John Stewart skewers Hillary and her campaign’s unending stream of nonsense:
Also, the Charlie Cook at the National Journal says what the rest of the media don’t want to admit:
At the end of the day, the popular vote for the Democratic nomination means nothing. I doubt that having won the popular vote in the 2000 general election is of much solace to Al Gore. Many a football team gains more yards than its opponent in a game yet loses on that important technicality called points.
The Clinton folks shouldn’t be faulted for the arguments they are making: In the big states that will determine the final outcome in November, she has done better than Obama, and she holds on to downscale white voters better than her opponent does. Beyond the fact that both assertions are true, I’d make the same arguments if I were in Clinton’s shoes, as would most of Obama’s strategists if they were working for Clinton.
But you can’t change how the game is played once it has begun. The Democrats have decided that the nominee will be determined by the number of delegates won, not by the popular vote, and that primaries held in direct violation of party rules (in this case, Florida’s and Michigan’s) don’t count. End of discussion.
Enough of this campaign already. It is over, Hillary has lost, and the only way she “wins” the nomination at this point is to completely destroy the party. The longer she stays in, the more delusional her supporters become and the more difficult it will be to rally around a candidate.
jenniebee
Just as likely to be true the other way around. If Hillary doesn’t stick this out – and there are what, two states left to go? – her supporters are just as likely to get a let-down from the anti-climax that makes them, for lack of a better word, bitter. Best case scenario for getting everybody feeling good about this is for her to see this through to the end, and then Hill tells everybody that they all gave it the very best shot it could have been given and we’re oh so happy that both the people running were such fabu candidates, full support, yada yada and she then she fades out and works the DNC fundraising circuit for Obama.
Bad idea to have everybody else get to actually vote in a primary with more than one candidate running and then cut off Indiana and NC from getting their share of the spotlight.
I still think this has been great. States that pols don’t bother visiting much in the general election (like mine) have actually gotten a bit of a look at a candidate this time around. We’re finally in play, even if it’s only for the nomination. Makes people feel involved, makes them feel like it’s worth their time to pay attention. That’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.
Zifnab
I’ll say this. You can’t talk about Hillary “winning by destroying the party” if you only blame Hillary. There would have to be serious fractures – Lieberman style serious fractures – for the majority of the supers to jump ship and support Clinton. If she has that much sway in the party… perhaps she should get the nomination after all. Because she will not have destroyed the party single-handedly. Large swaths of the party elite will have to step in and back her up.
PeterJ
Adding to the injury:
From last night’s The Colbert Report, The Word – Iraq the Vote.
PeterJ
It would have been a great, without the negative campaigning.
DougJ
Some idiot just emailed me a pro-Hillary video based on WaffleGate.
These nuts really aren’t a better than the Bushbots. I hate to say that, I really do.
PK
My county in Pennsylvania (bucks county) went heavily for Clinton, despite supposedly being demographically ideal for Obama. Apparently the the percentage loss for Obama was shocking(25%). He won only 12 out of 54 municipalities, by very slim margins, one he won by 1 vote.
Reasons given by the local paper were in this order 1) color-some people will not vote for a black guy come what may.
2) Rush’s operation chaos-thousands of republicans changed their affiliation to democratic and the local GOP guy thinks most will register back and
3)He did not connect to white working class people.
Kind of depressing overall.
Throwin Stones
but the previously agreed upon rules don’t count for Hillary…
she wants the supers to go with feelings
feelings, nothing more than feelings
Soylent Green
Much as I hate to admit it, that’s exactly right. Hillary and her followers need to save face to move forward. So we must drag this out to its inevitable conclusion.
All this will pass. I’m tempted to unplug the TV and computer, toss the paper, and come back in a couple of months when a smiling Clinton will be saying “you know, I’m delighted to support my good friend Barack and I didn’t mean any of those things I said.”
jenniebee
LOL John, did you finish reading that article?
Of course, I’m still wishing to God that this contest was going on between Obama & Edwards or Clinton & Edwards. And I wish that Edwards was the one with the lead. And I wish I had a pony. Le sigh.
