In his webchat with readers yesterday, Washington Post Congressional reporter Paul Kane had two juicy political tidbits: (1) undecided superdelegates have actually concluded the race is over and are just waiting for Senator Hillary Clinton to drop out, and (2) supporters of front-runner Senator Barack Obama shouldn’t lose sight of just how narrow a victory (if it occurs) their candidate has over Clinton.
Here are the parts of the chat:
Washington: Looking at the most recent Rasmussen daily polls, I see that Hillary manages a tie today against McCain, but Barack is down by five points to McCain. What piqued my interest was that while Hillary had a “highly unfavorable” rating of 32 percent (i.e., as I see it, people who never will vote for her) Barack was at 35 percent. On Jan. 30, as we entered primary season’s main show, Barack’s “highly unfavorables” were 20 percent and Clinton’s were 35 percent. Is this something superdelegates may be watching?
Paul Kane: I’ve spent the past several months talking to as many super-delegates as any reporter in America, I’d guess, since I cover on a day-to-day basis about 280 of them here on Capitol Hill.
I hate saying this, because all the Clinton people are going to flip out and say, You’re biased, you’re biased, you’re biased. So go ahead and flip out if you want, but the simple basic truth is that the super-delegates stopped paying attention to the Clinton-Obama race about a couple days after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries.
They’ve stopped paying attention to the primary, and instead they’re focused on an Obama-McCain matchup in November. That’s the basic, simple, definitive reality that has happened in this race. The “undecided” super-delegates at this moment are not going to “decide” any time soon, because to them the race is over, they’re just waiting for Clinton to drop out.
AND:
Centreville, Va.: I was surprised and disappointed that The Post did not seem to address the Gallup poll yesterday which seemed to say Hillary Clinton had somewhat of an advantage over Barack Obama in the so-called swing states. The news of that poll was bandied about all day on the political blogs, and I have to say the Obama supporters seemed to be getting the worst of it. (Or is it “worse” with only two candidates in the poll?)
Paul Kane: Again, don’t yell at me because I’m only the messenger here. But the super-delegates have moved on, they’re no longer looking at how Hillary Clinton fares in battleground states against McCain. This is very hard for Clinton supporters to hear, I’m sorry, but the super-delegates are not paying attention to your candidate anymore. These head-to-head matchup polls (Clinton v. McCain, Obama v. McCain) are not having the impact on people’s thinking anymore.
AND then this comment about how Obama supporters should not lose sight of the narrowness of this contest:
Lashing out?: Why? I know that there are many out there who vastly prefer Sen. Clinton to Sen. Obama. I know they think that she’s more qualified and better-equipped to beat John McCain in the general election. I know they think that Clinton has been unfairly treated by the media and that the primary system is all screwed up. I’ve heard all their arguments. And I don’t doubt that they genuinely believe all of these things. My question, though, is this: What realistic outcome are they still holding out for?
Paul Kane: They want their candidate to win. I’m not sure they know how that outcome would occur, but they want Clinton to win, it’s that simple. If Obama was losing this campaign by just as narrow a margin, his supporters would be just as upset. It’s important for Obama supporters to realize just how narrow a victory he appears to have pulled off, rather than running around the country acting like they blew out Clinton. If she had been semi-competitive in the post-Super Tuesday states in February — rather than losing them all 60-40 or worse — it’s highly possible she would be the nominee.
This provides some of the context for today’s big showdown over the Michigan and Florida delegations. If party bigwigs feel they’ve come up with a compromise that is legally sound, they’ll do it. And if superdelegates have all but formally decided the race is over, then maneuvers the Clinton camp does will be fruitless unless there is some huge development or revelation about Obama before the convention.
And, as we’ve noted here before, if some revelation about Obama or someone close to him surfaces on the Drudge Report before the convention, many will correctly or incorrectly attribute the sourcing to the Clinton campaign due to reports about the Clinton campaign’s symbiotic relationship with Drudge.
It’s as though anxiety around the world over the ongoing battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is just as strong as it is among U.S. Democrats.
“There are moments in life in which a person must make a decision, even if you don’t know what decision is the right one. You can weigh the pros and cons, draw on the council of friends or see a fortune-teller. But calculating the probabilities only gets you so far since no one can know all the variables. All of which is why one must act on the basis of the information available at the time.”
“If Hillary Clinton can’t recognize when its time to concede, then the remaining undecided superdelegates should offer a helping hand: with a swift vote in favor of the candidate who has emerged as the winner of primaries held so far: Barack Obama.”
By Sabine Muscat
Translated By Ulf Behncke
May 7, 2008
Germany - Financial Times Deutschland - Original Article (German)
Philadelphia: It’s about time that the superdelegates put an end to the clash between presidential candidates Clinton and Obama - even if Clinton doesn’t realize that it’s time to stop.
There are moments in life in which a person must make a decision, even if you don’t know what decision is the right one. You can weigh the pros and cons, draw on the council of friends or see a fortune-teller. Calculating the probabilities can only get you so far since no one can know all the variables. All of which is why one must act on the basis of the information available at the time.
