As expected, it looks like Obama is going to take Wyoming. With more than 2/3 of the precincts reporting, he’s leading 58% to 41%.
Texas isn’t done counting caucus delegates yet, but as it currently stands, he’s ahead of her by 4. The current totals for all 4 of Tuesday’s primaries is Clinton 177, Obama 171. When you add the 8 delegate swing in Obama’s favor after California’s totals were certified on Tuesday, Clinton actually lost ground overall. Add today’s eventual win for him, and the stake gets driven even further.
I don’t know how you can say the stake is driven in further. The fact is, neither candidate can now win without the Superdelegates. This means it’s almost certainly going to go to the convention. So who wins is going to come down to who has the best claim to be able to win in the general election.
To that end, it’s actually not looking good for Obama. Most of his delegates come from Caucus states, where party activists pick who they want. Clinton is winning the big state open primaries. And she may wind up leading with the popular vote. She won Ohio, which has been a bellweather state for decades, and she’s mentioning that at any opportunity.
So it may wind up looking like this:
Obama - has the support of the ‘base’, and the party activists.
Clinton - has the support of the general democratic voters, and has more strength in the big populous states.
If Clinton winds up winning the overall vote count from the primaries, the Democrats are going to look like huge hypocrites if they pick Obama over her, after spending the last two elections screaming that the popular vote should count and that it’s a tragedy that the electoral college can choose a president who doesn’t have the most support among the population at large.
Also, it’s going to come down to momentum. Obama is showing clear signs of losing his mojo, and if he’s peaked, it’s awfully early in the game to do so. There’s now going to be a string of several months where the two candidates have to consolidate support before the convention. Hillary’s got an awesome machine working for her. Obama’s is driven by passionate volunteers and newcomers who are prone to make mistakes (see: Austan Goolsbee and Samantha Power). Clinton has been thoroughly vetted, and there are unlikely to be more skeletons in her closet. Obama, who knows?
If I were betting on this race, I’d give a very slight edge to Obama at this point. But Hillary is far from being done. It’s not quite a coin flip right now, but it’s close.
If you’re feeling that confident about it, Sam, you should head over to Intrade, where Hillary futures are available at 25. (Obama’s at 72.8.) Good luck!
You meant to say voters. For example, given that Wyoming had fewer than 700 people statewide show up to caucus in the last election, I hardly think you could reasonably call the nearly eight thousand citizens who went to their precincts to have their voices heard, “party activists.” Voters, Sam. They are voters, just like in every other state.
Some of them. And none by very wide margins. And all of which will go Dem in the general election anyway, even if John Kerry were running again.
Highly doubtful.
Which was always hers to win, and her only claim to fame at this moment, so of course she’s bleating about it, who wouldn’t? Ohio alone does not make an election.
Well this is just completely absurd. What the hell is the difference between this “base” of which you speak, and the “general democratic voters”? And just who are these “party activists” and why on earth would they be more in favor of the relative newcomer, Obama, over the previously party entrenched Clinton? That just doesn’t make a lick of sense.
Riiiiight. Obama raised $55 million, all all-time record, in February alone (a short month, no less!), picked up almost as many delegates in the last round of voting and brought the gigantic and heavily Hispanic Texas to a virtual tie, but he’s losing his mojo. Sure. Whatever you say, Sam.
Oh right. The one with all the infighting and the finger-pointing and constant change in staff and focus? The one who called in all her favors amongst superdelegates early, but who can’t get any of them to hop off the fence for her now, while Obama gets new superdelegates to endorse him almost daily? The one who’s lost 29 of the 43 contests so far? That “awesome machine”?
I love the fallback to campaign spin. We know all the bullshit in Hillary’s past, but the so-far-almost-squeaky-clean Obama could be hiding something HUGE that could, like the BOOGEY MAN, jump out at any given moment and scare the bejeesus out of his constituents.
And I love how Obama’s surrogates are a liability because they’re newbies making newbie mistakes, but somehow there’s no mention of Hillary’s super-experienced-should-freaking-know-better surrogates doing and saying similar or worse.
Don’t forget that Power has both apologized for the remark and resigned from the campaign over it, while Harold Wolfson, who compared Obama to Ken freakin’ Starr for asking that Clinton release her tax records, is still working for Clinton. And Clinton, when asked about the incident by a reporter, tried to say that the MEDIA were the ones that did the comparison first. Then excused Wolfson by saying that the Power thing was an ad hominem attack while the Wolfson thing was a historical reference.
On the whole, yes - at least, if we’re talking about this message board.
I could count on my fingers the pundits whose quality wouldn’t appreciably improve if they had to vet their opinions by debating them here first.
Even some of them.
I think you’ve noticed that even some of our ‘heavily biased’ posters have backed up their opinions with a great deal of factual material. Plenty of televised ‘experts’ seem to have done a lot less research than such posters.
‘Public Office’ and ‘Delegate’ in initial caps, even!
I confess I would have never guessed.
I’m sure I’m not the only one eager to hear details.
Who’s going to control the credentials committee at the convention? The side with a majority of the 4048 (maybe make that 4047) going in.
If Obama already has 2024 delegates going in, then any MI/FL resolution will be one that preserves his win. If Clinton has 2024 delegates going in, then the same will be true of her.
If the superdelegates (and/or Edwards’ delegates) haven’t thrown their weight one way or the other before the convention, then the battle over the credentials committee membership will determine the nominee, and everyone will know it: the one will be a proxy for the other.
So it’s just another way of saying that if this thing isn’t decided before the convention, either side could win there.
All of the news services went big with the hype of Hillary winning Texas, but I don’t see this being reported even on BBC. I’m not disbelieving you, I’m simply amazed that Obama actually winning Texas is not considered very newsworthy.
It depends how you define “won”. Hillary got approximately 100,000 more popular votes than he did in the Primary portion of the election, giving her 51% to Obama’s 47%.
However, not all of Texas’s pledged delegates are awarded based on the Primary votes. 67 of them are awarded in caucuses that take place immediately after the Primaries are over in each precinct. Obama won the caucuses, 56% to 44%. They aren’t done divvying those up yet, but currently the delegate split stands at Clinton 84, Obama 89. Because of his margin of victory, those totals will end up even further apart.
Holy crap! IL-14 has been a solid Republican seat forever. Oberweis and the RNCC spent huge bucks running the sleaziest commercals I have ever seen againt Foster. I swear, they showed a photo of Foster that made him look like he has chicken pox. And they still got their asses kicked! :eek:
This looks pretty big. I’m sure that if the Obama staff wasn’t already sent it out to all the supers, they’re in the process of doing so. It’d be good to mention that to the voters of MS and PA too.
I’m confused though, when was this election? If it was Feb 5, with the IL primary, why are we only hearing about that now? If it was later, can we really say it was Obama’s coattails that did it for Foster? I thought “coattails” was when you showed up to vote for one candidate (or initiative, whatever), and while you were there voted for a bunch of other stuff in the same party or ideological range as the person you really cared about. Or is it a more general “I like Obama therefore I’m more favorable to Democrats” thing?
In any event, I’m happy to see Republicans lose ground anywhere.
Maybe there was some uncertainty about who would win the 12th delegate. But it looks like it’s Hillary’s - I think Obama would have had to win by 25% to win 8-4.
