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Mon 21 Apr, 2008 03:36 pm
-I think that Hillary should have already dropped out but I don't see how she can go on unless she wins by at least 10%.
Where's the option for "never"?
Hill should stay in until the convention chooses a candidate. Who knows with things like the rezko thing we may find there is more garbage on Obama than has come out so far. Besides maybe my guys Edwards or Kucinich can swing the convention in their favor and give us a real chance to not only win the election for the dems but have enough savvy to actually do something about changing things in Washington instead of parroting change, change like Obama.
I'm not her fan but she has a reasonable argument for staying.
the clinton brothers are looking for a showdown
i can see them standing at the end of the street as obamma steps off the train at the convention
ala 3:10 to yuma, i forsee a bloodbath, where nobody wins
interesting everybody said, how could bush have squandered the good will of the world following 9/11
now the same can be said of the dems, they went up against the one of the most reviled men in politics, a sure bet, but by the time this travesty is over, who knows
As long as she has money and a following, by all means keep going. I wish she would focus on why she is better than McCain instead of making up attacks on Obama, but she must campaign how she sees fit.
Quote:As long as she has money
seems to be the major issue.
dyslexia wrote:Quote:As long as she has money
seems to be the major issue.
then she should quit she is ten million in debt...
Roxxxanne wrote:dyslexia wrote:Quote:As long as she has money
seems to be the major issue.
then she should quit she is ten million in debt...
Honestly, what's 10 million to the Clintons? An advance on a book deal about her 2008 presidential campaign.
Hell, I'd stay in if I were her just to have an exciting ending for that book.
WTF? 10 million is still 10 million to even Gates or Buffett. The Clintons just acquired their wealth in the last few years and now they are going to piss it way on a lost cause?????????????///
With 1279 pleged delegates Clinton is 136 elected delegates behind Obama, who has 1,415 . There are about 473 delegates remaining to be selected in the states that haven't yet voted (all before the PA results are factored in). Finally, there are about 800 ex-officio, "super" delegates. These totals don't include delegate counts from Michigan & Florida.
The PA results will probably reduce Clinton's deficit by about 12 (roughly 10% of the pre PA gap), leaving the count at about 1,358 Clinton & 1,482 Obama. At that point there will be about 315 delegates outstanding in the remaining state primaries, plus about 300 at issue in the Michigan & Florida delegations, and of course the 800 super delegates.
I just don't see Hillary quitting now. I'm sure this is hard for Obama supporters to understand or accept, given his rather meteoric rise early in the campaign. However the numbers are close, compared to the remaining uncertainty in this hard-fought contest, and, perhaps more importantly, she is closing the margin of difference in the total votes cast column.
Roxxxanne wrote:WTF? 10 million is still 10 million to even Gates or Buffett. The Clintons just acquired their wealth in the last few years and now they are going to piss it way on a lost cause?????????????///
thta's pretty much their prerogative....
georgeob1 wrote:With 1279 pleged delegates Clinton is 136 elected delegates behind Obama, who has 1,415 . There are about 473 delegates remaining to be selected in the states that haven't yet voted (all before the PA results are factored in). Finally, there are about 800 ex-officio, "super" delegates. These totals don't include delegate counts from Michigan & Florida.
The PA results will probably reduce Clinton's deficit by about 12 (roughly 10% of the pre PA gap), leaving the count at about 1,358 Clinton & 1,482 Obama. At that point there will be about 315 delegates outstanding in the remaining state primaries, plus about 300 at issue in the Michigan & Florida delegations, and of course the 800 super delegates.
I just don't see Hillary quitting now. I'm sure this is hard for Obama supporters to understand or accept, given his rather meteoric rise early in the campaign. However the numbers are close, compared to the remaining uncertainty in this hard-fought contest, and, perhaps more importantly, she is closing the margin of difference in the total votes cast column.
