Keep in mind that you should probably put as much stock in this daily tracking poll as you did every one in which Obama was leading (in my case, that is very little), but it appears that Hillary is now ahead of Obama by one percentage point in the latest Gallup. Who knows how much of this is bounce for Hillary from Pa, and how much of this is Obama being dragged down by his former pastor.
As far as super delegates go, it appears that Obama has picked up two in the past few days and Hillary has picked up one. In the Obama category go Richard Machacek from Iowa and Kentucky Rep. Ben Chandler, while Hillary picked up NC Gov. Mike Easley.
As someone new to the Democratic party, I have to admit to being shocked at how efficient we are at inflicting maximum damage on ourselves. I still don’t think there is any way for Hillary to win without ripping the party in two for at least a decade, but I am amazed that the remaining undecided super delegates seem content to sit by and waffle and do nothing as Hillary and Obama destroy each other. Profiles in courage, I tell you.
At any rate, the way this is going, by the time Obama finally has the number of super delegates he needs, Hillary and Rev. Wright can have him trailing McCain and Hillary in the polls by double digits. Awesome.
As a side note, I still do not know whether I am supposed to hyphenate the term super delegate, and I switch back and forth between hyphenated and unhyphenated, sometimes in the same post.
*** Update ***
Almost an identical post at the Great Orange Satan, which has me kind of weirded out. Apparently now I even think like the Great Satan himself.
Dan
Big diary over at Kos saying the same kind of thing. People are now less angry at Hillary (hey, she is who she is), but getting REALLY pissed at the supers at this late date. Too bad there is no price for them to pay for sitting with their thumbs up their asses for so long.
Wilfred
Clinton’s core constituency of po’ whites, women and wankers must have heaved, something.
Idiotic
THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!
scarshapedstar
If Obama wins, of course, the 51%ers will fall right in line and we’ll all ride the Unity Pony to victory.
Rick Massimo
My conspiracy theory, which I hope is wrong but fear is correct, is that every undeclared superdelegate (I do it as one word) is actually for Hillary; they’re just waiting/hoping for a shift in the momentum that would make their announcement somehow not the stupidest political move in American history.
Like I said, I really hope I’m wrong. And if I am, then what the hell? I had to make my decision March 4, and a lot of people had to choose earlier. These are the plugged-in SuperDemocrats who supposedly know these people personally and have their fingers on the pulse etc., etc., and they don’t know?
By the way, welcome to the Democratic Party, John. To paraphrase the New York Times, the party that can have two candidates run for six months in 50 states and neither one wins.
Chris Huston
If the undecided supers were waiting for the right time to declare for Hillary, now would likely be the right moment. Math aside, Clinton is good at the expectation game and her words about the tide turning would only become more credible with a giant influx of supers at this moment.
Much more likely is most undecideds are for Obama and waiting for him to score a decent win to declare.
Even more likely than that is most of the undecideds are spineless and want to wait for the chips to fall before they do anything, thus washing their hands of any consequences for their decisions.
Billy K
It’s written as “Hillary Delegate.” It always has been…
Billy K
I’e been hearing this in one form or another for a couple months now. They’re just gutless cowards.
Benjamin
You are misreading the Gallup poll.
Hill and Obama have been statistically tied for five days now and Obama is not dragged down at all since his numbers have not budged or almost for the past 10 days. Since PA it is Hillary who has gained back support that had gone to undecided.
cleek
Democratic politicians, gutless cowards? the party that won massively in 2006 and proceeded to give a president who hasn’t polled above 35% in years everything he wanted – cowards ?
harrumph.
Rick Massimo
Yeah, that’s what I figured was most likely. Sigh.
calipygian
I am a member of no organized political party. I am a Democrat.
Josh E.
C’mon John. You paid attention to the capitulation of the Dems in Congress for the past eight years, and especially the last two. You should know that most Dems are complete cowered. They couldn’t face down the most unpopular president ever, why would they risk the wrath, however unlikely, of Nixon-in-a-Pantsuit?
In other news, Obama just gave Jeremiah Wright the “I’m done with you” treatment.
Rick Massimo
All right everyone, let’s start the countdown for the changeover from “Obama’s a scary black Christian nationalist Muslim whitey-hater” to “Obama’s an unprincipled panderer who will say anything and throw anyone under the bus to become president”!
Fasten your seatbelts! The experienced professionals won’t get whiplash, but average folks will!
jake
The Republican party has survived Presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush I & Bush II, not to mention countless shenanigans by various elected officials with Rs after their names.
The Dems can survive a rough campaign. There’s a bit more to us than standing around in chaps, sipping lattes and discussing literature.
cleek
right. we’re also planning our escape routes so we can get out just before we destroy the government and the Muslim hordes to flood across the Canadian border on their bloodthirsty quest to take over the country and impose their sinister commie black nationalist sharia fascism.
viva la revolution!