General Disorder
Come the beginning of June when the last primary is held and the results are no different and Obama still has the most delegates and primary votes, then it will be over. Until then, let it play out. That way, Clinton and friends will not be able to say the voters weren’t heard (except for Michigan & FL, according to her, which is BS). Hillary, who is using Karl’s playbook, has probably not done permanent damage yet, but she will if she continues her scorched earth campaign after the last primary.
But it would be nice if she would just go away and leave us alone, now.
Josh E.
seven states and two territories.
The problem is this assumes a degree of class, grace, humility, and commitment to the party on Clinton’s part that is nowhere in evidence. If enough supers commit on June 4 to put Obama at 2025, there’s a not-insignificant chance that Clinton hangs around in the hope that she can change their minds before the floor vote.
Jake
Best case scenario for getting everybody feeling good about this is for her to see this through to the end
The problem with this line of argument is that, increasingly, Hillary and her supporters think “the end” is the convention, as opposed to the last primary. I think she’s said very recently that she’s in this until MI and FL are seated. Her supporters feel the same way.
I’d be fine with her sticking it out through the last primary. But at some point, one has to recognize that any insistence that it goes beyond that is delusional. Delusional supporters aren’t likely to view any outcome as fair, so I say let them suck it.
Conservatively Liberal
The ‘this is great for the other states’ went out the window with the negative campaigning by Hillary. If she had not gone that route, but rather stuck to campaigning on her strengths (such as they are) then everything would be fine. Instead of both candidates attacking McCain, which should be the natural order of things, she attacks him and he can do no less than respond. While McCain and the right attack him at the same time.
Why are they not focusing on Hillary? Why are the right giving her a free pass NOW? Because they want Hillary to win. Why is she focusing on any negative she can grasp regarding Obama? Because she blew it and thought it was all hers to take, just waltz in and grab it. Obama knocked her out of that dream real fast.
It is over. Hillary just has to admit it to herself. She won’t.
jenniebee
The Willie Horton ads – that was negative campaigning. The Swift Boat bullshit – that was negative campaigning. The WTF ROFL that’s all you got? nonsense that’s been bandied about in this campaign – that’s done Obama a favor. Not by making him tougher or any of the other BS, but because it was really done so half-heartedly. People have gotten in the habit of asking “and this matters why?” in response to the petty character assassination tactics. They’ve had to, because the man’s been accused on national television of the unforgivable weirdness of asking for orange juice instead of coffee.
Svensker
Here’s a musical tribute to The Hill
John Cole
Oh, yeah, I know.
The thing is, the first part of the article should be informing Hillary how to run her campaign. She can’t win, so stop DOING DAMAGE.
Soylent Green
She must convey this impression to get people to part with their money. Without that false hope of redemption, fewer will do so.
The Other Steve
I thought we were going to stop paying attention to her?
IF YOU!
Josh E.
Yeah, blanketing Pennsylvania with ads about how Obama’s an elitist and that he can’t stand the heat and should get out of the kitchen was really half-hearted.
Jon H
Here’s the thing. Obama is running his campaign like a leader. Clinton is running a campaign like the ankle-biting lawyer she is, as demonstrated by the Daily Show video of her moving from “the voters will decide this” through increasingly ridiculous hair-splitting legalistic absurdities that remind me of the crazy legal arguments the Bush administration presents.
Bibblesnæð
I can’t wait for Hillary Clinton to just fade away.
Once upon a time I respected her. Now I see that she doesn’t give a damn about anything but her own ambition.
Sure, she talks about how she’s fighting for this group or that group, but she’s really just fighting for herself.
We don’t need another narcissistic, self absorbed president who only listens to yes men.
I want her to go away.
How much longer, Lord, how much longer?
Paul L.
I guess it was a good thing that the writer’s strike ended so you guys can be enlighten by following this font of wisdom.
merrinc
This is much more than just trying to drum up monetary support to pay her debts. Remember, Clinton has Harold Ickes and his long, sordid history of behind the scenes maneuvering makes Hillary look like one of those cute little LOLcats.
