A Second Hand Conjecture

Obama the Confident:

Barack Obama’s campaign, riding a wave of 10 straight victories in the contest for the Democratic nomination after wins in Wisconsin and Hawaii, today urged Hillary Clinton to bow to the inevitable and accept defeat.

Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, dismissed her camp’s hopes of making a comeback when the power states of Texas and Ohio hold their primaries on March 4, and said Clinton would be unable to bridge a widening gap in delegates.

“This is a wide, wide lead right now,” Plouffe said in a conference call with reporters. “The Clinton campaign keeps saying the race is essentially tied. That’s just lunacy.”

The argument from the Obama camp appears designed to paint Clinton as a nuisance candidate — much like Mike Huckabee who has continued to fight for the Republican nomination even though it is mathematically impossible for him to catch up to John McCain’s lead in delegates.

Shaun Mullen writing at The Moderate Voice takes a look at the delegate race and agrees that Clinton is unlikely to prevail as eventual candidate, but finds Plouffe’s comments to be mere … Plouffery:

I’ve been killing a goodly number of brain cells lately trying to figure out how Hillary Clinton can keep from driving off the electoral cliff, but I keep shooting blanks.

For one thing, the mathematical deck is now stacked against her. She needs to win the Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4 by huge margins, but that looks increasingly unlikely, while a big win in Pennsylvania on April 22, where she doesn’t even have a full delegate slate, would be too little too late.

With voting over in all but 14 states, Barack Obama leads Clinton 1,336-1,251 in delegates, according to The Associated Press’s count, with 2,025 needed to secure the nomination.

[...]

So what’s a cooked goose to do?

Certainly not concede, as Obama’s campaign manager suggested in an atypically silly remark. What Clinton is left with is stealing and attacking.

Stealing as in trying to manipulate the superdelegate count and get delegates seated who are pledged to her from Florida and Michigan. Because of the longtime connections that she and Bill Clinton have to the party establishment, she would seem to have the inside track on this.

Atypically silly or not, I think it’s indicative of how much Obamamentum the campaign has right now. I think Mullen’s right as rain about Hillary needing the superdelegates to pull this thing out, as well as at least some of Obama’s pledged delegates and/or getting the Michigan and Florida contingent seated. While the race isn’t anywhere near final, I do believe it’s Obama’s to lose.

Even so, advising your opponent to just quit at this stage is a bit much.

No Comments »

In my most recent post, I referred to the cool cash that at least one of the Democrat candidates is spreading around her community.

Cash abounds in the Democratic world! My liberal friends squeal about the money that they believe transfers from Republicans to big biz. It’s true – and that is part of why many of us who want small government desire such. If the money doesn’t come in, it can’t go anywhere.

If you think that Republicans are the only ones who like to throw money around, however – please quickly be disabused of this notion.

Many of the superdelegates who could well decide the Democratic presidential nominee have already been plied with campaign contributions by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, a new study shows.

“While it would be unseemly for the candidates to hand out thousands of dollars to primary voters, or to the delegates pledged to represent the will of those voters, elected officials serving as superdelegates have received about $890,000 from Obama and Clinton in the form of campaign contributions over the last three years,” the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics reported today.

About half the 800 superdelegates — elected officials, party leaders, and others — have committed to either Clinton or Obama, though they can change their minds until the convention.

Obama’s political action committee has doled out more than $694,000 to superdelegates since 2005, the study found, and of the 81 who had announced their support for Obama, 34 had received donations totaling $228,000.

Clinton’s political action committee has distributed about $195,000 to superdelegates, and only 13 of the 109 who had announced for her have received money, totaling about $95,000.

My thanks to Duane at Black Informant for the link.

No Comments »

Steven Taylor takes a look at Paul Kane’s conclusion that it is now mathematically impossible for either Obama or Clinton to win the nomination with pledged delegates, and notes that a super-delegate decided nominee represents an enormous political problem for the Democrats:

The party that has a legitimate gripe about the 2000 election and the fact that Al Gore won the popular vote cannot find themselves in a situation in which the nominee with less popularly-selected delegates is given the nomination by delegates who were not elected via the primary/caucus process.
(PoliBlog)

Not only is this a problem of political perception and party unity, it could conceivably jeopardize the unification of the two candidates on a single ticket. The candidate perceptions themselves of whether or not they’ve been swindled out of the top slot on the ticket could be significant. Given the nature of this race, it has become almost imperative that the loser is named the vice presidential nominee. But when we are dealing with two candidates who no longer seem particularly fond of each other to begin with, trouble may lie ahead by adding the dimension of a potential backroom convention deal.

Supplementally, Dr. Taylor also adds:

Also, at the end of the day, the DNC may very much come to regret taking the Michigan and Florida delegates out of the pool.
(PoliBlog)

Further evidence that the politics of exclusion always ends up punishing you in democracy.

No Comments »

Because of his support/endorsement of McCain. The Dems made a rule (because of Zell Miller and his endorsement of Bush in 04) that any democrat crossing the lines to endorse a republican (or presumably 3rd party too) candidate would be stripped of their superdelegate status. So that will be one less superdelegate for CT. Can’t say I necessarily disagree with this. Would kinda be embarrassing for one of your delegates to vote for someone in another party at the convention.

(HT FDL)

1 Comment »

Obama in Chicago: “If this contest comes down to superdelegates, we are going to be able to say we have more pledged delegates, which means the Democratic voters have spoken. Those superdelegates, those party insiders would have to think long and hard how they would approach the nomination,” he said.

No Comments »