4tehlulz
>>As a side note, I still do not know whether I am supposed to hyphenate the term super delegate, and I switch back and forth between hyphenated and unhyphenated, sometimes in the same post.
Super- is a closed prefix, so superdelegate is one word.
/CMS
Buck
First Grandma then the preacher.
“I can no more disown him than I can disown my own white grandmother”
Let the disowning begin in earnest.
But I still like Wright. He may be a little kooky on the fringe but at his core he knows what he is talking about.
Tsulagi
Really? After watching the Dem controlled Congress since the midterms? Just seems like SOP on the left side of the aisle. But no worries, surely they’re working on a resolution, or something. Takes time to get the stern/not-too-stern balance just right
Peter VE
It’s a sign of how far the Bush “administration” has screwed things up that you’re agreeing with the Great Orange Satan, and Tim is agreeing with the American Conservative in the previous post.
Pooh
Nah, why wouldn’t they have done it earlier? Like WAY earlier?
DSC
The thing about Dems (this from a lifelong Dem, and, unfortunately, an academic) is that we are committee-commitment phobes. We Never want to be the first on the bandwagon. We want to see what everyone else has to say, see how they vote, see if anyone comes up with a better idea. We hem, we haw, we wriggle.
(I’m DOOOOOOOMED! I’ll never get tenure because I cannot tolerate committees. It’s no way to get anything done.)
But the thing I love about Dems is, once the decision is made, we’re good a going forward. This time (fingers crossed), I’m hoping we have a real leader to lead the charge.
hmd
You might look at mrsuper for a superdelegates take on why superdelegates wait. The take home: As many as half the remaining uncommitted superdelegates are in positions where they are either required to maintain neutrality, or will have to work with the nominee, whoever that may be. They have professional reasons not to commit until there is a clear winner.
Studly Pantload
Reckon that escape route consists of jumping in the oceans, bein’ as we’re also set to allow the great Reconquista hordes across the Rio Grande to lay claim to all of the Southwest and Californy.
calipygian
Go to the National Review Online. Thirty six minutes.
Barbara
Write to your superdels, at least the ones who are elected. They are easier to find, anyway. I wrote to mine (Jim Webb) last night. No idea what he’s waiting for and cowardice would be an inconvenient excuse for someone whose stock in trade is that he was “born fighting.”
What you need to understand is that many Super Dels are not elected but PARTY officials. They aren’t accountable to anyone, and they are the ones, by and large who are uncommitted. Therefore, my proposal would be that Super Dels be limited to elected officials, and perhaps state party chairs, so: Gov, Senator, Rep, State D Party chair. You can ditch everyone else, including (ESPECIALLY!) former presidents and so on.
Richard Bottoms
This just in: Some black folks are pissed.
In other news, the sun rose today.
Last I checked, this isn’t Bosnia or Lebanon and the fact is, a lot of black folks older than 40 years or so regardless of their social status are disgruntled.
The good reverend probably still remembers this line from my teen years: What do you call a black man with a PhD? Nigger.
We don’t trust the changes that have happened, but on the other hand we aren’t waging a separatist jihad blowing up shopping centers and shit (see Irish Republican Army 1969-2000). You think Eli Weisel ever really, really, really feels 100% safe?
So Wright is an asshole, and it means some cashier at Target does the head thing and tells you to talk to the hand.
Oh the humanity.
Todays’ crop of kids don’t give a shit about race or sexuality (though the GOP’s endless parade of clost cases seem to think it’s important).
When Wright and me and folks my age are all gone, those who are young today will wonder what the fuss was all about.
dlw32
Well, as annoying as it might be to have this unresolved, it is not an indefensible position to say, “I’m waiting until the convention to declare.” Two months is an eternity in politics; your candidate might implode by then and then you’d be on record as a supporter of a nutcase.
Also, I don’t see where it would resolve things. The supers are allowed to change their minds at anytime up until they cast their votes on the floor of the convention. If we knew where all the supers were we could only say that “unless things change, X has the nomination”. Do you really think if Obama suddenly got a enough supers to put him over the top that Bill and Hill would give up? That might make it worse; they’d really be pushing on the supers to change their mind.
For that matter, I’m not sure I see the point of declaring at this point. Doing it early might earn you props from the candidate, but at this point you’re more likely to get “it’s about time!”
I could also see waiting until the last of the primaries is done out of respect for those voters.
Rick Massimo
So we have an entire tier of delegates who a) are only relevant if they have to decide the nomination and b) have professional reasons not to want to decide the nomination.
Which is another reason why we so completely suck.
