Wait! I saw some movement!
I'm not convinced just yet. Seriously, do you think Hillary is just going to "gracefully" step aside?
Posted on 05/07/2008 1:13:51 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
Tuesday was a decisive night for Barack Obama.
Sure, CBS News called Indiana early for Hillary Clinton (a verdict the network may yet regret, with many precincts still outstanding), and if she does hang on there, she will have won just as many states on the day as Obama did. And she will then soldier on to what should be a landslide win in next week’s West Virginia primary, just as she figures to dominate in Kentucky on May 20.
But tonight made clear one thing: None of that will matter.
Ever since she fell hopelessly behind Obama in the pledged delegate and popular vote counts during a string of February defeats, Clinton has clung to a longshot nomination strategy. She would not be able to overtake him in delegates or popular votes in the late primaries, but she could use them to shake Democrats’ confidence in Obama as a general election candidate.
This would mean winning overwhelmingly in the late states where she was favored and picking off some or all of those that he had been expected to win. Only then, with Clinton making a compelling case that Obama’s supporters were abandoning him in drives, would superdelegates – loath to overturn “the will of the people” and to risk the devastating intraparty warfare that would come from thwarting an African-American who won a pledged delegate majority in the primaries – be receptive to lining up with her en masse.
To Clinton’s credit, she strung this all out longer than many thought she could. She won in Ohio and Texas on March 4, when defeat would have meant the end for her. Then she pulled out Pennsylvania on April 22, and suddenly the wind seemed to be at her back. She began receiving a hearing from some opinion-makers on her specious “big state” argument and her questions about Obama’s seeming inability to connect with white working-class voters (something that made the coverage of Jeremiah Wright’s untimely reemergence all the more devastating for him). For the first time since January, Clinton picked up a new batch of superdelegate endorsements and when she latched onto a gas tax holiday plan and began bashing “elitists,” game-changing wins in Indiana and North Carolina suddenly became plausible.
So much for that.
Obama has absolutely clobbered her in North Carolina. As of this writing, the final numbers aren’t known, but it’s clear that his margin will be well into double-digits. The Clintons can claim that this is an improvement from polls conducted months ago – their surrogates seem to be engaged in an informal competition to one-up each other in stating the initial size of her deficit; Terry McAuliffe said 25 points, while Gov. Mike Easley went with 34 – but political observers, and superdelegates in particular, know better. The North Carolina results do not suggest any significant erosion in Obama’s standing in the state during what has been a very rough few weeks for him.
This alone is enough to derail the Clinton strategy. A win in North Carolina would have been powerful evidence that Democrats are turning on Obama and that the character attacks had rendered him unelectable. A very narrow loss might have helped the Clintons make this case as well. But a landslide defeat?
The implications of the Carolina result are many. First, it reaffirms – yet again – the lack of momentum in this race. The outcome of just about every state has been predictable well in advance. This was true in the Clinton states of New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania (among others) and it proved true in North Carolina on Tuesday. For all of the poll fluctuations before all of these contests, primary day has inevitably resulted in states reverting to form. That there was no measurable momentum in North Carolina is even more significant, because Obama couldn’t have possibly endured a worse two weeks than these past two.
This means that the remaining few contests are basically foregone conclusions. Clinton will win West Virginia next week, Kentucky on the 20th and Puerto Rico on May 1. Obama will win Oregon in two weeks and South Dakota and Montana on June 3. A split, in other words – not the decisive and jaw-dropping series of late wins that Clinton absolutely had to have.
North Carolina also essentially locks in Obama’s edge in the popular vote. His margin should undo whatever benefit Clinton reaped from her win in Pennsylvania. No fair and reasonable calculation of the cumulative popular vote at the end of this process will show Clinton ahead. It is now mathematically inconceivable.
Against these realities, the Indiana results almost don’t matter. Obviously, if Obama ends up ahead when all the votes are tallied, the race will end on the spot, and Clinton won’t even have license to pursue meaningless wins in West Virginia and Kentucky. But even if Clinton hangs on, it will be for show.
Clinton’s strategy since February 5 never stood much chance of working and allowed room for absolutely no slip-ups. Now it’s over.
Nothing I've seen makes me think she's primed to quit.
The Hillary haters have just handed the election to Obama.
