Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont - March 4th, 2008

[Phlosphr]

@EddyTeddyFreddy

I hope you’re right, Phlosphr, but until tomorrow’s votes are all counted I’ll be huddled with Bob over here in the corner, whimpering with dread.

No need. Seriousy, stand up and watch the man win, don’t sit in the corner and worry. All those thousands of Obama grassroots organizers are not doing what they do in record proportions in vain! I have been Campaigning in CT and now in RI and have seen some serious Obama Momentum over the weekend. Clinton has had some nice skits on SNL and others nbews outlets…but…

Obama was on 60 minutes Sunday, the cover of New Week today, NightLine tonight, and GMA this morning. AND has bought the most airtime during the 5:00, 5:30, 6:00, 6:30 and 10:00, 10:30 and 11:00 evening and nightly news in TX and OH tonight and tomorrow. He’s not joking around at all. He knows full well what he had to do tonight and tomorrow. His Rally tonight in Houston will be record breaking, just watch.

** SO YOU AND YOU! GET OUT OF THE CORNER!!!**

[Merkwurdigliebe]

Look, it’s ridiculous. Hillary has lowered expectations so many times that I half expect her to make losing a victory for her.

Check out the delegate math. Obama would have to do VERY poorly from here on out to actually lose this thing. It would also take a superdelegate coup with them breaking 2 to 1 for hillary. That is simply not going to happen. I suppose she’s pumping the media with bullshit in hopes that Ohio and Texas will break for her in a big way, but really it’s very much impossible. I don’t know if you have noticed the trend yet, but Hillary’s poll numbers don’t go up. They only stay the same at best.

Secondly, for some reason, delegate allocation seems to favor Obama in general. I think it has to do with past gerrymandering but yeah it seems to work in his favor somehow.

What do I think Hillary is planning on? I think she is hoping for some bad Rezko news that will make the Super-D’s abandon obama en masse.

One important thing to realize that while Obama’s lead seems small relative to the number of delegates allocated so far, it is actually most useful to compare it to the number of delegates yet to be allocated. Every single “essentially even” election that occurs from here on out just makes that ration even higher for Obama.

Technically speaking (barring a Super-D coup) it would be very difficult for Obama to screw this up. Hillary needs to stop wasting everyone’s time and get on with her life.

The press is also getting in on the pro-Hillary act, but it won’t be for long. Bored of the same old stories all year long, they now have a, “Is Hillary gaining Momentum?” moment. First of all, Hillary never has gained momentum at any stage of this thing. Every single contest has been her fighting off Obama from her entrenched position of initial front-runner. Hillary won’t get any momentum. Secondly, can the press really call narrow victories in Ohio and Texas a “win” for Clinton? The pundits will say something about it, but will immediately mention how it helps her very little in the delegate math.

Honestly, I predict a night like Super Tuesday as a worst case scenario for Barack Obama. It takes a few days for people to realize that he is indeed the winner of the contest. It might turn out that Clinton narrowly wins the popular vote in TX and OH, but in the end, Obama will have done what he needs to do to get to 2025. HRC will not have.

Anyone think that this “Hillary Resurgence” stuff might be bad for Hillary? I think it energizes Obama supporters to go out and work. Remember how this was used to explain New Hampshire?

[RTFirefly]

Survey USA just checked in:

Texas: Obama 49, Clinton 48. (Actual difference, ~0.6%, they said.)

Ohio: Clinton 54, Obama 44.

Polling for both was done March 1-2. MOEs: 3.5% in TX, 3.4% in OH.

Clinton’s gonna win Ohio.

[Syntropy]

@silenus

I just don’t see Hillary letting go that easily. I expect to see a bitter and drawn-out battle to the end. She doesn’t care what damage that will do to the party. She will do anything it takes to win, and if it means destroying the party to do so, she wouldn’t even blink. It is only her amazing arrogance and incompetence so far that gives me hope for the future.

And the prize goes to sil for most depressing yet accurate prediction.

I reiterate: you do not win elections by telling people what they should want and how they should think.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@Phlosphr

** SO YOU AND YOU! GET OUT OF THE CORNER!!!**

• pokes helmet on rifle out of foxhole *

You sure about that?

I’m with RTFirefly in that I prognosticate Hillary will take a narrow win in Ohio as well as a wider win in Rhode Island; my paranoia then takes over and insists that she’ll spin it into a mandate to go on, that the momentum has shifted to her, etc.

