after winning a few states in a row and was going to definitely win the nomination, so they jumped on the wagon. Now that HRC has momentum, they may switch back- many people don’t vote for their choice, they vote for who they sense is going to win, like people who root for a winning team in sports.

20

I agree, but Clinton is not exactly the winning team. She won Ohio handily, RI and TX very narrow, and we’re still waiting for TX Caucus results. This is going to be a rollercoaster. I see Obama retooling and coming back locked and loaded. We shall see.