That should be exactly the course of action now taken by the U.S. Democratic superdelegates, in whose hands lies the power to bring the clash of rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to an end. The information we now have is this: Obama’s has the balance of superdelegates needed to obtain the Party’s nomination.
With his huge victory in North Carolina, he neutralized Clinton’s win in Pennsylvania the week before. Clinton was unable to catch up to and overcome him. And the enthusiasm that a clear victory in Indiana would have generated is missing as well.
U.S. Democrats had half a year to compare presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and to verify that both uphold the same core Democratic values. At present, which of the two stands a better chance against Republican John McCain on November 4 is anybody’s guess. What’s clear right now, however, is that the margin between both candidates and John McCain is shrinking. The Democrats should worry less about …
First, if you’re wondering what I as a Hillary supporter think about Hillary’s decision to continue running after yesterday, the answer is I don’t know what I think of it as a strategy. Naturally I would like to believe that she could still somehow prevail. I am not sanguine. People are speculating that she is now running for the VP slot. We’ll see.
But — and this matters more to me — I most definitely admire her for her unswerving commitment to see the process through. Despite the pissing and moaning in the media, and whatever the outcome, I predict that the day will certainly arrive when people will look back with awe and amazement at Hillary’s insistence in going the distance against all odds and wish that they had chosen her. She is indomitable. I like that in a Democrat and so should other Democrats. Alas, many of them are so beguiled by the media myths about Hillary that they just can’t see what a force of nature she really is.
Obama could learn a lot from her and he’d be a better (future) president for it. Instead, I imagine we’ll be stuck with him in his current incarnation — all rhetoric, all the time.
Cartoonists are having a field day with the results from last night’s Indiana and North Carolina Democratic primaries. A large number of them are lampooning Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party’s divisions.
Here are three of the most timely ones (we’ll run others throughout the day tomorrow):
May 7th, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
Photo I.D.’s were required in order to vote in Indiana in the primary yesterday. A strict new law.
But what if you can’t easily get a photo I.D.?
What if you are a citizen, have lived an exemplary life, have stood up for the lives of others, have agreed not to be paid for your work lifelong, have agreed to wear funny clothes and interfere in society’s gears when justice to the soul is concerned…
and you can’t get a photo I.D. to assert your right to vote?
What if it’s because you’re 98 years old and your comrades, sister nuns who also were not allowed to vote in Indiana yesterday because they too didn’t have photo I.D.s…. don’t drive. Like many nuns. They don’t drive because they live where they work, and their work is unending. There’s no 9-5 amongst nuns. They don’t have a lot of time to find someone to drive them to wherever they might get some sort of photo I.D., they’d be leif to ask anyone to take time from their own work to do so,
and nuns, even the most elderly ones, haven’t the same courtesy of ’step to the head of the line’ that we accord dignitaries.
12 nuns from St. Mary’s convent at South Bend (Sisters of the Holy Cross) were turned away from the polls, for not having the picture that said they were who they said they were.
Ironically, they were turned away by a sister nun who knew them, but regardless, and properly so, had no choice, as said sister was acting as a volunteer at the voting precinct.
The sisters turned away were in their 80s and 90s. Some brought their passports with requisite photo, but the passports were long expired. I don’t know about anyone else, but I just went through intense rigmarole to get my own passport reissued and I could have practically graduated with a degree in engineering for as long as it took the government to issue it.
Sister On Special Assignment as Voting Precinct Volunteer said the nuns “weren’t given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law.” “You have to remember,” Sister McGuire said, “that some of these ladies don’t walk well. They’re in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts.”
I only have this to say: These nuns and others like them who are elderly and in many ways are naive about the world yet very sharp about the ‘other world,’ and yet have dedicated a lifetime to serving day in and day out, who have sacrificed so much, deserve to be treated far more decently than this. Far more.
And as for the photo I.D. law, I see the reasons behind it. But also,
there has to be reasoned application of such a law, so that when one casts huge nets meant to catch the common fish, they do not also catch dolphins… dolphins are mammals, not fish. Dolphins are disabled when stuck in nets underwater, not allowed to surface.
It makes no sense to deny the innocent their hard-won freedoms whilst trying to entrap the others.
Indiana, for your penance, that’ll be ten Our Fathers, twenty Hail Marys, and a passel of rosaries. And an apology to the sisters from the Governor would be nice, since Mitch Daniels (R) is the one who signed the law to begin with.
But then, nuns being nuns, they’d likely say, no apology needed. They’d rather just have the prayers… And the right to vote not made labyrinthine… et– in nomine Domine, hosanna, in excelsis, and in the name of God, with high praise.
———
CODA
from AP:
“Indiana’s photo ID law is the strictest in the country. The Republican-led effort was designed to combat ballot fraud, said supporters, who also have acknowledged that no case involving someone impersonating a voter at the polls has ever been prosecuted in Indiana.
“The state’s American Civil Liberties Union sued, calling the law a poll tax that disproportionately affected minorities and elderly voters, those most likely to lack such identification. On April 28, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that the law did not violate the Constitution.”