[tnetennba]

She’s lately prepared for just that spin, trying to say Obama as the front runner should “win” all four contests (of course, this talk about “winning states” is nothing but smoke anyway, since they are not winner-take-all contests).

[RTFirefly]

@Merkwurdigliebe

Look, it’s ridiculous. Hillary has lowered expectations so many times that I half expect her to make losing a victory for her.

Check out the delegate math. Obama would have to do VERY poorly from here on out to actually lose this thing. It would also take a superdelegate coup with them breaking 2 to 1 for hillary. That is simply not going to happen. I suppose she’s pumping the media with bullshit in hopes that Ohio and Texas will break for her in a big way, but really it’s very much impossible. I don’t know if you have noticed the trend yet, but Hillary’s poll numbers don’t go up. They only stay the same at best.

They’ve gone up now, in both Ohio and Texas, from where they were a week ago.

Secondly, for some reason, delegate allocation seems to favor Obama in general. I think it has to do with past gerrymandering but yeah it seems to work in his favor somehow.

It’s two things. One is the proportional allocation of most delegates by Congressional district (most states, including Ohio, do this) or by some other district (Texas uses state senate districts, IIRC). This strongly works to minimize the translation of a middlin’ victory (e.g. 55-45) into a delegate win of equivalent size. You’ve got to get into landslide territory before the winner’s delegate percentages start catching up with his/her vote percentages.

The other thing is where the past gerrymandering, mostly by Republicans, comes in, and that specifically helps Obama. Districts have numbers of delegates to apportion, more or less in proportion to their Dem vote totals in past years. Blacks are the most solidly Democratic of any voting bloc. And in past years, mostly GOP gerrymandering pushed supermajorities of blacks into every black-majority district they could. The logic was: if you’re going to lose that district anyway, why not have it be 100% black and 90% Dem, so that other districts will have fewer Dems and we can win more of them?

The result is that each state of any size has one or two 8-delegate districts that are likely to break 6-2 for Obama.

One important thing to realize that while Obama’s lead seems small relative to the number of delegates allocated so far, it is actually most useful to compare it to the number of delegates yet to be allocated. Every single “essentially even” election that occurs from here on out just makes that ration even higher for Obama.

Exactly. After tomorrow, there will only be 611 pledged delegates left in play. After a week from tomorrow, that’ll be down to 566.

My prediction stands that she winds up with a net loss with respect to pledged delegates over the next 10 days - that is, tomorrow plus Wyoming and Mississippi. So she’s going to go into the six-week hiatus in worse shape than she is now.

How that’s supposed to be a resurgence, I don’t know. I’m sure she’ll call herself “the comeback kid” or some such anyway, but she’s only spinning herself, AFAIAC.

[Shayna]

@RTFirefly

How that’s supposed to be a resurgence, I don’t know. I’m sure she’ll call herself “the comeback kid” or some such anyway, but she’s only spinning herself, AFAIAC.

My boss just got invited by one of her top fundraisers, Sim Farar, to fly out to DC next week on the 11th to meet with Hillary. That wouldn’t be happening if she didn’t plan on staying in the race. She’s going to drag this out 'til the bitter end (though it’s funny funny how things have changed in nearly a year).

[rikc]

@Shayna

My boss just got invited by one of her top fundraisers, Sim Farar, to fly out to DC next week on the 11th to meet with Hillary. That wouldn’t be happening if she didn’t plan on staying in the race.

I’m not sure. Wouldn’t she want to continue on as if she were in it for the long haul until she’s about to make her announcement? Canceling fundraisers and otherwise acting like she isn’t confident about her post-March 4th campaign would only serve to kill her chances tomorrow. I would imagine she would want to put on a confident face until the last minute.

[Shayna]

@rikc

I’m not sure. Wouldn’t she want to continue on as if she were in it for the long haul until she’s about to make her announcement? Canceling fundraisers and otherwise acting like she isn’t confident about her post-March 4th campaign would only serve to kill her chances tomorrow. I would imagine she would want to put on a confident face until the last minute.

Of course – publicly. But privately she’s also inviting (through a surrogate) my boss, a political consultant, to meet with her a week from tomorrow. I doubt she’d be asking him to fork out the dough and rearrange his schedule to fly out from L.A. to DC for a meeting if she didn’t fully intend to stay in the race.

[Phlosphr]

@Shayna

My boss just got invited by one of her top fundraisers, Sim Farar, to fly out to DC next week on the 11th to meet with Hillary. That wouldn’t be happening if she didn’t plan on staying in the race. She’s going to drag this out 'til the bitter end (though it’s funny funny how things have changed in nearly a year).