Yeah, I know Sully suffers from full blown CDS but I like him and I think he’s right. This will go to the convention and it will be ugly. Someone wrote something here in B-J a few weeks ago about Hillary being dragged off the stage after trying bash the MUP’s head against the podium. At the time, it seemed funny. Now it seems prophetic.
Grumpy Code Monkey
I’m with jenniebee; overall, this has been a positive for the party, despite the sniping, and I think it will turn into real votes in the general. This will not “destroy the party”; frankly, if it flushes some of the dead-enders, it’s for the best.
Notorious P.A.T.
Oh come on. -1 and -1000 are both negative numbers. Clinton’s campaign has been undeniably negative. Sure she isn’t pulling stuff out of her butt like Bush did but she is still trying to take Obama down rather than build herself up. She is trying to get the nomination by weakening Obama and hurting his chances in the general election, and that is unforgivable.
Kathy
Not that I think this will happen, but what I would almost like to see is Obama saying he will bow out for the good of the party (but making clear to the Clintons he will not accept the VP and he will only bow out if the Clintons state that they will not offer it too him.) The right wing nut cases go postal on Hilary and she loses really, really badly to McCain, whose presidency then implodes. Dems come to their senses and overwhelmingly support Obama in 2012 and the Clintons’ role in the Democratic party is completely over.
I know it won’t happen and actually I would just prefer to see Obama put Hilary away now, but if that can’t happen, it’s not a bad second place.
John Cole
The thing is, she drives both her supporters and detractors to insanity. You can’t tell me Sullivan’s anti-Clinton stance is any crazier than the full-on lunacy at Taylor Marsh or the site that formerly was Talk Left.
WMass
“But you can’t change how the game is played once it has begun. The Democrats have decided that the nominee will be determined by the number of delegates won, not by the popular vote, and that primaries held in direct violation of party rules (in this case, Florida’s and Michigan’s) don’t count. End of discussion.”
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. While I have a preference for Hillary, I realize that Obama will almost certainly win, and I will support him any way I can, when he wins. But I love the way Obama supporters keep going on about Hillary trying to change the rules, while they keep lying about them. Since neither candidate can win enough delegates to get the nomination, they are both reliant on the superdelegates to win the nomination. And here is the part that Obama supporters seem to have so much trouble with, there are no rules about how the superdelegates choose who to support. The superdelegates can base their choice on anything they want, delegate count, popular vote, whoever they think dresses better, tossing a coin, or by asking their dog for advice.
And the candidates never agreed that Florida and Michigan “don’t count”. They agreed that their delegates would not be seated at the convention. Again, there is no rule or agreement that stops the superdelegates from considering the wishes of the voters of Florida and Michigan.
Look, Obama is going to win unless he completely self destructs. There is no need to start lying about the rules in order to help him. We all have to kiss and make up in the general to avoid another 4 years of incompetent government, so lets not piss each other off more than we need to.
lane
Heard yesterday on NPR, a 58 yo woman celebrating at hillary’s victory party whose comments mirrored your comment.
I don’t care how she wins as long as she wins, she deserves it.
EL
I heard an interesting bit on NPR this morning, interviewing some superdelegates. There seems to be a tone switch; previously they were talking about supers waiting for the voters to decide, and sitting on the fence for fear of offending large swaths of constituents who favor one or the other. This segment had the implication that supers who don’t decide now, or at least soon, are harming the party and a bit cowardly.
If that meme spreads, then more supers will have to come off the fence, relatively soon. Can’t come too soon for me…
chopper
WMass, the statement
doesn’t exclude supers. supers fall under the category of ‘delegates won’.
both parties agreed that the FL and MI delegates would not count in the total unless the states worked out a deal with the DNC, and that ship has sailed. all this ‘if you add FL and MI’ is idiotic and pointless. even if the intent is to convince supers to go with hill to make up for MI and FL, doing so would be dishonest as neither campaigned in those two states and obama wasn’t even on the ballot in MI.
myiq2xu
Therefore, Barry should immediately cease all primary campaigning, fundraising, advertising (television, radio and direct mail) and have his name removed from all remaining primary ballots.
He has already stopped debating.