A Hoosier’s rights under the new law, include being able to cast a provisional ballot and obtain a proper ID within 10 days so that ballot would be counted later. But, in Indiana, as in many other states, the MVD takes far longer than 10 days to mail out the required key to the kingdom. So, no dice.
**Disclosure: The Sisters and Brothers of the Holy Cross, the group noted in this article, were traveler-teachers to a tiny school that gathered farmer-immigrant-merchant class kids from the boonies long ago. This order of priests, brothers and nuns taught me there, and at other proximate locations, for the better part of 12 years. Like many consecrated who live in other convents and seminaries across the world, they are some of the dearest, funniest, uncanny people you’ll ever meet.
CNN just showed Senator Hillary Clinton at a campaign appearance, gearing up for the upcoming West Virginia primary — and the subject comes up: with the number of pledged delegates, the popular vote and fund-raising against her, why won’t she quit her battle with Senator Barack Obama for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination?
The New York Daily News has an article detailing the reasons why. And a key reason, the paper says, is her camp’s feeling that Obama has little appeal to white collar voters:
While the case for Hillary Clinton to stay in the race is shakier than ever, one ugly reason for staying in could be found Tuesday amid the ruddy, sun-kissed Hoosiers who cheered her on to victory at the Indianapolis Speedway.
With Clinton posing alongside pioneering Indy speedster Sarah Fisher, there were almost no African-Americans to be seen. Many in the white, working-class crowd were simply not ready to back Barack Obama….
Such feelings leave Clinton and the Democratic Party in a tough spot. With the largest number of remaining delegates now being party insiders, they have to decide if Obama can overcome enough of that antipathy - essentially deciding if enough working-class whites will back away from the black candidate, whether because of the false Muslim rumors, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright flap or old-fashioned racism.
The paper reports that this need “gives her a reason to stay in the race.”
So how long is it likely to go? According to the Daily News, it’s likely Clinton will fight on all the way to the convention, unless there is a truly massive outcry for her to leave:
Two separate sources in the Clinton orbit insisted Tuesday night it’s now more likely Hillary will pursue her quest until the August convention in Denver - unless party leaders rise up en masse and publicly tell her it’s time to stop. The math, after all, remains solidly in Obama’s favor.
“I can think of no reason why it would not go to the convention now,” one top Hillary Democrat predicted. “Why should she get out?”
And then there’s a section that could be a red warning flag:
Some insiders still want to make sure no new bombshells will explode around the freshman Illinois senator.
Will there be new allegations surfacing? Perhaps in original, blind sourced reporting on the Drudge Report? If those surface, look for fingers to be pointed at the Clinton campaign, even if it’s not the source.
He could slip and stumble some more, her polls could continue to be strong, and once the party decides what to do with Florida and Michigan, his lead in the popular vote will be very narrow,” an insider said.
A top Democratic source with insight into Bill’s and Hillary’s states of mind says the Clintons are convinced that a Democratic presidency is all but certain no matter how messy the fight for the nomination.
In that scenario - which the Obama side and some Democratic elders worry is wishful thinking at best, delusional at worst - there’s no downside for Hillary doing whatever it takes for as long as it takes.
The problem is the meaning of “whatever it takes.” If it’s via a continued campaign aimed at driving up Obama’s negatives so they can convince Superdelegates Obama is unelectable, it’s likely to received a lot more poorly by party bigwigs than it would have been two weeks ago.
If Clinton plays out her campaign based on issues and makes a graceful exit, the Democrats have a chance at unity. If her campaign remains an aggressive negative campaign, complete with eleventh hour negative campaign ads, it could backfire with some superdelegates and will make the Democrats’ attempts to unify their fractured party even more difficult — not to mention negate any possibility of a “Dream Ticket” which more and more seems like an In Your Dreams Ticket.
FOOTNOTE: Just how bad was the political news last night. GO HERE and look at the photos that show how poorly Bill Clinton serves his wife when he stands by her side after a defeat.
Cartoon by John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri
So what happened to Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in last night’s Democratic presidential primaries?
To find out, you can read a host of news articles and weblog posts (including several perspectives here on TMV). Two MUST READS that just hit the Internet are columns by Dick Polman and Christopher Hitchens.
Britney Spears, last December: “My sister’s not pregnant.”
John McCain, in January: “Any recession is psychological.”
Hillary Clinton, last night: “I win, he wins. I win, he wins. It’s so close!”
Polman then strips the assertion down detailing a host of factors. Here are some excerpts (read the original in full to get all the details):
1. By slaughtering Clinton in North Carolina and neary beating her in the wee hours in Indiana, Barack Obama racked up an overall net gain of 200,000 popular votes…..
2. Her squeaker win in Indiana, combined with her landslide loss in the more populous North Carolina, means that she will slip farther behind in the overall pledged-delegate competition…..
3. On the psychology/perception front, Obama’s performance last night foiled the Clinton argument that she owned the momentum and that the frontrunner was inexorably fading…..