I see her doing this until the superdelegates heavily lean on her to get out. I see that sometime in the 6-week hiatus between Mississippi and PA.

The math says she’s toast.

[silenus]

@Phlosphr

The math says she’s toast.

But girls are traditionally weaker at math.
Personally, I think she is either deluding herself at this point, or is trying to set up a position where she can claim that she was “betrayed” by the Democratic Party, and gather up all sort of Martyr Points to cash in for valuable prizes later.

[Menocchio]

@silenus

Personally, I think she is either deluding herself at this point, or is trying to set up a position where she can claim that she was “betrayed” by the Democratic Party, and gather up all sort of Martyr Points to cash in for valuable prizes later.

I think she’s holding out for a miracle tomorrow. Or at least already sunk so much resources into OH and TX that she might as well see it through. Unless she really kicks ass, I think she’ll bow out after Mississippi.

[tnetennba]

@Shayna

Of course – publicly. But privately she’s also inviting (through a surrogate) my boss, a political consultant, to meet with her a week from tomorrow. I doubt she’d be asking him to fork out the dough and rearrange his schedule to fly out from L.A. to DC for a meeting if she didn’t fully intend to stay in the race.

She’s asking him to meet her and isn’t paying for his plane ticket?

[DSeid]

@Shayna

Of course – publicly. But privately she’s also inviting (through a surrogate) my boss, a political consultant, to meet with her a week from tomorrow. I doubt she’d be asking him to fork out the dough and rearrange his schedule to fly out from L.A. to DC for a meeting if she didn’t fully intend to stay in the race.

Shayna I do not doubt that HRC believes that she will win both Texas and Ohio tomorrow. If she does that she will stay in and continue to play for the superdelegates hoping that Obama supporters start to get buyer’s remorse. As has been pointed out time and again, it may be highly improbable that she pulls this off, but it is not impossible. Doing it would require a big enough victory tomorrow to spin it positively and her somehow amazingly getting her game on and winning some where she is not expected to. That could force this into a bloody brokered convention in which it is possible, albeit unlikely, that the supers would break for her. Even narrow wins would be enough for her to hang on to that fantasy.

But if she loses either then the pressure from the supers to get out will mount and she won’t last the week.

[Spoke]

I think Hillary may also holding out some forlorn hope for an Obama implosion via scandal (a la Gary Hart, or otherwise). That is why she’s been nagging the media to “vet” Obama over the past few days.

Clinging to that faint hope, I expect she will forge ahead regardless of what happens tomorrow.

[Jonathan_Chance]

Brief, parenthetical aside…

Everyone sucks. My political reporters and I have barely slept for two weeks. We’ve met both Obamas, all THREE Clintons, and on Friday HRCs Deputy Chief of Staff just ‘dropped into’ the newsroom saying he was just walking down our main street and saw our newspaper and wanted to say ‘hi!’. He had with him the Mayor of a town in New York and the President of a business that HRC protected from overseas competition.

We’re exhausted and want it to be over. Just over.

• Jonathan “Owns a newspaper in Ohio” Chance

[Phlosphr]

@Jonathan Chance

Brief, parenthetical aside…

Everyone sucks. My political reporters and I have barely slept for two weeks. We’ve met both Obamas, all THREE Clintons, and on Friday HRCs Deputy Chief of Staff just ‘dropped into’ the newsroom saying he was just walking down our main street and saw our newspaper and wanted to say ‘hi!’. He had with him the Mayor of a town in New York and the President of a business that HRC protected from overseas competition.

We’re exhausted and want it to be over. Just over.

• Jonathan “Owns a newspaper in Ohio” Chance

SSSoooooo are you slanting for Clinton or Obama???

Just kidding, Just Kidding.

My blood pressure has been up for a month. I can’t wait for Clinton to Conceed either…errr, I mean I can’t wait for this whole thing to be over either!

[Airblairxxx]

@Jonathan Chance

Everyone sucks. My political reporters and I have barely slept for two weeks. We’ve met both Obamas, all THREE Clintons, and on Friday HRCs Deputy Chief of Staff just ‘dropped into’ the newsroom saying he was just walking down our main street and saw our newspaper and wanted to say ‘hi!’. He had with him the Mayor of a town in New York and the President of a business that HRC protected from overseas competition.

I’d love to know how she did that.

[tnetennba]

I wonder how much the “wanting it to be over” factor will play out tomorrow. Also the “ah, it’s no use” factor, with Clinon backers.

What time do the polls close? Will we know tomorrow night what’s happened?