Just Some Fuckhead
I didn’t care too much for the way Obama blew him off. For me, it’s just too out and out different from his earlier remarks about the guy being like family. I think there was plenty of room between Obama distancing himself from Wright’s more inflammatory stuff and throwing him under the unity bus.
I’d have been happy with something along the lines of “look, it should be clear we’re too different people with our own sets of opinions – if you can’t see that by now you aren’t looking much further than the color of our skin.”
Having said that, I recognize the Obama campaign is much smrarter than me. The main talking point I picked up from Ari Flesheater yesterday was Obama spent twenty years under Wright’s tutleage without protesting. This may be the campaign’s way of saying, “all of us, including Obama, are seeing a side of Wright we didn’t know so you can’t really fault Obama” and putting the “20 year” Republican bullshit to bed now.
Then again, I’m not sure exactly which demographic is unfamilar with the crazy shit pastors all over America say. Especially white pastors. My own pastor in the church I grew up in – once, when preaching on the creation story said that blacks and whites shouldn’t get married because according to Genesis they were clearly two different species and species shouldn’t intermingle or whatever.
mrmobi
With you on that, Buck.
However, while I did see all of the speech at the National Press Club yesterday, it seems that I didn’t see all of Wrights’ responses to questions.
Last night, on Dan Abrams “Verdict” he and his “panel of experts” were slamming Wright over his response to whether Wright believes that the US Govt. was responsible for the spread of AIDS. (the panel stated he said he does believe that!)
Have any of you here seen his response to that question?
I haven’t been able to locate a video of it, and I don’t see a transcript of the speech either.
I would point out that the “panel of experts” included Mike Huckabee (he of the 6,000 year old earth) and, of course, Tucker Carlson (he must have something on someone high up at NBC, because there is no reason he should be inflicted on unsuspecting humans). So take the panel’s reaction with a grain of salt. But Abrams, who is usually reasonable, seemed to wholeheartedly agree that the only thing to be done was for Obama to “throw Wright under the bus.”
While I generally think Wright is terrific, and appears to be a really good man, I’m not about to start wearing a tinfoil hat at this late stage, even for Obama.
4tehlulz
>>When Wright and me and folks my age are all gone, those who are young today will wonder what the fuss was all about.
True, because they’ll be wasting their time on other stupid shit.
b. hussein canuckistani
I’ve been rereading Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail by the late lamented HST, and there’s a chapter describing how uncommitted delegates can squeeze candidates for lucrative positions as long as the candidate is close to the magic number. These are just people who want to be ambassadors to warm, safe countries.
4tehlulz
>>warm, safe countries
Iceland will be pretty warm in the next few years…..
The Other Steve
I would be more than happy to accept a cushy state dept job in Spain or Italy.
I have extensive experience, having seen all three Bourne movies, plus all of the James Bond.
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
DemConWatch says that Obama is only behind Hillary by 19 super delegates now. If/when he catches up to her…
Just Some Fuckhead
Wright didn’t answer the question with a yes or no. He just brought up two different authors/books that purported such. Actually, I watched all the stuff Wright did yesterday and don’t have a lot to disagree with. Like TZ, I wasn’t particularly enamored with his style which seemed to be deliberately puckish and provocative when what he should have had on display was his formidable intellect and education.
Richard Bottoms
>Wright didn’t answer the question with a yes or no.
Rev. Wright, new Hitler leading blacks on murderous revenge frenzy???!!!
Wait, I’ve heard this before.
Louis Farakkhan, new Hitler leading blacks on murderous revenge frenzy???!!!
No wait.
Jessie Jackson, new Hitler leading blacks on murderous revenge frenzy???!!!
“And you fall for it every time!”
~ Angel, Becoming Pt. 1
firebrand
I think we all understand why Obama had to distance himself from Rev. Wright. I think we all agree, also, that it sucks that in our current media environment Obama had to do that at all. Whatever Rev. Wright is, he isn’t a warmonger and a torture-loving monster like Bush and his cohorts.
Bob In Pacifica
Quite honestly, I thought the thing with Moyers, at least the clips I heard from it, was fine. I don’t know what the point of the National Press Club was though. These are the same fuckers who’ve been sticking to Obama through Wright over the past month or so. A perfect performance wouldn’t have satisfied them. Wright basically flipped them off. So I have no problem with Obama basically saying that he and Obama aren’t the same person and aren’t saying the same things.
I heard somewhere that the breakfast with the press club was paid for by a Clinton supporter. Could that be? Oh, the humanity!
les
Problem: the system this time around has guaranteed no clear winner. They have a “professional” duty to pull the thumbs out.
Sasha
True again, but at least it will be new stupid shit.
tBone
Surely you meant to say “assless chaps” there, right?
He mentioned Tuskegee and said he believed our government was capable of anything. He didn’t say he thinks HIV was the result of a government plot. A little more nuanced than what the press accounts would have us believe. Shock!