4. Unpledged superdelegates want to see some clear evidence that voters view Clinton as the more electable and more appealing candidate, despite Obama’s frontunner status. Neither race last night supplied that kind of evidence…..
Polman says it’s “strains credulity” to think (a) Clinton will find fundraising easy, (b) the party will decide to give her Michigan’s delegates, (c) and that “superdelegates are going to deny the nomination to the candidate who, barring a documented revelation that he is an alien from a hostile planet, is now demonstrably poised to finish out the primary season with the most pledgees and popular votes.”
He concludes:
I suspect that the Clintons know all this, despite her display of public denial….And her husband clearly recognizes the lay of the land. He stood behind Hillary last night looking as if he’d been smacked with a two-by-four. The visual of Bill meant more than anything she had to say. The end of an era was in his eyes.
Hitchens provides less detail but makes some pointed observations…and again cannot get the image of Bill Clinton’s face as he stood behind his wife on a very bad political night out of his head:
Of all the slogans that Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama might have picked to distinguish themselves from one another, “Prolier Than Thou” was probably the least convincing.
Yet in the closing days of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, it seemed as if the two graduates of the nation’s most privileged law schools, and the two former residents of the Ritziest parts of Illinois, were in a race to don the bluest collar and the most stained factory overalls.
Not since a desperate George Herbert Walker Bush (father of the current incumbent) started munching on pork-rinds, donning a Teamster cap and squeezing behind the wheel of a big rig in 1992 have I seen anything so condescending and ridiculous as the recent competition between Clinton and Obama to down the most beers, pose with the most guns, boast of the most hunting expeditions and so forth.
What did the voting boil down to?
However, it was not really the class vote at which people were looking. In North Carolina, Senator Obama reaped almost one hundred per cent of a constituency which the commentators quite frankly called by its primary color.
In Indiana, that constituency is not such a large share of the electorate.
Nobody especially likes to bang on about this, but this is as good an explanation as any for the discrepancy between the two candidates and the two states.
And, since West Virginia and Kentucky are next up – and reporters are almost unconsciously describing these two states as for some reason more “natural” for the former First Lady – in a short while we will be seeing the pendulum of politics swing back again.
There is less and less point in pretending that this campaign is not “about” race.
As far as I can calculate it, though, Mrs Clinton can carry all the next five states AND Puerto Rico and still not get an arithmetical majority.
Nonetheless, she continues to act as if she knows something that the rest of us do not. And I can tell you that it spooks the Obama campaign.
He ends looking at her speech in Indiana…and Bill Clinton:
And she looked tireless and energetic and full of vim and vigour in her – ill advised I felt – electric blue trouser-suit. It’s this amazing love of combat for its own sake that has won her so much grudging respect even from many Republicans.
However, just take a look at the speech and notice the lugubrious, white-haired, red-faced, scowling and bored figure standing so listlessly just behind her.
How can a campaign once renowned for slickness and spin have permitted such a horrid spectre at the feast?
And this dreary, resentful and shambolic person was once himself described as the country’s first black president. If his wife loses we shall know why.
Indeed. I’ve said it here many times: when the story of this campaign is written it will be said that Bill Clinton on balance sandbaggged his wife’s campaign.
The negativity that he reportedly championed (and did convince her to implement) helped divide the party and harden opposition to her. Raising the race card, even though he denies he did, put Hillary Clinton in a position where she started the primaries enjoying strong black voter support that Obama had problems getting, to her loss in North Carolina where she got less than 10 percent of the African-America vote. The Clinton’s frittered away a key constituency — a glaring fact of their campaign. She needed the black vote.
It’s definitely too early to write the Clinton’s political obituaries.
But if Hillary Clinton’s candidacy dies and they call CSI, CSI will likely find Bill Clinton’s fingerprints.
Cartoon by RJ Matson, The New York Observer
She came, she saw and she fell still further behind.
The results of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries were pretty much preordained — a Barack Obama victory in the Tar Heel State by a large margin and a Hillary Clinton victory in the Hoosier State by a narrow margin. That the results were exactly that is a repudiation of Clinton’s latest and, by my count, fourth strategy in the last five months, this one to treat voters like idiots.
The results also should be Clinton’s final repudiation.
This, of course, is because it is mathematically impossible for Clinton to catch up to Obama in popular votes, pledged delegate votes, opinion-poll positives, contributions and endorsements. Obama will soon eclipse Clinton in superdelegate votes, as well, and has added 21 of the 32 who have jumped off the fence since the Bitter Small Town State primary on April 22.
Some 187 pledged delegates, nearly half of the 404 in the remaining primaries, were in play yesterday.
Obama will win a comfortable majority of those delegates, meaning that he needs about one-third of all remaining delegates to get to 2,025, the number needed to clinch the nomination. Clinton needs about two-thirds of all remaining delegates to just draw even with Obama.