After all, if she lost, why is he still running against her?
mrmobi
However, there is the part about John McCain appointing two or three more Supreme Court Justices during his single catastrophic term and, of course, the food riots and the new (nuclear) war in Iran. I’d prefer another Clinton Presidency to that, even if she has to cheat to win.
Relax, Obama is winning this thing. Despite the fact that we have seen the power of negative campaigning in Pennsylvania, Obama made it a 9 point difference after being down 20.
Democrats tend to be “nervous Nellies” about their primary elections. However, we belong to a party which actually believes in democracy, so we tend to put a lot of value on the rules we establish to govern them.
For this reason, I don’t see the party seating either Florida or Michigan, absent the consent of both campaigns, and in some manner which is neutral, delegate-wise. The Clinton Campaign nonsense about winning the popular vote is just campaign spin. Primary elections do not equate to the general, they are just the way we pick our candidate. This is about delegates, not the popular vote. So Obama will win. He will have the majority of elected delegates, will have won the vast majority of states, and the superdelegates will then have to make a decision.
If he has these majorities, he’ll be the nominee.
John S.
For the same reason why the Patriots had to stay on the field while the Giants had posession at the end of the game. The only difference is that the Patriots knew they had lost, despite the fact that they were still playing in the game at that point.
Conservatively Liberal
Yes they can. Lets see them do it. IMO, it will be suicidal if they give it to Hillary. Mark my words if it happens.
Yes they can as it is just another point for the super delegates to ponder. Still, they may have to justify their vote to voters (if they are officeholders), and if they give it to Hillary over Obama’s lead then they better be ready for the results.
John S.
Or, how about this…
When Obama gets within enough delegates to 2025 that counting the ‘Uncommitted’ delegates in MI and the delegates he got in FL puts him other the top, he agrees to seat all of the delegates as-is.
I’d love to see Hillary spin her way out of that one.
The Other Steve
It’s hard for me to get worked about supreme court justices, when we’ve got two idiots out there threatening nuclear war.
Rick Taylor
That’s a great Daily Show clip. I missed most of those early quotes of Clinton. They could have added the quote where an interviewer asks Clinton how she can possibly win at this point, and she remarks that even so called pledged delegates can change their vote at the convention.
Chris
Hillary Clinton is only going to get more awesomely insane as the years drag on. Surrounded by sycophants and veiled in self-delusion and contempt for the actual voters, she’s quickly becoming the Norma Desmond of American Politics. We’re going to find Howard Wolfson floating face down in the Clinton library reflecting pool at this rate.
“I am still big! It’s the caucuses that got small!”
Josh E.
I think he’ll still need supers to get to 2025, and therefore this will be the spin: “Superdelegates can change their minds.” We may even see the resurrection of the “pledged delegates aren’t really pledged” meme.
ThymeZone
Yes, but this line subscribes to a completely wrong model of what is going on here.
The primary season, unlike the General Election, is not about “winning states.” States don’t count. The contest is arranged around accumulating delegates.
In Pennsylvania, her “great victory” nets her a gain of about 10 delegates. This was her great opportunity, to gain a few delegates. But she is well over 100 delegates behind, and there is no plausible scenario for her to catch up.
Unless the designers of this process really intended for the delegate counts to mean nothing, and only “winning states” and who scores the last touchdown to count, then all — one hundred percent — of the churn over Penssylvania, going back a month, all of it, the tv crap and blog crap .. MEANS NOTHING.
Winning the state MEANS NOTHING. It’s a delegate race, and she barely made a dent in her deficit. She was outplayed the last six months, outmaneuvered. Tough shit.
But more to the point, it would be nice if this little blog corner, at least, could serve as an example of people who talk about the primary season in some way that is congruent with reality.
It’s not about popular votes, or states, or bigness of states, or any of that horseshit. It is entirely about delegates. The entire process is a contest between candidates to see who can accumulate the most delegates.
We won’t change the rules at the end of the game for the same reason we don’t award a basketball game to the team that had a strong run at the end of the final period and fell two points short. The game is about points, not momentum.
If you want a momentum-centered game, then you need to change all the rules and design a whole new process. Plenty of time to do that before 2012, if it’s doable, which I doubt. The whole idea is just silly. It isn’t even practical, but that’s for another thread in another year.