Virtually no one expected Hillary to voluntarily drop out even if she lost PA. Obama supporters are not having a hard time accepting Hillary's refusal to fight on. We know she will until enough Super Delegates commit to put Obama officially over the top. The Hillary and MCCain supporters are having a hard time accepting the math. Hillary can't possibly win the delegate count even with a MAJOR OBAMA disaster at this point. She needs 80% of the remaining delegates! The popular vote is meaningless. It is like if a team gets more hits than another, they still lose if they score less runs. You can't go back and say they won because they got more hits. It is absurd.
Obama is ahead in NC and Indiana. If that holds, enough SDs will commit to Obama and put him over the top officially. I know you guys have this wet dream about the race going all the way to convention but it ain't gonna happen.
BTW beyond absurd is the notion that Michigan could be counted in Hillary's total when Obama's name wasn't on the ballot.
Bi-Polar Bear wrote:Roxxxanne wrote:WTF? 10 million is still 10 million to even Gates or Buffett. The Clintons just acquired their wealth in the last few years and now they are going to piss it way on a lost cause?????????????///
thta's pretty much their prerogative....
She is not going to piss away her own money on a losing cause? SHe is begging for five dollar donations. Are you stepping up?
Well, we sure don't need the likes of Georegob1 telling us what we think as we blog all over the internet and it is quite easy with anyone with a mouse to confirm what we are thinking and it is almost never the way Georgeob1 and other A2K wingnuts try to spin it.
Hunter at Kos pretty much sums up how a lot of us are feeling this AM, we are sick and tired to the deceit and the ever changing moving of the goalposts on the part of Clinton and her surrogates as well as the obvious futility of it all. Hillary and her supporters are hoping that a disaster befalls Obama as that is the only way Hillary could ever claim anything close to a legitimate nomination.
Hunter:
Forget the spin: the race is where it is. Clinton won Pennsylvania. The overall delegate margin has barely budged, however, and it is now even more assured that there is no reasonable scenario where Clinton can pull out a primary win absent intervention by the superdelegates.
I was never a Clinton fan, in this campaign. I have previously stated my deep discomfort with the notion that the person most deserving of the Presidency of the United States just miraculously happens to be the person married to the last Democratic President of the United States; it smacks far too much of the usual intra-Washington narcissism, and carries the strong whiff of American monarchy, something already wafting through the air after the ridiculous rise of the Boy King. At the same time, however, there seems little value in debating whether Clinton should or should not leave the race. That is entirely up to Clinton, and any candidate with a mathematical chance -- even if slim -- of pulling out a win has every right to see the race through until that last fateful day. I don't buy the notion that the campaign is hurting the Democratic party: any election that generates this level of excitement among Democratic voters is hardly a bad thing.
What bothers me, however, is the increasingly insulting quality of the campaign and surrogate spin as each successive campaign day wears on. It is fine to celebrate a Pennsylvania win -- by all means, a victory is a victory, and a significant and hard-fought one at that -- but all I ask in politics is that the spinners of each camp try their best to not make it quite so obvious that they think the rest of us really are a spectacular new species of rubes, able to be led by the nose to whatever ridiculous and improbable conclusion would best benefit a particular camp.
Listening to Clinton campaign surrogates on television, before the PA votes ever started to trickle in, was truly painful. Suddenly one state was the only state that mattered. All those other states were merely prelude: if Clinton could eke out a victory in this state, trailing in the delegate count would no longer be significant, and it would be a brand new race, and Obama would be on the ropes, and Clinton would suddenly win a billion dollars, a pony, and the moon; attention must be paid. It is not enough for Obama to simply be winning the nomination according to the rules laid out in advance: no, he must win the "right" way, according to the Clinton campaign and surrogates, or it doesn't count. He has to win the "right" states. And he has to win primaries, not caucuses. And he has to "close the deal", shutting Clinton out of remaining wins entirely, or it proves something ominous (the fact that Clinton has not been able to "close the deal" against him, and is instead trailing him badly and irreparably, barring superdelegate do-over, somehow does not count against her own merits.) And he not only has to win the "popular vote", but he has to win that, too, the right way, which is to say by counting only certain states and not counting others. And he has to win small towns, not just big population centers, because winning big population centers is elitist. Except that if he wins small towns in the West and Midwest, that doesn't count, because it's more important to win the big population centers. And all of this somehow proves that Clinton is a better candidate against McCain than Obama is, even though the polls to date have consistently shown Obama is a better candidate against McCain than Clinton is.