Yet with 90 percent of the pledged delegates now chosen, Clinton is once again picking up those goal posts, slinging them onto her itty-bitty shoulders (come on, Rush, give the nice lady a hand and a few bucks!) and is slogging on. This is not for the good of party or the nation, as she would have us believe, but because she cannot face up to the reality that she squandered pretty much a sure thing by engaging in the kind of divisive and fear mongering politics of which change-thirsty Americans are so fricking sick and tired.
So now that the North Carolina and Indiana primaries are over — ending in split decision wins — who are the winners and losers in Tuesday’s primaries? Is it just Senator Barack Obama (who won North Carolina) or Senator Hillary Clinton (who narrowly won Indiana)?
Is it that clearcut? Here’s our take:
WINNERS:
Senator Barack Obama for winning a victory in North Carolina that went beyond the conventional media wisdom that was building — that he could lose there.
Senator Hillary Clinton for surviving by winning Indiana and keeping her candidacy alive, although some insist it is now on life support..and the batteries are almost dead.
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh for his reprehensible “Operation Chaos” campaign to convince voters to use their precious right to vote to sandbag another party that appears to have worked in Indiana. Data suggests it had an impact.
Senator Barack Obama for not being able to end Clinton’s candidacy with two solid wins (this could change if the final Indiana vote changes).
Senator Hillary Clinton for not just losing to Obama in North Carolina while aides talked about her gathering momentum, but for starting out Campaign 2008 with a good chunk of black voter support and ending the night with shockingly low black voter support (remember that at the beginning of the campaign Obama had a problem getting African Americans to vote for him and against a Clinton).
The Limbaugh “dittoheads” who felt the precious vote for which so many have died should be tossed away to sabotage another political party, as if democracy in a time of national crisis were some cutesy game (and we add in this category any Democrats who also played the same game crossing over in Republican primaries).
THE BIGGEST LOSERS:
The Superdelegates who will either have to act soon…or later…to put an end to the contest and face the possibility that, no matter what they decide, half of the committed Democrats won’t vote for the candidate they opposed (which some feel means they should be committed).
Political pandering: By most accounts of the talking heads and experts, Clinton’s embracing of the gas holiday tax and dismissive comment that she didn’t have to listen to economists didn’t do her much good and probably hurt her.
To read some excellent analytical live blogging on the night’s voting GO HERE.
What happens next? The media and weblogs are filled with tidbits about a night that could have been a “game changer,” but not what Clinton had in mind.
My own view is she should run her campaign against John McCain. She will win West Virginia and Kentucky by huge margins.
She might even challenge Obama in Oregon.
What she should not do, imo, is run against Barack Obama. If there is a path to the nomination for her, and I doubt there is, it won’t come from attacking Obama now.
Is a dramatic political night about to get more dramatic? Gary Indiana’s mayor is suggesting that when the votes from his county are tallied, Senator Barack Obama could win the Indiana primary:
As the fate of a nailbiter Indiana primary — and possibly the course of the Democratic race — hung on his city, Gary Mayor Rudy Clay said just now that it might take a while yet to finish counting the vote in Lake County, which includes Gary, and said tonight his city had turned out so overwhelmingly for Barack Obama that it might just be enough to close the gap with Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“Let me tell you, when all the votes are counted, when Gary comes in, I think you’re looking at something for the world to see,” Clay, an Obama supporter, said in a telephone interview from Obama’s Gary headquarters. “I don’t know what the numbers are yet, but Gary has absolutely produced in large numbers for Obama here.”
Clay said the results were late coming in from Lake County because of the large numbers of absentee ballots that had to be counted — about 11,000. Under local practice, all of the cartridges from voting machines in Gary and nearby East Chicago are first collected at the local airport before being driven to the county headquarters to be tallied with the results from the rest of the county, he said. He said there were no major technical problems holding up the count.
Interesting…but at this point we’re leaving up our post that has CBS calling it narrowly for Clinton. If it changes, we’ll do a new post.
And if it changes and it does happen — it would be a “game changer.” In terms of campaign contributions alone, it’s hard to see how the Clinton campaign could continue much longer if there were two losses tonight. A narrow win is one thing; a loss is another.
In today’s last-big primaries left (187 pledged delegates up for grabs of the 404 remaining) day, Sen. Barack Obama scored a decisive victory (around 15 points or more) in North Carolina and Sen. Hillary Clinton holds around a 4 point lead in Indiana with around 85% of precincts in, as of 23:00 “fast time” (EDT). Insofar as North Carolina is significantly bigger than Indiana, and insofar as Sen. Obama’s margin of victory there will be greater than Sen. Clinton’s margin in Indiana, assuming she even wins it at all, Obama will improve on his around 150 pledged delegate (and 135 or so overall delegate) lead, with only 217 pledged delegates left for grabs, in contests in Kentucky, West Virginia and Puerto Rico (likely for Clinton), and in Montana, South Dakota and Oregon (likely for Obama)… i.e., they’ll all net out or come pretty close to doing so, and Obama’s lead will hold… and superdelegates will start breaking in droves… for Obama.