Richard Bottoms
You mean thirty-six years after a monstrous multi-decade US government sanctioned medical experiment that led to agonizing deaths was revealed the minority group singled out for this crime is still suspicious of doctors?
My God, when will blacks grow up.
nightjar
I knew Will Rogers, he was a friend of mine.
maxbaer (not the original)
It’s just reality. The blue sky and green grass take a little getting used to. I worry when I find myself agreeing with Pat Buchanan and Charley Reese.
Willy T Patriot
Man this thing is freaking everyone completely out. Big choice here for the super dels, the past or the future. Chicks over fifty and dumb ass white boys or the young and people of color. Not much of a decision in my humble opinion. Peace!
Martin
Mr Super says:
He also says that superdelegate is compound. Neither hyphen nor space required.
Martin
According to Mr Super, who is confirmed to be a super – most of the remaining undeclared are either Club Pelosi (will support the pledged delegate leader) or DNC members (who probably fantasize about dining on Hillary’s entrails about now).
No need to worry. Some will go with their state/districts, but most look like they are Obama’s to lose.
Z
Wow. Tim agreeing with the American Conservative. John agreeing with KOS. Any minute now the locusts will descend and the rivers will run with blood.
daveinboca
A bit like Kerry’s hesitation over punching back during the “swift-boating” situation—although the 55 Swift Boat captains had a lot more integrity & credibility than the millionaire preacher Bling-master Wright-wing conspiracy. His brand of theology is not the “black church.” It’s his own bummer hitching a ride with Farrakhan.
Obama’s polls have been heading south during the whole Wright 3 Days of klieg light fame. As a result, Obama has finally been forced to uncurl from the fetal position & grown a pair! Now the media can quickly claim that another Obama ally has been thrown off the fantail and BHO will have “put the issue completely behind him” and is “moving on” to his next destination.
Let’s see, he still adores his Kenyan daddy who abandoned him at age two after a bigamous relationship with his mother, but he was too busy to visit mom on her deathbed because of scheduling problems. And his grandma who raised him while his mom was rebigamizing in Indonesia, she said she was sometimes afraid of black men because of the high black crime rate—prima facie proof of her racism. She posthumously walked the plank for that.
Anyone see a pattern here? Of course, the uncommitted superdoopercalifragilistic Dems won’t care, as they are just hoping to get out of this campaign with as much boodle as they can get their hands on.
Z
Thanks daveinboca! We hadn’t heard that slanted argument based on a cherry-picked and biased presentation of the facts. Gee whiz! Now that Hillary supporters and Republicans all sound alike, I am truly feeling the unity pony magic in action!
Chuck Butcher
John,
These people are correctly “automatic delegates;” the “super” is a media construct – you could perhaps speculate to piss off voters- so however you want to do it would be as incorrect as any other. The Democratic Party of Oregon maintains strict neutrality in a contested Primary so it is no surprise that none of the 5 “supers” from DPO have said anything, our Primary is counted May 20 and after that they are free in regard to our state. So far the elected officials are a mixed bag of committed and uncommitted. The Governor went for Hillary right after she announced, I don’t know what his thinking has been since, he hasn’t said anything – surprising.
Richard Bottoms
Fuck this “We are the World” horseshit and the dwindling children’s crusade for Barrack.
When gas is $4.00 a gallon, the first rate adjustments on ARM’s kick in, and Muqta al-Sadr is busy making Iraq an unpleasant place this summer, no one will give a fuck about Rev. Wright or Hillary’s tears.
The five minutes it will take to spend the tax “rebates” will be long forgotten, and the bitter Pennsylvanians will be remembering exacatly what they are bitter about, and who has been in charge the last eight years.
Hillary has always been the mean ass fighter we’ve need to take John McCain into a political dark alley and beat his decrepit ass senseless.
I am proud that black men have come far enough in America to seriously contend for President, and in eight years, Vice-President Obama will go all the way.
Soylent Green
Aren’t some of Hillary’s fans extra super nice people, generously offering us the dream ticket of Obama and Clinton running together?
I can’t help but notice though that they ALWAYS give Hill top billing. Isn’t that special? How convenient.
Seems mighty disingenuous, seeing as Obama’s sizeable delegate lead will be even larger by June 3. Then, after she hijacks the nomination (the only way she can get it), think what an honor it will be for him to become Hillary’s lawn ornament, dutifully waiting for his turn. Dream on, dream ticketers.
Hillary needs Obama on the ticket a lot more than he needs her.
Soylent Green
I was happy to see Rep. Wu get off the fence the other day and wonder what Wyden and DeFazio are waiting for. I’d also like to know if Kulongoski regrets his early move and if it would ever be safe for him politically to switch. The supers hide their secrets well.