Now, I'm all for surrogates talking up their candidate, assuming they don't insult my intelligence in the process. But with the ever-changing rules and subrules of Clintonball, my intelligence feels fairly insulted, at this point. There seems to be an ever-expanding list of rationales why the delegate counts in front of our faces don't actually matter, or don't actually exist, or are terribly misleading. There seems to be an ever-expanding list of supposedly devastating Obama faults, such as the supposed elitism of the black guy from Chicago (seriously?), and there is a cynical and mocking dismissal of political eloquence from a campaign that once counted the political eloquence of their former president as one of their greatest assets. People have muttered over the negative tone of the campaign of late: hell, go negative. It's about time the Democrats figured out how to competently go negative, even though so far they have only bothered to practice it against each other. More irritating is that the negative attacks presented are, well, stupid, and seem increasingly to be predicated on the notion that voters, the press, the pundits, and we political hangers-on are all idiots seeking to cling to the most shallow of accusations. The press and the pundits? OK, I'll give you that one. The rest of us, however, weren't born yesterday.
All the spin boils down to a simple truth: Clinton now has almost no chance of winning on the delegate count. Barring Obama getting eaten by a bear, it's not going to happen, so the Clinton campaign wants the superdelegates to overturn the primary and caucus results at the convention and appoint her the rightful winner, even though she is, at this point, clearly losing. That's going to be a tough sell, if all Clinton has to offer is one state's worth of "momentum" or the rather odd logic that, since Obama has supposedly not sufficiently proven his campaign viability by kicking her completely to the curb by now, the superdelegates should instead hitch their wagons to a candidate who has been proven to be less viable than him.
The problem is those arguments simply aren't credible. You can't spin away an insurmountable delegate disadvantage with declarations of mulligans or claims of an "electability" that hasn't been able to actually get you elected. And with the ongoing declarations of which states should and shouldn't count (Pennsylvania yes, North Carolina no, one half of Texas yes, one half of Texas no, etc.), Clinton surrogates are rapidly running out of states and people to dismiss or insult. It has been a very, very nasty habit of her campaign -- seemingly Mark Penn inspired, but expansively used by any number of surrogates.
If Clinton wants the superdelegates to overturn all the voting up until now, fine: she's got every right, according to the rules of the contest, to campaign for that. All I'm asking is for her surrogates to come up with rationales that aren't absurdly premised and/or dismissive of the electorate. Given that I can't think of any such non-absurd arguments, that may pose a problem.
Roxxxanne wrote:Bi-Polar Bear wrote:Roxxxanne wrote:WTF? 10 million is still 10 million to even Gates or Buffett. The Clintons just acquired their wealth in the last few years and now they are going to piss it way on a lost cause?????????????///
thta's pretty much their prerogative....
She is not going to piss away her own money on a losing cause? SHe is begging for five dollar donations. Are you stepping up?
I have donated regularly as a matter of fact.
Though I don't expect many here to agree with the analysis of Karl Rove, he is a well-respected political analyst, and his views, expressed here, are probably very much like the analysis being offered to Senator Clinton by her own political advisors. I offer it only to help those here, who are unable to see any rational basis for Clinton's persistence in staying in this hard-fought race, to better understand her likely motives and justification for them.
The stakes are high for the candidates in this race, and the fact is that there is indeed a rational basis for Senator Clinton's persistence - however much it may annoy and frustrate Obama supporters.
Quote:
Is Obama Ready for Prime Time?