The game is called “delegates;” telling us that if you count Florida and Michigan, (and only count White people at that) that Hillary “actually won” the “real” popular vote… or that some poll tells us Clinton will do better against McCain in selected counties in Florida and Ohio… really tells us nothing. If Clinton supporters want to make the case that the Rev. Wright has rendered Sen. Obama unelectable, apparently, the voters in both North Carolina and Indiana don’t seem to be accepting that, given the respective margins tonight, which, as noted above, will give Obama a net delegate pick-up, despite “Hillary’s momentum” and wall to wall Rev. Wright coverage on broadcast media (and of course, the shameless pandering on the gasoline tax).
If we accept polls that show that raw racism is something that Democrats should respect (i.e., evidently, a significantly higher number of Clinton voters say they would not vote for Obama than vice versa, and, as their policies are pretty much indistinguishable, I think we know why they would say this), then the Democratic Party may as well start selling the furniture at DNC headquarters, because it will no longer have a reason to be, nor would it ever again be assured of its only reliable base (hint: it’s neither unions, nor working class White people).
So… while this election may be too important for Democrats to lose, if it involves “winning” by elevating the candidate in distant second place in delegates, “winning” may well be a Pyrrhic victory: the end of the Democratic Party in any meaningful sense. Not that Sen. Clinton (and certainly Pres. Clinton) seem to care a jot about this. If the argument that Obama– a man who was a state legislator just three and a half years ago, is unelectable, then the answer to that problem might well be “Al Gore” (Gore-Obama?), but it is surely notthe candidate with every conceivable advantage of name recognition, organization and fund-raising prowess and a popular husband ex-President to boot who still couldn’t beat the man who was a state legislator three years ago (because she ran one of the stupidest campaigns in the history of the world).
Does Sen. Clinton have every right to soldier on? Yessirree, and frankly, if I were her, I might well myself, because this may well be her last opportunity to run, and certainly, she may never be this close again. Of course, it’s quite possible that her campaign is broke (again). And superdelegates are now going to start committing in droves, insofar as, while there are nominally 5 or 6 more contests, they are, combined, barely more than tonight’s total, which included an Indiana that had many demographic similarities to Clinton-strongholds Ohio and Pennsylvania, and yet, it might well only be Rush Limbaugh’s operation chaos that pushes her over the top there.
Is primary season and the race for the Democratically nomination technically or mathematically over? Not by a long-shot. Is it over? Yes, boys and girls, I’m afraid that it’s over.
Hey, who knows? If Sen. Obama can wrap this up in the next few days, he might even have time to come to our Columbia ‘83 class reunion in three weeks time. No… crazy talk on my part. But unless Sen. Obama is videotaped on a boat called Monkey Business, or shows up on the client list of the Emperors Club, or some other outrageous scandal that involves sex, any doubt that he will be the Democratic nominee has by and large just been removed.
UPDATE: Here is Obama’s North Carolina victory speech tonight. (We embed…you watch and decide!). If the video doesn’t show all of it, please go to THIS LINK to view it:
Why is the man above smiling? Because, apparently, he has a RIGHT to.
If all goes according to projections and Senator Hillary Clinton somewhat narrowly wins the Indiana Democratic primary (CBS has projected she will narrowly win it), he has a right to smile. Because if early indications are correct, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh may have provided a textbook case of the influence of radio talk show hosts on partisans in the 21st century.
His “Operation Chaos” — designed to get his listeners to vote whenever they can in Democratic primaries for Clinton to prolong the Democrats’ highly divisive Clinton/Barack Obama Presidential nomination — could have given the Cinton the winning edge, if the victory margin in the end is like what seems to be shaping up now. The New Republic’s The Plank:
Some reporters have speculated about the impact of the “Limbaugh effect” — partisan Republicans crossing over to vote fr Hillary Clinton solely to help weaken the Democrats against John McCain. The sieze of the effect is hard to measure. But there is one numerical measurement, first pointed out to me by the Pew Survey’s Richard Auxier following the Pennsylvania primary, that gives some sense of it.
One exit poll question asks Indiana voters who they would support in a Clinton-McCain contest. 17% of them say McCain. Of those voters, 41% say they would vote for McCain over Clinton. In other words, these voters, 7% of the Indiana electorate, voted for Clinton in the primary but have no intention of supporting her in the fall.
Now, this isn’t a precise measure of the “Limbaugh effect” — no doubt there are some Republicans who backed Obama in the primary out of anti-Clinton sentiment, but plan to vote for McCain in November. But it is a good place to start when making a ballpark estimate. And it’s a sizeable number — 7% may wind up being as big as her margin of victory.
The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein looks at exit polls and reaches the same conclusion: Limbaugh played a role in motivating some voters whose motive was basically to sabatoge the Democratic primary…something some Democrats have tried in cross-over primaries the past but not on such an organized, sustained and serious scale. Stein’s post must be read full but here are some excerpts:
Did Rush Limbaugh actually impact the Democratic primary?
The loud-mouthed radio talk show host has been encouraging Republicans to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton to continue the “chaos” in the Democratic race. And a sampling of some key exit poll information suggests he may, to a certain extent, be having an effect.
