This argument only holds water if she won in those areas by pulling Republican voters over to vote for her. And only if they won’t also vote for Obama against McCain in the general, which you have no way to predict.
Wrong. The superdelegates can support whomever they want. The argument many of us are making is that it would be DAMAGING to the Democratic party as a whole, and DAMAGING to our chances of winning the general election if the will of the people is subverted by them. Period. If Hillary were to manage a miracle and end up with the most pledged delegates by the convention, I’d expect the supers to get behind her, too.
Oh this is such nonsense. Babies? For arguing our points strongly? For thinking Hillary would be such a bad President that we wouldn’t want to vote for her if it came down to that? Utterly absurd.
Most Obama supporters take the stance of “I hope we win but if we don’t we’ll support Clinton and our party,” too. But many on Hillary’s side also say they won’t vote for Obama. Clearly you have not been reading around the right places if you aren’t aware of this.
Well, if that’s the way they feel, why should the voters show up for a candidate that they didn’t want, but that someone else chose against their wishes?
I mean, if the DC Dems want to lose, I can’t stop them from overruling the wishes of the Dem primary voters. But if the party says ‘fuck you’ to the voters, why shouldn’t the voters say it right back at them?
Howard Dean and other high-ranking Democrats in the party will be having conversations with many, if not all, of the remaining undeclared superdelegates at some point. If they believe it will hurt the party, I’m certain there are buttons they can push to make it clear where the party needs to stand.
Yeah, I’ve been living in a cave. :rolleyes:
Who said anything about a landslide?
Look, stop insulting me. First I’m a baby and now I’m ill-informed because I look at polling data right along with the rest of the world. You’re free to disagree as to the importance or relevance of that data, but knock off the innuendo about the people who see it differently from you.
The above quote is of course fictional, but I think Clinton being handed the nomination by the superdelegates would strike an enormous blow to the Dem’s (recent) historic ability to rely on the African American vote. Not that they’d vote Republican, but I think a lot of them would stay home in disgust.
If expecting them to pay attention, in their choice of nominee, to the primary votes of the voters they’ll need in the general election is “wishing for a pony,” then the Democratic Party is in worse trouble than I realized. And I haven’t exactly been impressed by it, this past year.
Superdelegates are there to SUBVERT the will of the people. That can be the only reason to have them. But it doesn’t mean that they will do it this time. The reason they were implemented was because it might be necessary to do so.
But you’ll have to make a really strong case for Hillary to give it to her. And these superdelegates aren’t people sitting around some room. They are just people spread across the country.
I swear to God though, if they give it to Hillary when she didn’t win fairly. I will never vote for a Democrat again. That’s it. If that’s what this party does then I’m done. And guess what I won’t be the only one. Think of all of the millions who voted for Obama thinking our votes would count. If you’re a superdelegate, you’re overturning the will of the voters simply because Hillary did better than Obama there in a primary.
You have two options as a superdelegate. Give it to Hillary because you hope she can do better in the swing states despite the fact that Obama wins the popular vote. This will destroy the party and would most likely result in losing the election to McCain. Or you could follow the popular vote / pledged delegates and vote for Obama, who might not win the election (according to the ridiculous swing-state model) but would at least not destroy the party to do so.
That’s the point, Hillary would have to break lots of rules and piss off a lot of people to win. For Obama to win it’s by the book.
Also the argument that Obama can’t win Ohio is stupid. He’ll be running against McCain in the general, not Hillary in the primary. It’s apples and oranges people. Winning slightly more than a quarter of the electorate doesn’t mean you could win half. Hillary one 26 percent last night when she needs 50 in November. Who can close that gap? Hard to tell, best way is by looking at polls.
Polls, by the way, show Obama crushing McCain while Hillary loses in a lot of less swingy states as well. We’re talking bread and butter states here.
Secondly, unless Clinton leads in delegates, there will be no seating of Florida and Michigan. It simply won’t happen. Obama will control the credentials committee and won’t do it unless he has the breathing room.