Of course that remains to be seen, given the adjustment he will inevitably apply to the weight of their delegates.
You know... historically, on this site, we've always taken genuine and open pleasure in the sorrows and/or discomfiture of anyone named "Clinton," as a rule.
Pardon the holy heck out of me, for being a staid FReeper traditionalist. ;)
Wait! I saw some movement!
I'm not convinced just yet. Seriously, do you think Hillary is just going to "gracefully" step aside?
My understanding -- and I could be completely, 110% wrong on this one, all right? DON'T quote me. ;) -- is that, yes, the delegates for both said states do get "seated" at the convention... but: none of them actually get to cast votes during the initial (and often decisive) round of ballots, re: the selection of the party's eventual nominee. (I do believe that potential later rounds, however, are still the subject of some ongoing negotiation.)
Hope that helps.
Heck... I just hope it's actually right, come to think! ;)
>> The Hillary haters have just handed the election to Obama.
You say “Hillary haters” like it’s a BAD thing.
Apparently there also is no way to wake up Republicans to the threat Obama poses in the election because of Americans who have become so spineless, naive and ill educated.
If Hillary believes she can stay close through the rest of the primaries, she’ll go for that and hope for a delegate reversal. Secondly, in desperation, she could nuke out with the BLT-reparation stuff. Extremely dirty, but true and not fully addressed yet (IMO).
Let’s face it....we wanted them both to lose, but mostly NObama because most of us, I think, figure he’s slick enough to con too many voters. Thus Operation Chaos (which seems not to have caused NObama to lose).
Here’s a positive thing, which should give all us McCain “nose holders” some cheer......he spoke today about appointing judges like Roberts, Alito and Renquist (sp?) to the USSC. That’s the best reason to vote for him, IMO.
I think we’re actually lucky, as conservatives, the way things have panned out to date. NObama is beatable, and, after the past eight years, a good fightin’ chance is better than we deserve.
This is exactly what I'm bemoaning. What does it take for people to see what's right in front of their eyes? Surely a few smooth but hollow words aren't enough to totally overcome commonsense.
That and the Dems have to be getting tapped out on money given two candidates driving hard late in the race. The remaining markets aren’t costly to compete in, but money still has to be raised.
The black vote will be truly monolithic for Obama regardless of his ties to terrorists and 20y in the pew of a racist. It is their time.
Obama and his wife and the fawning media will be difficult to take if McCain can’t pull this off. He’ll be an utter disaster as President. I don’t get the feeling that he’s thought too much about the day after the election if he’s won.
The Clintons don't lose. And it's miraculous Hillary hasn't turned things completely around with all her GOP water carriers. Obama has been getting murdered in the press for a considerable period of time while Hillary's girlfriends publish vapid articles entitled “Hillary talks girl talk.” The Clintons are pure evil. Anybody who thinks McCain can beat them is delusional.
So we get this double gift, and Freepers want to give it back. A royal goofball suddenly emerges who steals the black vote from them and can eliminate the She beast, and to top it off he only wins Republican states that he can't win in the general election. But the wailing, name calling, and gnashing of teeth on Free Republic sounds like the Democrats of ten years ago during impeachment. And now people here praise the Clintons and scream like Lanny Davis if you criticize them.
I've been here since 1998 and we're all in the Twilight Zone. I never thought FR would become a Clinton board.
>> Apparently there also is no way to wake up Republicans to the threat Obama poses in the election
I dread what Obama might do in the White House.
But I KNOW BEYOND THE SHADOW OF A DOUBT what Hillary would do. We lived through 8 long years of Clintoon White House. Remember?
Hillary Clinton is scum. And that’s just her... we’d also end up with that... thing BILLY JEFF, who is “scum de la scum”.
No thank you!
Well said.
Please, please run for President. I so desperately need someone genuinely SANE to vote for! ;)
I believe she will pull a coup.
One way or another, she’s way to valuable to the dims to not be on the ticket. Probably 30 or 40 millions votes worth.
There is nobody O could have in the second slot that would bring in as many votes as she could.
Not bad, yourself. My best.
Seeing the Clinton's crushed and defeated is tonic to my soul!
As well it bloody should be, for both of us! We're CONSERVATIVES, dammit! ;)
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