Hillary's in trouble. At least that what it seems like, though during this campaign season many things which seemed to be true (Rooody the GOP front runner, Hillary inevitable) sure didn't turn out to be true.
Nevertheless, the margins of victory for Obama in yesterday's DC area (Obama got 60% of the vote in Maryland and a stunning 64% in Virginia, a state democrats have their eye on flipping in November, as well as an expected 75% of the vote in DC itself tells us that he is on a serious roll. Hillary's hoping to win in both Texas and Ohio on March 4, which would again make this a total toss up race. But if Obama wins both of those states (difficult but not impossible) the race will probably be over. Theoretically Hillary can do better with the superdelegates (important democrats like congressman, governors, etc, who can go with whoever they want regardless of the delegates voted by the states), and these could push her over the top, but if Obama wins noticeably more delegates than Clinton and the superdelegates flip the nomination to Clinton there would be holy hell to pay within the democratic party. Think the fiasco of 1968, which led to a narrow Nixon victory (and the 72 landslide that followed). An awful lot of people do NOT want to see that happen. Hill's not a quitter, to be damn sure, but I could forsee a scenario where Obama is up by enough of the pledged delegates (the ones won in the state primaries and caucuses) that a movement ensues among the superdelegates to ratify the voters' choice and nominate Obama.
Among pledged delegates (those won in state contests and NOT counting the superdelegates) Obama is now up about 1104-979. 2,025 are needed for nomination.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
Hardly insurmountable, but it is a clear lead. There is also the matter of Michigan and Florida, which as of now will not be sending ANY delegates to the dem convention in Colorado. This is of course completely intolerable, and it is entirely possible that there will be fresh elections in both states, which should, in theory, favor Hillary strongly.
So its all a bit of a mess still. Dick Morris has predicted for nearly 4 years now that Hillary would be the nominee and next president. Yesterday for the first time he predicted Obama would win the nomination. Its easy to see why. He probably will. I sure as heck hope he's ready. A lot will depend on him if he's the nominee.
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13 hours ago
4 comments:
I was sort of expecting this to be your post today. Hil is in trouble. It's by no means over, as we've seen before things seem to change in a second on the dem side. But Obama clearly has the big MO going for him. He also has tons of money.
So if it is indeed Obama-McCain, could this be the election where neither is really hated. We all know that Hil is despised by Republicans. We all know that GW was despised by Dems in the last election and still is. Neither McCain or Obama appears to be despised by a large portion of the population. Sure, conservatives have been mouthing off about how they can't stand McCain, and I'm sure once they see how liberal Obama is, they'll hate him too. But it's not with the same venom inspired by Hil/GW.
Also, if it is a McCain-Obama battle, it might not be a "nice" election. I seem to remember the two having a falling out about 2 years ago. McCain said some not so nice things about Obama. They later "made up."
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/07/mccain.obama/
So, is Bloomberg still going to run as an independent?
Dan,
I'm an Obama supporter, so this is somewhat biased but ...... Please explain exactly why not seating the Florida and Michigan delegation is intolerable. the states voted to move up their primaries knowing full well what would happen if they moved them before Feb. 5. They did it anyway, and the Democratic party for a change acted as they said they would. The elephants have also punished those states, though not as severly.
As to whether or not Bloomberg runs, my guess is no -- esp. if Obama and McCain are the nominees.
Justin
Justin:
Its intolerable because we live in a democracy, and those that believe in it must not worship rules and process over democracy (am I a lawyer?) Of course, the states did act out of turn knowing there'd be consequences. (I don't remember Moses informing the Israelites that the 11th commandment was that New Hampshire and Iowa shall go first!)
On the other hand, seating the delegates "won," in the un-campaigned election, as my girl Hillary has called for, is TOTALLY out of the question. But simply having no PEOPLE under the banner of the biggest swing state of them all (27 electoral votes) as well as a big possible swing state, Michigan (17) sucks in a variety of ways and could conceivably hurt the dems a tiny bit in the Fall. I think the democrats risk looking like the gang who can't shoot straight to the general public in the other 48 states, not to mention in Michigan and Florida.
Much much better to rerun the election with a month's notice and have the delegates count normally. That's an outcome Barack is going to have a real tough time objecting to, and if my prom date Hill doesn't like it, well, tough.
agree with you Daniel on Florida/Michigan. Dems shot themselves in the foot on that one, and those states should really be represented at the convention. I think the repubs got it right by just penalizing them half of their delegates. Ugh. I can't believe I said the repubs got something right. That will taste bad in my mouth for a week.
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