Thirty-six percent of primary voters said that Clinton does not share their values. And yet, among that total, one out of every five (20 percent) nevertheless voted for her in the Indiana election. Moreover, of the 10 percent of Hoosiers who said “neither candidate” shared their values, 75 percent cast their ballots for Clinton.
These are not small numbers. By comparison, of the 33 percent of voters who said Sen. Barack Obama does not share their values, only seven percent cast their ballots in his favor. Basically, more people who don’t relate to Clinton are, for one reason or another, still voting for her. These are not likely to be loyal supporters.
He goes into some detail then writes:
The numbers suggest one of three things: A) Clinton’s support in Indiana, while clearly there, is not entirely solid; B) a large swath of Indiana primary goers simply didn’t like the nominees and thought of Clinton as the lesser of two evils; or C) Limbaugh’s hatchet plan could be having political ripples.
Perhaps it’s a mix of all three.
Republican partisans will applaud what truly seems to be a Limbaugh success. And his “legend” as someone who can press a button and get followers to do his bidding (or jettison previous beliefs and get with the party line) will grow. Some Hillary Clinton supporters will say Well, what does it matter why they vote the way the do — they have the right to vote as they vote. (Which they do.)
But there is an ineffable stench of political sleaziness when Republicans — and Democrats — decide to cross party lines to sandbag the other party. Who would have ever thought 20 or 30 — or 10 — years ago that partisans of either party would vote in another party’s primary specifically to prolong the other party’s turmoil or weaken that party’s candidate? There have been charges that siphoning off another party’s votes has been used via third parties but this hasn’t been an actual calculated strategy until now. Welcome to mega partisan 2008.
Perhaps when Superdelegates look at these numbers, it might influence their perceptions on the components of the Indiana vote….particularly as Limbaugh starts hyping his impact and if the mainstream media latches on to the story.
P.S. Limbaugh’s power isn’t just because he’s a partisan. He is also a talented, first-class broadcaster who knows how to use the broadcast medium and get and hold an audience. He makes it look easy, and it isn’t — which is why so many other conservative and progressive talk show hosts have failed.
This may be the first vote in which his influence can be measured in qualitative terms.
I am listening on NPR to Sen. Obama’s victory speech in North Carolina - he really thinks that our Democratic Party will unify behind him! Such denial of reality should automatically disqualify him from serious consideration for the Presidency.
It’s About What’s Best For America - NOT What’s Best For Barack Obama.
Change? We? Can? Believe? In? - Every Word is False.
It is clear to this center-left Democrat that Barack Obama is NOT the best choice for the Democratic Party, let alone for America. He is, rather, a disaster in the making.
CBS News has projected that Senator Hillary Clinton will win the Indiana Democratic Presidential primary — a result that means the evening of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries ended in a split decision for what increasingly appears to be a split political party:
Clinton pulled off an Indiana win in what was a virtual must-win Midwestern state. With 50 percent of the votes being reported in the state, she was leading Obama 55 percent to 45 percent.
Obama’s win mirrored earlier triumphs in Southern states with large black populations: Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina among them. With 14 percent of the votes in North Carolina being reported, Obama was leading Clinton 63 percent to 35 percent.
CBS News exit poll results show that most voters in both states made up their minds a while ago. Only 17 percent in Indiana and 14 percent in North Carolina decided in the last three days. Twenty-four percent in Indiana and 18 percent in North Carolina decided in the last week.
Late deciders backed Clinton in Indiana by a margin of 62 percent to 38 percent for Obama. In North Carolina, Obama won late deciders by a much smaller margin of 49 percent to 48 percent.
And the important issues?
As it has been throughout the Democratic primaries, the economy was the most important issue in both states with 65 percent of voters in Indiana describing it as such and 60 percent in North Carolina. In Indiana, 50 percent of voters said Clinton would be more likely to improve the economy and 46 percent said that Obama would. In North Carolina, 52 percent said that Obama would be more likely to improve the economy and 42 percent said that Clinton would.
Nearly half of voters in both states said the situation with Obama’s former pastor Reverend Wright was important in their vote, while half said that it was not. In Indiana, 48 percent said that it was important and 49 percent said that it was not, while in North Carolina, 48 percent said the Wright situation was important in their vote and 50 percent said that it was not.
What happens next?
The Obama camp will point to his big North Carolina win and the rocky patch he has endured the past few weeks and suggest it shows he can handle anything. That spin is already going out.
Expect to the Clinton side to discount North Carolina without flatly coming out and saying Obama won in a state with a large black vote. Expect to hear the words “demographics” and fill in the vague word yourself.
Also, expect the Clinton campaign to signal ASAP that it intends to play hardball since Clinton did not get a double win tonight.
Clinton delegate honcho [Harold Ickes] tells The Page that his camp believes 2,209 — not 2,025 — is the magic number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination because they’re counting Michigan and Florida.