This year, it’s about delegates, and the outcome is not exactly in doubt at this point.
Dave S.
I’m going to assume that contested primaries improve the organization and outreach of campaigns in those states, for the purpose of getting out the primary vote. Could those improved organizations/networks then be leveraged to improve turnout in the general election? If that’s the case, then a drawn-out nomination battle could actually benefit the Democrats in the fall.
This also assumes, of course, that the media will not focus on the destructively divisive and, yes, bitter Democratic primaries while simultaneously touting the maverickinositytude of McCain.
OK, never mind.
ThymeZone
On another angle of this topic … I heard an interview today on the XM POTUS (Politics of the United States) channel …
in which the interviewee (whose name I missed) basically said, yes, the Clintons have an approach to facts and truth which makes it possible to just ignore what actually happened, or what was said yesterday …. but …wait for it ….
This might actually work in her favor. If American electability is based on the ability to just talk one’s way out of anything, then maybe slipperiness is an electability plus. Maybe she is just doing it to show her creds as a slippery pol who can out wriggle Obama and thereby wink enough voters into the booths to win, where his more laid back and straightforward approach leaves him behind.
So there you have it. Truth and facts? Those are for LOSERS. The ability to move the goalposts and slide around those pesky facts is what the voters really are looking for.
I ain’t makin this up. And I am not sure that in some demographics, it’s not true.
Rick Taylor
myiq2xu:
Repeated for the quadrillionth time, just because Obama is certain to win, doesn’t mean he can stop campaigning and ignoring Hillary’s attacks. To use an analogy, if I played a game of tennis with John McEnroe, he’d inevitably win, but that doesn’t mean he could just leave the courts mid way through. Even so, as John Stewart remarked, he’s making efforts in that direction talking about McCain as much as he can.
But rather than rehashing the same tired points, I’m curious what you think is going to happen in Indiana and North Carolina now? Who’s going to win them, and by what margins? I’ll make a guess: Obama wins Indiana narrowly, while Clinton wins North Carolina by double digits.
mrmobi
TOS, I hear what you’re saying.
However, I do think that democrats generally have to talk tougher during elections that they actually are when elected. I’m assuming the two candidates you are talking about are Clinton and McCain. I haven’t seen where Obama has indicated he’d use nukes. In fact, I thought I heard him say last year that nukes were, specifically, off the table, in at least one interview.
But I would point out that yesterday, because of a terrible Supreme Court decision which basically allows gender discrimination in the workplace, Senate Republicans prevented passage of a law which removes the technicality that this right-wing court cited in its’ denial of equal pay for equal work.
McCain thinks the law is a bad idea because it would lead to “more lawsuits.” So, it’s ok to discriminate in the workplace because prosecuting offenders would lead to more lawsuits. Did I get that right?
Another Republican in the White House could mean the end of legal abortion, the end of whistle-blower laws, the end of anti-discrimination laws, and so much more.
The Supreme Court matters, a lot.
If it was so easy to wage a nuclear war, why hasn’t the Bush criminal conspiracy already started one? Do you actually think Hillary Clinton would become the first woman President and just casually start a nuclear war? I know her vote on Iraq was terrible, but let’s have some perspective, please.
Conservatively Liberal
Wha?! Obama has that one pretty well down right now.
TenguPhule
mrmobi
TZ, that channel is going to be the death of me. When I got satellite radio in my car, I never imagined there would be an “all politics, all the time” station.
I have to take a break every now and then, or it gets to be too much.
Shinobi
If the superdelagates overthrow a delegate victory for Obama I’m going to have to bring out the big guns.
In a move not seen since 2004: I’m moving to Canada.
Martin
It’s not the negative campaigning that bothers me but dismissing the voters and the constant proposed rule changes. If you look at what the campaigns have said, its really not that negative on either side. There’s a lot of policy parsing like the NAFTA stuff, and I think the worst incidents were ‘monster’ and Ferraro, the latter I’m certain was a setup for getting Wright out there. But people here really don’t talk about that stuff at all. Look at what John rants about and what flows through the comments.