By KARL ROVE
April 24, 2008; Page A13
After being pummeled 55% to 45% in the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama was at a loss for explanations. The best he could do was to compliment his supporters in an email saying, "you helped close the gap to a slimmer margin than most thought possible." Then he asked for money.
With $42 million in the bank, money is the least of Sen. Obama's problems. He needs a credible message that convinces Democrats he should be president. In recent days, he's spent too much time proclaiming his inevitable nomination. But they already know he's won more states, votes and delegates.
His words wear especially thin when he was dealt a defeat like Tuesday's. Mr. Obama was routed despite outspending Hillary Clinton on television by almost 3-1. While polls in the final days showed a possible 4% or 5% Clinton win, she apparently took late-deciders by a big margin to clinch the landslide.
Where she cobbled together her victory should cause concern in the Obama HQ. She did better - and he worse - than expected in Philadelphia's suburbs. Mrs. Clinton won two of these four affluent suburban counties, home of the white-wine crowd Mr. Obama has depended on for victories before.
In the small town and rural "bitter" precincts, she clobbered him. Mr. Obama's state chair was Sen. Bob Casey, who hails from Lackawanna County in northeast Pennsylvania. She carried that county 74%-25%. In the state's 61 less-populous counties, she won 63% - and by 278,266 votes. Her margin of victory statewide was 208,024 votes.
Mrs. Clinton's problem remains that she's behind in the delegate count, with 1,589 to Mr. Obama's 1,714. Neither candidate will get to the 2,025 needed for nomination with elected delegates. But the Democratic Party's rules of proportionality mean it will be hard to close that margin among the 733 delegates yet to be elected or declared. Mrs. Clinton will need to take 58% of the remaining delegates. Thus far, she's been able to get that or better in just four of the 46 contests.
Her path gets rougher. While Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and Puerto Rico are good territory for her, Oregon and Montana may not be. And Mrs. Clinton will be outspent badly. She entered April with $9.3 million in cash, but debts of $10.3 million. Mr. Obama had $42.5 million but only $663,000 in unpaid bills.
In Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama's money could only wipe out half a purported 20% deficit, but the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls shows Mr. Obama behind by 2% in Indiana and ahead in North Carolina by 16%. Those states will vote in two weeks. The financial throw weight he will have in the Hoosier State could more than erase Mrs. Clinton's lead there, while keeping North Carolina solidly in his column. His money could give him a double knockout on May 6, which would effectively end her bid for the presidency.
If she wins Indiana, however, she will surely go forward - and Democrats run the risk of a split decision in June. Mr. Obama could have more delegates, but she could have more popular votes. In fact, on Tuesday night she actually grabbed the popular vote lead: If you include the Michigan and Florida primary results, Mrs. Clinton now leads the popular vote by a slim 113,000 votes out of 29,914,356 cast.
Mr. Obama will argue he wasn't on the ballot in Michigan and didn't campaign in Florida. But don't Democrats want to count all the votes in all the contests? After all, Mr. Obama took his name off the Michigan ballot; it isn't something he was forced to do. And while he didn't campaign in Florida, neither did she.
And what about the Michigan and Florida delegates? By my calculations, she should pick up about 54 delegates on Mr. Obama if they are seated (this assumes the Michigan "uncommitted" delegates go for Mr. Obama). If he is ahead in June by a number similar to his lead today of 125, does he let the two delegations in and make the convention vote even closer? Or does he continue to act as if two states with 41 of the 270 electoral votes needed for the White House don't exist?
The Democratic Party has two weakened candidates. Mrs. Clinton started as a deeply flawed candidate: the palpable and unpleasant sense of entitlement, the absence of a clear and optimistic message, the grating personality impatient to be done with the little people and overly eager for a return to power, real power, the phoniness and the exaggerations. These problems have not diminished over the long months of the contest. They have grown. She started out with the highest negatives of any major candidate in an open race for the presidency and things have only gotten worse.
