2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

so theres talk of obama going negative
http://thepage.time.com/2008/03/05/change-versus-more-of-the-same-part-ii/

is that really a good idea?

Clintons will NOT be stopped. Til McCain....

is that really a good idea?

we'll see! I think probably it is, its their only option. If they don't respond aggressively and control the news cycles, Hillary will press her advantages. otoh, Hillary will invariably respond with more "poor widdew me" antics and crying etc

(also I think where their going IS totally legit - Hillary's "foreign policy expertise" is bullshit, and the Clintons have all kinds of ethics skeletons in their closet)

he should make a commercial of her bragging abt her "important work" in bosnia then cut to footage of her singing w/sinbad

hahaha, otm

roflz

so apparently Hillary's victories last night have not narrowed Obama's delegate lead at all...? way to go shrillary

I think the 'talk' of Obama going negative is now 'reality'. Or maybe, to be fair, he's just determined to get tougher with HRC starting now. Curious to see how this plays out.

Given the fact she is able to loan her campaign $5 million, you would think the Clintons would be able to hire an accountant.

lolz

i gotta go in a min but can someone explain to me why SUPERTICKET is so laughable on its face beyond the obv animosity b/w the two right now? would clinton as veep really kill o's independent appeal?

dont mind the haters SUPERTICKET rules

maybe they can work something out where obama gets to be president on odd days, hillary on evens?

would clinton as veep really kill o's independent appeal?

it would kill his appeal to me.

hillary get to be president in 2016

Obama's turning to negative campaigning as a means of embracing Hil's tactics is like when your girlfriend is always throwing stuff at you in arguments but you're cool and collected but one day you snap and chuck a lamp and quite possibly you sleep on the curb that night.

lolz

I am not okay with any arrangement wherein Hillary is in the WH/closer to the presidency

x-post

wimmin always be trickin us

can someone explain to me why SUPERTICKET is so laughable on its face

It isn't so much laughable as improbable. IIRC, the last time a nominee put his nearest challenger on the ticket as veep was when JFK offered and LBJ accepted. Since then similar offers have been made, but always rejected. Once a candidate sets his or her heart on the office of POTUS, being the vice seems like small beer and a step into obscurity.

It is only recently (post 1980) that the vice president has been given any real work to do at all. Reagan started it, mainly because he didn't care to work very hard and liked to delegate as much as he could.

Don't forget: Reagan's people floated the idea of a "co-presidency" with Ford in 1980.

I'd say it started with Carter, who actually, you know, MET with Mondale and treated him as a member of Cabinet.

IIRC, the last time a nominee put his nearest challenger on the ticket as veep was when JFK offered and LBJ accepted.

Uh, Kerry/Edwards?

And before that Reagan/Bush 1980.

SUPERTICKET

clearly you just like the sound of that word.

http://media.gallup.com/poll/graphs/030508DailyUpdateGraph1.gif

bahh i'm kind of reaching burnout right now. i need to take a break from reading about this election

lol voters are mindless drones

http://media.gallup.com/poll/graphs/030508DailyUpdateGraph1.gif

-- Mark Clemente, Wednesday, March 5, 2008 1:37 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

motherfucker! what is wrong with you people

good analysis here - way to fuck it up Democrats

I take comfort in the fact that the existence of this thread and just the hysterics and paranoia means that, hopefully this year for once, the Democrats actually have energy for this presidential election. (lol, except maybe for "omg I was too busy on ilx to vote!!!1")

Was the 2004 Primaries thread anything close to this on a level of micro-micro-micro-tea-leaf reading?

Just looking back at Democratic nominees for the past three decades or so:
Kerry
Clinton
Clinton
Dukakis
Mondale
Carter
Carter
McGovern

..I mean, there isn't a precedent for 2008 for the Democratic nominee candidates. There definitely isn't a precedent for the GOP situation in 2008 too, which is more key and more overlooked.

There definitely is a precedent for nominee races lasting until June as recently as Bill Clinton, fwiw.

So, follow Tracer's advice. Be vigilant yet chill. This is going to last until the convention. Enjoy Spring and Summer 2008 while you can. I love you guys.