It’s the voter dismissal and rule changing that is creating the anger with the voters. Myiq and p.luk like many Clinton supporters that Hillary is being set up to fail by the DNC rules. Never mind they were agreed upon by her, but they are absolutely convinced that a civil rights violation is taking place here by tolerating caucuses, not seating FL/MI, having proportionate delegates, and even having delegates instead of a popular election. Outside of the campaign, I’d be pretty receptive to those arguments, but once you commit to the rules, you gotta follow them through. They aren’t illegal so there’s no basis to just put an end to it mid-stream. And at the outset, they appeared to strongly disadvantage Obama and Edwards, not Clinton. The problem is that Clinton is pushing her supporters to buy these arguments. Basically she’s encouraging her supporters to feel disenfranchised. Hell, there’s a lawsuit out of Florida accusing the DNC of a civil rights violation against Florida by allowing Nevada to go ahead of 2/5 which somehow gets tied to FL delegates.
On the MUP side, all of this talk of rule changing is taken as an actual disenfranchisement taking place. Of course, no rules have changed so there’s a LOT of over-reaction, but you can’t fault them for directing their anger toward Clinton and her supporters for even suggesting these things. If Obama encouraged his supporters to dismiss women’s votes, or to imply that white working class voters don’t matter, I wouldn’t fault Clinton supporters for being howling mad at him.
This is what’s really creating the chasm in the party – and it’s directly coming from Clinton and her supporters. Rather than just step up and argue that there are still contests to go and still room in the superdelegates for her to win and why she can beat McCain and will be good for Democrats, they’ve gone down this other path of dismissing voters and rule bending – and it goes all the way back to Super Tuesday. I mean, she was still ahead at that point by quite a bit – so there is absolutely no reason for making the argument, but she made it anyway – and more black voters abandoned her and more Edwards voters ran to Obama. And the more she and her supporters make the arguments, the more pissed off the Obama voters feel for being dismissed.
Sasha
Besides the trenchant reason that Mr. Taylor gave above, you have to remember that, ultimately, Obama is running against McCain.
Part of Obama’s success has been from campaigning in “forgotten” quarters of the nation, areas that Democrats had simply given up on. The more he campaigns and advertises, the more opportunity he gets to peel off borderline conservative and independent voters from the GOP and the better his — and consequently, the Democratic Party’s — election apparatus “on the ground” becomes. (And of course, any funds raised in the primary will be useful in the general.)
ThymeZone
I know. Electronica does it for me.
Or, have you heard Bob Dylan’s show on Channel 2?
OMG, that guy does a fabulous radio show. Interesting, weird, funny, and great music.
Martin
Since I keep hammering on the point, I agree that the supers can base their choice on *almost* anything they want. I also agree that the supers can consider the wishes of FL/MI.
But there is the remaining problem of perception of voters with the party. If voters get the perception that one candidate or the other is getting preferential treatment in some way, particularly if that is being argued around the voters themselves, then we have a huge problem.
As it is now, a lot of the spinning is around how the opinions of the majority should count more – the big state argument, the blue state argument, all center on this. I know some people see it as simply being practical, but minorities don’t. Minorities already feel that their power is being undermined because of how districts are gerrymandered, how they can never bring enough of a voice forward to win electoral votes in the south because they are always slightly outnumbered, etc. This is the balance between a direct democracy and a representative democracy that we have always fought. And there are flaws of varying degrees in all of these systems.
The problem with what the Clinton camp is doing is that they are making these arguments after the fact. I see this kind of discrimination in interviewing (I do a lot of it). A candidate comes in and is interviewed. He/she is really strong at statistics, but one person on the committee clearly doesn’t like the individual for some other reason – they’re young, or old, or black, or a woman, whatever… They start to make the argument that we don’t really need statistics, that shouldn’t someone else be doing that anyway, but shouldn’t we really be looking for someone with writing skills, etc. The person is making perfectly valid arguments, but they are arguments that are appropriate before the candidates are known. But raised mid-course, it’s plainly obvious that they are now arguments to discriminate against one candidate.