“I know the Obama people like to use the smaller amount. We don’t even like the implication of it, much less the amount. It implies he doesn’t recognize Florida and Michigan. We don’t see how he can do that politically…So our target is 2,209 and we think Hillary is in a good position to get there.”
This is called changing the goal posts. AND:
Also repeats his calling card to supers: “We don’t know enough about Senator Obama yet. We don’t need an October Surprise. And (the chance of) an October Surprise with Hillary is remote.”
So it could boil down to whether Superdelegates will allow the up-until-now conventional wisdom on the delegate count to be changed and to tilt to a candidate because the other side suggests there could be an October surprise.
FOOTNOTE: The total picture will be far more clear once the votes are completely tallied.
ABC News says that based on exit polling it is calling the North Carolina primary for Senator Barack Obama — amid increasing signs that the Democratic party may be gravely split so many Democrats will stay home in November whether Obama gets the Presidential nomination or his rival, Senator Hillary Clinton.
Indiana, ABC News reports, is too close to call. But the conventional wisdom has been that if there was a “split” tonight, Obama would get North Carolina and Clinton would win Indiana. ABC News:
As expected, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has solidly won the North Carolina primary, ABC News projects, while he and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, remain locked in a tight race in Indiana.
Nearly unanimous support among African-Americans who accounted for a third of voters in North Carolina lifted Obama to easy victory, according to preliminary exit poll results.
About 91 percent of African Americans supported Obama in preliminary exit poll results. Obama also benefited from a surge of new voters; 18 percent in North Carolina said it was their first time voting in a primary, and they favored him by a vast 68-26 percent.
Meanwhile, the race is too close to call in Indiana. The Hoosier State is seen as Clinton’s best chance for victory, with demographics similar to Ohio and Pennsylvania — states she has won in the past — but Obama remains competitive in Indiana, a state that borders his homestate of Illinois.
But the larger issue for the Democrats as the rest of the results come will be: is the Democratic party now on the way to being badly broken? The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, looking at some exit polls writes:
Forget the horse race numbers for a moment: if the surveys are accurate, the polarization within the Democratic Party has reached critical levels. Nearly six in ten Obama supporters in Indiana say they would be dissatisfied if Clinton were the nominee — that’s (I believe) the high percentage of Obama supporters who have ever said that.
In both IN and NC, two thirds of Clinton supporters say they’d be dissatisfied if Obama were the nominee — I believe that’s the highest number recorded for that question, too.
The percentage of Clinton voters who say they’d choose McCain over Obama in a general election is approaching 40% in Indiana. Put it another way: in North Carolina, less than HALF of folks who voted today for Hillary Clinton are ready to say today that they’d definitely vote for Obama in a general election.
And if the evening shapes up the way the conventional wisdom has suggested it could — Obama winning North Carolina, Clinton winning Indiana — this race will most assuredly go on for a while. Each camp will try and discount their loss in the state they lose. But a lot of what goes on will be aimed at Superdelegates, who will be under more pressure than ever to change sides.
If Clinton or Obama would win both states, the dynamics of the battle for the nomination could change. But if the ABC projection holds and Clinton wins Indiana the increasingly — and perhaps mortally — divisive battle for the Democratic nomination will continue as it did a week ago.
If you haven’t voted yet, Marion County Clerk Beth White offered this advice just before noon: Go now. “I’d recommend they get there right now, bring their ID and prepare to be patient,” White said during a news conference in the clerk’s office. Polls close at 6 p.m., and White said turnout already is looking less like a primary than a general election….One thing was clear by noon: Election results will take a while tonight. White said she would be surprised to have them available before 8:30 or 9 p.m.
Amid heavy turnout, Republicans appeared to be crossing over in droves today in Marion County and suburban counties, where fewer Republican voters might impact down-ticket primary races
Charlotte Observer: “Long lines were reported this morning at some polling places across North Carolina in the state’s first significant presidential primary election in two decades… Longtime N.C. political observers say that 1.5 million voters may participate in the historic Democratic primary.”
Indianapolis Star: “More voters have turned out in the first half hour than usually turn out in a half day… Republicans appeared to be crossing over in droves today in Marion County and suburban counties.”
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has urged his Republican listeners to vote for Senator Hillary Clinton in today’s Indiana primary, pointing to what he said is a double standard when it comes to cross-over voters, the Boston Globe reports — and another newspaper reports signs of “hardcore” Republicans voting Democratic.
Indiana’s primary is open to Republicans and independents, as well as Democrats. Limbaugh is urging Republicans to cross over and vote for Clinton to extend the Democratic nomination fight and, he hopes, further damage the eventual nominee.
Exit polls suggest that Limbaugh’s soldiers could have made a difference March 4 in Texas, where Clinton pulled out a narrow win in the primary, though Obama won the simultaneous caucuses.
Limbaugh told listeners on Monday that Democratic Party officials in Indiana are trying to intimidate Republican voters with monitors at the polls. So he issued these orders: “Flood these precincts. Vote for Mrs. Clinton as an act of defiance against these police-state tactics as a form of protest.” Read the rest of this entry »