Also, you can never use mccainbushhug.jpg enough this year

Dems wasting time (and most importantly $$$) in-fighting while McCain consolidates campaign resources/money/hones message = C/D

this is bad bad bad for the Democrats in the fall, there's no denying it. all of us are feeling election fatigue, and there's SIX MONTHS to go. this "enthusiasm" will not last that long, it will be replaced by bitterness and disenchantment.

And either way, a huge segment of the Democratic base will feel bruised.

and the fact that Hillary is ensuring this in the hopes that she can finagle a coronation via some procedural loophole in defiance of the popular vote = FUCK YOU I HATE YOU ARRGHGHGHGH

I'll vote for McCain over Hillary just to say fuck you to her and the DNC. xpost Hi there!

and honestly I really am beginning to wonder to an uncomfortable degree how much racism factors into Hillary's voting bases of old white women and blue collar whites, etc. Much as I hate to say it.

this is bad bad bad for the Democrats in the fall, there's no denying it. all of us are feeling election fatigue, a

I disagree – this is healthy! For the next two months the press, to McCain's annoyance, will focus on these two fools squabbling. Meanwhile the politicrats might actually air some useful Obama or HRC laundry.

but... the money. this is draining all the Dems financial coffers, they won't have much left for the GE.

Alfred will like this, then: Lots more negative campaigning to come from HRC, under the guise of "contrast" and "vetting."

Hillary, for instance, is white.

Hillary, for instance, is white.

I'm sure this is true. I mean, I take her at her word that she's white. I have no reason to disbelieve it. As far as I know, she's white.

the thing thats so weird about the 'hillary comeback' is that there was never a point at which it looked like obama was really gonna do better than he did last night - maybe in texas by, like, a percentage point. but nothing unbelievable. we all knew this was the likely result going in

again i gotta credit her strategists for making her perform as expected into MASSIVE HRC VICTORY HALTS OBAMA MOMENTUM

but... the money. this is draining all the Dems financial coffers, they won't have much left for the GE.

If you nominate, they will come.

he thing thats so weird about the 'hillary comeback' is that there was never a point at which it looked like obama was really gonna do better than he did last night - maybe in texas by, like, a percentage point. but nothing unbelievable. we all knew this was the likely result going in

Exactly! So everyone: enjoy the weather! It's March!

This is more or less what everyone else has been saying, but I just tried the Slate Delegate Calculator and had Hillary winning 60%-40% in every remaining contest, and she's still behind by 15 pledged delegates.

David --

Our projections show the most likely outcome of yesterday's elections will be that Hillary Clinton gained 187 delegates, and we gained 183.

That's a net gain of 4 delegates out of more than 370 delegates available from all the states that voted.

For comparison, that's less than half our net gain of 9 delegates from the District of Columbia alone. It's also less than our net gain of 8 from Nebraska, or 12 from Washington State. And it's considerably less than our net gain of 33 delegates from Georgia.

The task for the Clinton campaign yesterday was clear. In order to have a plausible path to the nomination, they needed to score huge delegate victories and cut into our lead.

They failed.

...[lots of stuff about how i should send them money]

Thank you,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Donate

I'm glad David Greenburg agrees:

Like the calls for Al Gore to concede the presidency to George Bush in November 2000, this anxiety about the imagined consequences of a protracted fight misreads both history and the calendar. In 2000, pundits seemed not to know that contested elections in previous years—notably the 1960 race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon—remained officially unresolved until barely a month before Inauguration Day, and so they talked as if each hour of uncertainty brought the republic nearer to doom.

The calls to wrap up the Democratic primary race show a similar amnesia. To suggest that March 5 marks a late date in the calendar ignores the duration of primary seasons past. Indeed, were Hillary Clinton to have pulled out of the race this week, Obama would have actually clinched a contested race for the party's nomination earlier than almost any other Democrat since the current primary system took shape—the sole exception being John Kerry four years ago. Fighting all the way through the primaries, in other words, is perfectly normal.

i'm starting to realize that the pledge delegate, while a very strong argument, isn't a foolproof one. what if HRC succeeds at "vetting" and "contrasting" to such an extent that he's painted as a very, very weak candidate by the media?

let's say they split the remaining contests, and let's say hillary picks up a few a long the way. any delegate lead he's got won't really matter much if obama's viewed as a weak GE candidate

i.e. while the superdelegates are surely more likely to break for the pledged delegate leader, it's not absolute by any means, especially if hillary succeeds in painting obama as a candidate with serious faults

err *flaws not faults