That’s what we have going on here. Watch the video above. Hillary minimized Obama’s win in Louisiana because blacks were the foundation of that win. And we get from her campaign that states like Louisiana don’t count because they aren’t battleground states or they aren’t big or they aren’t full of white blue-collar workers (Davis’s statement) or whatever. It’s hard for voters to not see those things connecting together – especially because the arguments come *after* the outcome is known. And in that way, it becomes even more direct. It’s not just that red state voters matter less, it’s that *these specific people that voted for Obama in this state* matter less. If the supers appear to buy into these arguments, then I think you are going to see a very strong and very loud backlash against Clinton and against the party.
Now, if Clinton hadn’t said anything. If she had explained her losses away as Obama does as not campaigning hard enough, or not connecting with voters, or whatever – but always as a failure of the campaign to do what it needed – then I don’t think that perception would be out there that the opinions of some voters should be dismissed in favor of other voters – at least not to the degree that it is now. But it is out there. And now that it’s there any appearance that the party or the supers are buying into it will be interpreted as agreement on the part of the party or the supers that, yes, some voters do matter more than others.
It was over this issue that DKos threw Clinton to the wolves. As soon as she started dismissing voters, she was dead to that community – and this is the reason why.
I said *almost* any reason above because the supers cannot choose Clinton because she is white or Obama because he is black, or Clinton because she is female or Obama because he is male or Clinton because Obama won black voters or Obama because Clinton won female voters. It’s not that they as a matter of policy can’t, it’s that if they do this, and it appears that they are doing this, the consequences to the party will be devastating. If the black community walks out of this with the feeling that the supers nominated Clinton because Obama’s margin of victory was due to black voters (which is not a stretch to infer from the arguments from the Clinton camp) then there will be a wicked backlash, and rightly so. I’d make the same argument if the tables were turned with respect to women voters, etc. This is why they can’t do it. And Clinton is the one that set up this sensitivity to it – it wasn’t there at the start of the election.
RareSanity
BCS for Presidential Candidates??
WMass
Martin:
I agree with most of your post. My objection is to people who confuse an opinion with a rule. The idea that Superdelegates should choose the delegate leader is an opinion, one that I happen to agree with. But calling it a rule, and then bitching that Hillary has broken it, is simply a lie. Sigh. Dont you wish this was over?
Notorious P.A.T.
Oh come on. If Obama finishes the primary with 200 more delegates with Clinton, will you deny that he has earned the nomination?
WMass
Notorious P.A.T.:
There is a specific number of delegates required to win the nomination, I think it’s 2025. That’s a rule, not an imaginary number that we can change to suit our personal desires. Obama cannot win the nomination until he reaches that number, however much you might want him to win.
Soylent Green
WMass, you are the first really sensible Hillary supporter I’ve seen around here in a while.
Yes, 2025 it is, and only superdelegates will get there. But if they are elected officials asking for our re-election votes someday, they can ignore the final pledged delegate count at their peril. That’s how serious the stakes have become.
Soylent Green
WMass, you are the first really sensible Hillary supporter I’ve seen around here in a while.
Yes, 2025 it is, and only superdelegates will get there. But if they are elected officials asking for our re-election votes someday, they can ignore the final pledged delegate count at their peril. That’s how serious the stakes have become.
Martin
I’ve only ever seen a few people say that it’s a rule, and nobody in quite some time. And you’d have to point me to someone calling Hillary a liar over that. We’ve seen a few warnings against doing that that have been interpreted by Clinton supporters as suggestions to be a rule, but I don’t think they can see why the warnings were put forward.
I see just as many warnings that the ‘popular vote’ must be followed.
EnderWiggin
John do yourself and all of us a favor. Don’t post anything about Hillary or her silly ‘campaign’ unless it is a post about her concession. Let’s focus on actual news and the general election.
Notorious P.A.T.
I must be looking in the wrong places. I can’t find anything that says you can only win by getting 2,025 delegates. That number is simply half + 1. Obviously, if you get half + 1 you are the winner, because no one else can get more than you, but that doesn’t mean you NEED 2,025 to win. And since Michigan and Florida messed up and probably won’t get their delegates seated, 2,025 might be impossible. That doesn’t mean that we have entered a shadow world where clocks melt and pigs fly and reality goes out the window and we might just as well give the nomination to Clinton as anyone else.
