2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

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

I think you're right. What most likely what will happen is that, barring some unforeseen scandal, they'll finish primary season about where they are now. Obama will have a 100-delegate lead (roughly 1,650 to 1,550), so it will be up to the superdelegates to decide this thing.

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?

That's her endgame. She'll most likely be well-behind in pledged delegates by the convention. Her goal will be to say that the latest votes -- the ones that took place after she and Obama were "fully vetted and contrasted" -- favor her, show her momentum and show him to be weak. This, she hopes, will give her leverage over the superdelegates.

Next, we should explain the nuances of the NBA salary cap.

Bill Bradley dropped out on March 8 - no one but Gore was left after that, right?

when he wins wyoming and mississippi that will be kind of hard to maintain, that the 'momentum has shifted!!!' she'll try to pull the same thing going into every state. "But now its shifted ... for real!!!"

Next, we should explain the nuances of the NBA salary cap.

im pretty up on this if you have any questions

Can we lock this thread until Saturday then?

I once corrected the NBA cap wiki.

lol

Robert Reich fears HRC will damage the party. Funniest Line: "When (Dick) Morris was subsequently discovered to have a penchant for the toes of prostitutes the White House dumped him but kept (Mark) Penn on." And Reich doesn't strike me as normally being a funny guy.

when he wins wyoming and mississippi that will be kind of hard to maintain, that the 'momentum has shifted!!!' she'll try to pull the same thing going into every state. "But now its shifted ... for real!!!"

Good point. It's hard to see her winning more than two in a row. For instance, he wins WY and MS, she wins PA, they split IN and NC, she wins WV, they split KY and OR, etc.

they split KY

obvious lol

living in a swing state that could possibly go Dem if all the born-agains stay home because of McCain (which I honestly don't think they will) I don't have the luxury of sitting this one out, but I really, really don't want to vote for HRC.

(Reich) made his first video blog (vblog) debut on Vimeo.com on March 7, 2007 where he revealed he dated Hillary Clinton while in college.

wau

I DID NOT KNOW THAT!

He certainly doesn't seem to favor her now.

sex b/w them was like Yoda and Dooku fighting.

xp Hillary is like 8" taller than Reich.

obama is up twelve percent in the caucuses on forty percent reporting, incidentally

here we go:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0308/Florida_and_Michigan_governors_speak.html

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.

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 20:06 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

okay, i believe someone posted that there was an exit poll showing that 20% agreed that 'race was a factor influencing their vote', of whom 75% were clinton voters. n.b. can't find the exit poll in question &

20% of three million ish texas voters = 600,000.
75% of 600,000 = 450,000.

which = more than clinton's margin.

yea, i posted that. it was linked from ben smith's politico blog, and there you can find the exit poll

^^^^^^^^^^the stats on race were based on Ohio

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0308/The_race_factor.html

btw intrade.com still has obama in the 70s

According to the DNC and RNC, Florida and Michigan have violated party rules by moving up their primaries. Today, we each will call upon our respective state and national party chairs to resolve this matter and to ensure that the voters of Michigan and Florida are full participants in the formal selection of their parties' nominees.

way to not apologize for yr state parties' fucking up their own primaries. crybabies.

oh yea, deej is right, it's from ohio

thomp i didn't read your post thoroughly

sorry

btw huge portions of dem voters are crazy racist, i dont know how this can be surprising to anyone

the thing is, many of all racist are also sexist

We must restore the rights of the more than 5 million voters whose voices have been silenced.

silenced by ineptitude

what i'm curious about: where on the net can one find a decent record of the advertising the candidates are doing, regarding what sort of advert to what kind of household, what percentage of them, etc. - i read somewhere that clinton was doing a big push advertising-wise around the time her gallup poll numbers got better, and i'm starting to wonder if this direct stuff makes a bigger difference than the 'larger media narrative'

xpost re: ohio - oops / :

(two million, four hundred thousand, three hundred thousand)

the best part of the whole thing is that if they hadn't moved their primaries up in an ill-fated attempt to assert their importance their states would have ended up being pretty fucking important ^_^

guys we can jerk off to the exit poll data as much as we want but there's simply no indication that all of the voters who said race was important were hillary supporters. it's perhaps just as likely that african american voters took race into account when voting for obama, isn't it?

20% agreed that 'race was a factor influencing their vote', of whom 75% were clinton voters

A good number of the African-American women I know and am close to support Hillary over Obama. This includes: my wife, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, my mom.

New haute game for disenfranchised Dems:

McCain Chicken!

"I'm SERIOUS! I really AM going to vote for McCain as a Democrat because of this!..... I will!..... Yeah?.... I will... uh huh!.... don't laugh guys, it's not funny"

btw huge portions of dem voters are crazy racist, i dont know how this can be surprising to anyone

OTM. The Civil Rights Act, busing, etc happened only 40 years ago.

I know I know it's just... disappointing

what i'm curious about: where on the net can one find a decent record of the advertising the candidates are doing

these two sites (along with others i'm sure) generally post the candidates ads along with info on when/where they go on the air:

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/

(they also post endless minutiae about the race, e.g. conference calls, press releases, poll data, etc)

I know a suprisingly large number of 45+ yr old middle class black guys who are HRC supporters, too, Dan. I think age skews the whole thing, too.

Besides the obvious nutjobs and racists, I think the way this pans out between the two camps on the race/gender front is who's turn is it? African-Americans or women? I've seen some pseudo-feminist special pleading in the letters to the editor recently but mostly the official HRC supporter line seems to be that she's got more experience, is less of a chimera, isn't making promises she can't keep, blah, blah, blah...

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/3/2008/03/thumb463x_AP080304031554-thumb.jpg

"going...down?"