It's been a while since I've made any predictions, prognostications, or Guaran-Sheeds. And this is probably a long time coming. In all honesty, I could have done this weeks ago. Barack Obama is already the Democratic nominee. I'm not just saying that because I'm an unabashed Obama man. I'm saying that because one of the following two things has to happen for Clinton to win:1. She wins more elected delegates than he does (virtually impossible)
2. The SuperDelegates vote for the candidate who won less pledged votes from primaries/caucuses (caucci?)
To win the nomination she needs more delegates than Obama; either more elected delegates or more superdelegates. Let's take these two things one at a time:
Pass Him in Pledged Delegates
You can do it yourself if you don't believe me, but under any reasonable simulation, she can't pass him (I love how one candidate is a man and the other a woman, it makes pronoun usage so much easier). You can give her 60 percent of the vote in every remaining primary, and he still has 23 more pledged delegates than she does. And there is no way she is going to be able to do that. Being way more realistic, if we give him narrow wins in Mississippi, Oregon, and North Carolina (he obliterated her in the sister states of Alabama, Washington, and South Carolina, respectively), he's up by almost 80 delegates. Somehow counting Florida and Michigan will not bridge that gap. In all likelihood, he's going to have more than 100 delegate lead, which means she has to go option B, which is....
Win Over the Superdelegates
No matter how far ahead he gets, us Obama fans are worried that she is going to pull some Clinton magic out of her hat and steal the nomination from him at the last minute. And the superdelegate thing is confusing, and she has the advantage, so that will surely screw him over in the end, right? Wrong.
Once again, we're going to have to dive into the numbers, so bear with me here. Keep in mind that the 794 superdelegates can change their vote at any time and for any reason before the Convention. Right now, she has 254 superdelegates to his 215. So 469 superdelegates have announced who they are supporting. What about the other 325? If you're a paranoid Obama fan, you imagine evil super Democrats, sipping lattes and scheming for a way to take the election properly won by a black man and give it to a Clinton. But let's look at this realistically: since Super Tuesday, he has picked up 45, and she has lost 6. That means that there have been 39 new people who have announced who they're supporting, and all 39 (more or less) have announced they're supporting Barack! So basically, when he won 11 primaries in a row, and essentially drew her to a tie in Ohio/Texas/Vermont/R.I. Day, the superdelegates moved to him like retired Michigan wusses to Florida.
What does this mean? It means there's probably a reason that 325 superdelegates haven't announced who they're supporting. Those are the people who think the superdelegate system is stupid, and are waiting for all the primaries to end before they vote. They probably believe in democracy, and are waiting to cast their vote for the democratically-elected winner. If you have followed me so far (I probably lost most of you by now, sorry this is a long post, but I need to get it off my chest), Barack has won the pledged votes, and will win so many superdelegates that he will have it wrapped up and she will have to concede. There is no Clinton magic spell that she can cast to overcome those basic truths (maybe she minored in miracles?). How many of those uncommitted 325 do you think are so hardcore for Hillary that they will vote for her, even if she lost in the primaries? 50? 100? Don't you think if they were so hardcore for her that they would have already announced they were supporting her, to make her numbers look better? Haven't you noticed that all the uncommitted ones are going to the guy in the lead? Why would that suddenly change? No reason. In fact, the political pressure on them would be even greater if he had already clearly won the pledged delegates (most of them are elected officials.)
So, I promised predictions, and while that was vaguely predictive, it wasn't in the tone you come to expect from this website. So here it is: he continues to win smaller states (plus the three I mentioned above), she gets some minor victories, picks up a good amount of delegates in PA, and makes it seem like she has a legitimate shot of winning it. But by the time the primaries are over, he has a substantial lead in the overall delegates, and the Superdelegates rush over to him to finally decide the race. Michigan and Florida perhaps do a re-do of the elections, but it doesn't really change the calculus of the race.
I know what you're thinking: if he's already won, then why are they still on the news all the time? Why isn't the Best Political Team on Television with that bearded Wolf telling me this? It's because everyone thinks that the Clinton's are unbeatable, they get better ratings when there's still a race going on, and they want both campaigns to keep spending money on commercials. They all played it like she was the eventual nominee, and don't want to look like an idiot now that she was out-campaigned.
Phew. It felt great to get that all off my chest. Check back later this week for why Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is a complete idiot for saying on Meet the Press that Clinton should be the nominee b/c she won Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and is going to win Pennsylvania.
2 comments:
You're right on the money, broseph. The biggest mistake the Obama campaign has made was not properly managing expectations on Super Tuesday II. In fact, Clinton needed to win Texas and Ohio and win them big to be in the race by realistic math, but the media believed that as long as she was able to eke out small victories in those states, the race was still alive.
Another point I would add that in the event that she does manage to finagle the nomination by use of superdelegates, it will be a disaster. The African American population, who has broken for Obama 9 to 1, 8 to 2, etc., will rightly understand that the white political establishment has in effect "stolen" the nomination from a bright and deserving African American man. Although African Americans are one of the most loyal voting blocs in politics, I cannot escape the conclusion that many African Americans will simply not show up to vote, or even break for McCain. Not to mention the inevitability that during the campaign McCain or his surrogates will remind the electorate of the questionable legitimacy of the nominee.
In short, unless Obama has a Spitzer-like scandal, I don't see an end-game for Clinton that results in winning the general election. I'm interested in your thoughts about her alleged "ability to win big states," which is patently ridiculous.
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