If someone can show me where I should be looking, that’d be great.
bridget
Oregon hasn’t voted yet. I’m glad that we have a choice between two good people and sad that we’re also not going to get to vote for the other talented candidates that have left the field. MY little wish is to have everyone vote on the same day in the primaries. That way one state’s votes don’t swing another state. The media wouldn’t be able to say “Oh the voters got sick of so&so bashing so voted for the other candidate” and all the rest of sick and lame excuses and blithering. I liked Dodd, Richardson and Edwards easily as much as I like Clinton and Obama. I think any of them would make a really good prez. The media has given us Clinton and Obama so they could conduct their little soap opera and call progressives racist and sexist. I’m happy to vote for Obama or Clinton, but it would have been nice to see the entire list of candidates on my ballot.
WMass
Soylent Green:
Thanks. Great movie.
Martin
It’s 2208 if you include FL/MI. Since the DNC ruled that FL/MI have no delegates at all, the winner is set by the smaller number which is 2025. The nominee will have the option of seating those delegates for the remainder of the convention, which they will almost certainly do, but those delegates will probably have no say in who the nominee is. There’s a rules committee that is controlled relative to the candidates. Obama will have majority control of that committee to interpret the rules.
Actually, you do. It’s not a plurality wins, but a majority wins thing. The winner is the candidate with more votes than everyone else combined. Falling short of this puts us in a brokered convention with repeated lobbying and votes until a majority winner is found. With a plurality rule, you’d never get a brokered convention unless there was an exact tie with the leaders.
John Cole
A lot of what MArtin says, and let’s also remember- I came to the Democratic party resigned to voting for Hillary. I defended her for months. She was not my first choice, but Dodd had no chance.
But Hillary blew it all. She ran a terrible campaign, a campaign that was arrogant, took a lot of things for granted, and wasted a ton of money. And then, after shitting the bed, they have done nothing but full on Rovian bullshit. Attempts to change the rules, smearing the opposition, embracing divisive tactics, parroting GOP bullshit.
And really, the thing that sets me off the most is the lying about Michigan and Florida, and the crap about certain states not counting. it really just makes my blood boil listening to that bullshit. I hear her say that stuff and I see the Bush administration.
mere mortal
This is just too funny. Remember when the superdelegates were still in play? Then the Obama supporters were in full throat about the will of the people and the popular vote. Threats of splitting the party, sitting out the general, and worse were not hard to find. Clinton was evil and wrong to try to win the nomination with the superdelegates, we were told.
Now that Obama has the pledged delegate lead, and the superdelegates are breaking even or better, now it’s “the rules are the rules.” What’s not changed is we’re still told that Clinton is evil and wrong to try to win the nomination.
Both campaigns are playing the angles to nomination, and have been the whole time. Pretending that Obama is above it all is foolish. Should he win, this pretense will eventually lead a great number of people to become disillusioned once again with politics when they discover the truth: there is no magical unity pony, Obama is a politician, not greater, not less, just a very good politician.
Soylent Green
If by “playing the angles” you mean running a clean, well-planned, expertly managed campaign and accumulating more votes and delegates as a result, while Hillary did the opposite, that was pretty damn sneaky of him.
merl
I don’t think anyone is destroying the party. Let everyone vote.
Notorious P.A.T.
But where are you getting this?
Kenneth Almquist
In reply to “mere mortal”:
Clinton never had a lead in pledged delegates. Obama won in Iowa, tied in New Hampshire, won in Nevada, won in South Carolina, won on “super Tuesday,” and won all of the remaining primaries in February. Finally, on March 4, Clinton gained a net of six delegates, reducing Obama’s lead from 165 to 159. Obama proceeded to win Wyoming and Mississippi, bringing his lead to 168, but lost Pennsylvania, reducing his lead to 158. Understandably, Clinton has tried to play up the recent results as a victory for her, but she hasn’t been able to make any substantial dent in Obama’s lead.