And what of the reborn Adlai Stevenson? Mr. Obama is befuddled and angry about the national reaction to what are clearly accepted, even commonplace truths in San Francisco and Hyde Park. How could anyone take offense at the observation that people in small-town and rural American are "bitter" and therefore "cling" to their guns and their faith, as well as their xenophobia? Why would anyone raise questions about a public figure who, for only 20 years, attended a church and developed a close personal relationship with its preacher who says AIDS was created by our government as a genocidal tool to be used against people of color, who declared America's chickens came home to roost on 9/11, and wants God to damn America? Mr. Obama has a weakness among blue-collar working class voters for a reason.
His inspiring rhetoric is a potent tool for energizing college students and previously uninvolved African-American voters. But his appeals are based on two aspirational pledges he is increasingly less credible in making.
Mr. Obama's call for postpartisanship looks unconvincing, when he is unable to point to a single important instance in his Senate career when he demonstrated bipartisanship. And his repeated calls to remember Dr. Martin Luther King's "fierce urgency of now" in tackling big issues falls flat as voters discover that he has not provided leadership on any major legislative battle.
Mr. Obama has not been a leader on big causes in Congress. He has been manifestly unwilling to expend his political capital on urgent issues. He has been only an observer, watching the action from a distance, thinking wry and sardonic and cynical thoughts to himself about his colleagues, mildly amused at their too-ing and fro-ing. He has held his energy and talent in reserve for the more important task of advancing his own political career, which means running for president.
But something happened along the way. Voters saw in the Philadelphia debate the responses of a vitamin-deficient Stevenson act-a-like. And in the closing days of the Pennsylvania primary, they saw him alternate between whining about his treatment by Mrs. Clinton and the press, and attacking Sen. John McCain by exaggerating and twisting his words. No one likes a whiner, and his old-style attacks undermine his appeals for postpartisanship.
Mr. Obama is near victory in the Democratic contest, but it is time for him to reset, freshen his message and say something new. His conduct in the last several weeks raises questions about whether, for all his talents, he is ready to be president.
Tico just posted that in the Obama '08 thread, so I'll cross-post my response:
It's never a good sign when I can't get past the first paragraph without incredulous laughter:
Turdblossom wrote:After being pummeled 55% to 45% in the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama was at a loss for explanations. The best he could do was to compliment his supporters in an email saying, "you helped close the gap to a slimmer margin than most thought possible." Then he asked for money.
He's been consistent throughout. He expected to lose Pennsylvania. It was ripe for Hillary to pick, and she needed to win by a whole lot (like 25 points) to really shift momentum and make it possible to pick up a popular vote lead and/or a delegate lead by the time voting is over June 3rd. He managed to hold her to 9.2 points (last I knew). While of course it would have been nicer if he'd won, that was still a significant achievement. Can she mirror it in North Carolina, for example, where he's had big leads?
I saw a quote from him yesterday -- here it is:
Quote:"The way we're gonna close the deal is by winning. And right now we're winning," [Obama] said. "And you know what we'll do is keep on campaigning in Indiana and North Carolina and Oregon and these other states. And at the conclusion of all these contests, people will go back and take a look and say, 'Who's won?'"
He's got the lead in delegates and in the popular vote. It looks extremely unlikely that Hillary will be able to mount some sort of giant comeback -- Pennsylvania was pretty much her last, best chance. This was all part of the Obama plan -- hence the "leaked" memo of way back in January was it, that predicted all of this with amazing accuracy (although they tended to underestimate Obama's margins).
It's a chess game, and he's good at it. I like that about him.
By the way, what I've said repeatedly is that I would like it if she dropped out but I don't think she needs to right now or even should, necessarily. I think it needs to be "cleaner" -- it needs to be absolutely patently obvious that she has no way of winning. (Right now it's extremely unlikely but still somewhat possible.)
This will likely happen either in mid-May (after Indiana and North Carolina, if she loses both) or after June 3rd (when the voting is over, and the remaining undeclared superdelegates are likely to start declaring).
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