I’d say that’s equally true for the young vote and the recently politically motivated. They have been engaging in politics more because of him. With him out, it’s the same-old/same-old, and they’ll stay home. I don’t doubt for a second that the turnout will be significantly stronger if he’s in a general election race, and that will help him across-the-boards. If Clinton is in, she will lose that vote but inspire more conservative voters to come out simply to vote against her. I’d say Obama has a strong chance of being a spoiler in unexpected places–but more independents will gravitate toward McCain if she is in the race. In the (still, IMHO) unlikely event that she wins the Dem nomination, she’ll have her ass handed to her by the Republicans in the general.
If they are Democrats I hope there is a good reason for it. I’ve always liked McCain, but if Romney had won the nomination I wouldn’t have contributed towards the election of someone who is diametrically opposite of myself on the issues just because I was mad at my party.
Let’s say this situation happened in 2004, and that a really popular candidate like Obama was set to win the Democratic nomination, and then lost.
Would you say “screw the Democratic party” because you were mad, even when it would directly contribute to the re-election of someone who I can safely presume you despise (George W. Bush.)? If the Dems actually have no problem with McCain as President then it makes sense. Or if the Dems think McCain would be a better President than Hillary.
I don’t get that impression, though. My impression is most Democratic voters think Hillary would be a better President than McCain, so regardless of whether or not she won through “the party screwing the electorate” I’d still think voters would want to see the candidate they most wanted to be President win. I don’t understand the mentality of trying to “punish a party.” By and large party fat-cats are fairly insulated from the decisions a President makes, it’s the ordinary voters who has to live with them. I think McCain would make a fine President, but I know many Democratic voters do not feel this way, so I can’t imagine why they’d contribute to his election if they didn’t feel he was the superior candidate.
Which is why I think it is silly to make assertions like “Clinton has to win 60% of the delegates up for grabs in the remaining states to win.” We don’t KNOW who has to win what, because, in the end run, at a convention with no clear winner on the basis of the awarded delegates, the superdelegates can go anyway they damn please.
In short, if Clinton were to win a significant number of the remaining states’ delegates (Pennsylvania, Indiana, and maybe Kentucky, for example, being good for her), we could easily see the superdelegates start to think something like “Clinton is the candidate with traction in states we need in the fall; Obama is the candidate who will only win the ones we expect to win anyway.” We could just as easily see the superdelegates thinking “Obama energizes the party in a way Clinton can’t, and she’s not going to get enough support from the base to overcome the Republican base vote.”
So, frankly, it’s silly to assert that she’s done; it’s equally silly to try and calculate what she needs in the way of remaining state delegates. The campaign at this point is about exactly the same thing it’s been about all along: can I appear to be the candidate for the fall that will help my party win. All else is just noise.
I disagree that the role of superdelegates is to “follow the will of the people,” (I don’t agree with Hillary’s “it’s pretty much about voting for your buddies” stance either, though) but at this point I think their purpose is so outdated that going against the will of the people would only damage the party.
I’m not spouting and calculating off the top of my head, every major news station ABC, CBS, NBC political correspondents are giving these numbers. Not me.
Why would they do that?
I heard that about TX, but not about OH. Still, I’d like to see some evidence that Republicans actually did this before worrying about its effect. It’s hard enough to get people out to vote for the candidate they favor, much less get them out just to stir the pot.
I think the Ohio exit polls showing 87% of Clinton voters think she’s qualified versus 97% of Obama voters is the best evidence we’ll be able to find for this.
But the same poll would, by that reasoning, imply they were voting for Obama:
More likely to win in Nov: 93% Clinton supporters think she is, but only 80% of Obama supporters think he is.
I really don’t think that polls tells us anything about Republican spoiler votes. I have to wonder if they would even tell the pollsters that they voted for Clinton instead of saying they voted for McCain.
CNN reported last night that about 9 percent of the Ohio Democratic primary voters were registered Republicans. And they voted for Obama by a margin of about 53% to 47%. If Rush and company had any effect on the election, it was probably very small.