Mark S. wrote: "I'm sure that she wants to be that guy.Clinton remembers the unpleasantness of that 1992 convention. I doubt "

From what I've seen recently (like letting Ferraro increase her race-rant, and Bill visiting Rush Limbaugh's show on TX/OH primary day), it appears she doesn't care how she's remembered if she't not the nominee.

Better to burn the party down with race-flames or whatever than to admit the obvious: that she's lost the nomination. I'm pretty sure that in the weeks to come we'll seem continued outrageous things that are harmful to the Dem party from that campaign.

I am amazed that superdelegates aren't fleeing in droves from these repulsive tactics. Who wants to be a part of this skeeviness besides the most hardcore Clintonistas?

Unfortunately, it's beginning to appear that the only thing that matters to Mrs. Clinton is winning - at any cost. She simply refuses to admit that she has lost this race, even though it's obvious that she has. And she doesn't seem to care about tearing the party apart in her dogged determination to somehow avoid an inevitable loss. At this rate, it looks like they are going to have to drag her, kicking & screaming, from the Convention after it is official...

I doubt that she wants to be that guy.

Actually, it's starting to look even worse than that. It looks to me like she's willing to destroy the Democratic Party in hopes of taking control of the rubble. The appeals to blue collar racists are no longer even subtle, and it's looking to a lot of perfecty sane observers as though her fallback strategy is to destroy Obama's candidacy in case he is nominated, so she can get another shot at McCain in 2012.

If she doesn't step back, right now, she'll make me start to feel okay about Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman. If she is nominated, I for one will vote for Ralph Nader. No kidding.

I'm AMAZED the media hasn't picked up this story more in depth. They had that stupid "Monster" comment plastered everywhere! Hillary is trying to make it look like the media is against her when in actuality they are all for her.

Its an old republican trick. Tell everyone the Media is Liberal so that you can discredit what you don't like and when something comes along praising the republicans the republicans say "See even the LIBERAL MEDIA agress with us we must be correct!"

Same situation here. Hillary says "The media is against me!" Then when a positive story (They mostly all are) comes out about Hillary or a negative story (About Obama mostly) comes out she can say "See even the media that hates me agrees with me!"

Its a big trick that lower educated people (Hillarys strong point) don't understand and can't figure out.

If she is nominated, I for one will vote for Ralph Nader.

Don't waste your vote on Nader. Cynthia McKinney is running!

Andy...what country are you living in? The news media has even admitted that they favor Obama. As if that fact hasn't been evident from the being of this race. Your comment about "lower educated people" being Hillary's strong point, was a pretty nasty and hateful comment. I have come to expect comments like that from the Obama supporters. It is comments like yours and worse that will most likely cause the Clinton supporters not to back Obama even if he does get the nomination. You may not care...but he will need their support to win in November.

This thread should get really interesting fairly soon...it's like watching a train wreck taking shape from above in a helicopter.

Nina,
Not defending how Andy expressed it, but people with less education (high school diploma or less) ARE part of Clinton's core coalition (which also includes women and people basically 50 and over). I don't think he means it as a swipe. Obama's core is younger, more affluent and generally college educated. That's been the breakdown for both of them since Iowa for the most part.

Obviously there's a lot of generalizing going on and not all supporters of either candidate fit into those groups, but still, it's a useful rule of thumb.

And Nina, Clinton will definitely need Obama backers support...goes both ways.

Don't waste your vote on Nader. Cynthia McKinney is running!

Good point. Or maybe I'll write in James Stockdale.

You see, Nina, progressives absolutely despise lower-class white people, who indeed are after all mostly crude and ignorant and prejudiced. Yet because of progressives' hypocrisy and obsession with politcal correctness, they absolutely adore the same kind of crude, ignorant, and prejudiced lower-class people if they happen to be black or brown.

"I have come to expect comments like that from the Obama supporters. It is comments like yours and worse that will most likely cause the Clinton supporters not to back Obama even if he does get the nomination."

So, you're fine with Clinton's CAMPAIGN issuing thinly-veiled racial appeals to the electorate, but all up in arms about a couple of intemperate Obama supporters commenting on a blog?

Some interesting perspective there.

"Its a big trick that lower educated people (Hillarys strong point) don't understand and can't figure out."

And here I thought HRC's strong point was upper middle class social liberals who liked her husband's pro-business administration.

Whereas Obama's strong point is upper middle class social liberals who liked her husband's pro-business administration, but who are cued into politics enough to know that post-Bush and post-jobless recovery (on the way into another recession), the public is looking for a "change," and Obama provides the appearance of change without really changing all that much.

Now that HRC is going after Edwards' base, that only redoubles their support for Obama.

Which means, I JUST CAN'T WAIT for the general election. Let the bullshit begin already!

You doubt wrong

So Hillary Clinton, who has gotten 47% of the popular vote to Obama's 49%, is comparable to Jerry Brown, the guy who won the CT primary and basically squat else in 1992? Jesus, you guys are really reaching. The nearest comparison to this is terms of primary politics is 1976, where Jerry Ford narrowly led Reagan all the way to the convention, with Reagan defeating Ford late in NC among others. I support Obama too, but this fanboy stuff is rotting the brains of our liberal pundits to the point where they lose all sense of historical perspective. Pathetic.

Scottreads - You're right that HRC isn't *exactly* like Gerry Brown. But she's starting to resemble him in one important respect: she can't win the nomination, but she keeps going anyway.

What's the argument to the contrary? That, despite losing the popular vote and losing the pledged delegate race, something like 2/3 of the supers are going to support her anyway?

It's also worth noting that Mark's being kind to Hillary on the popular vote total. The numbers he reports above give BHO no credit for the results in four caucus states that haven't reported vote totals - IA, NV, WA and ME. A reasonable estimate is that those would be worth about 120K more to Obama.

It would be great if Mark were right, but we've never seen a black man -- actually, half Kenyan, half white Kansan/Hawaiian, but we still adhere to the one-drop rule in this country -- with such a strong claim to the presidential nomination.

I once saw a 60 Minutes piece about Willy Brown, who said that if he'd been white he would have been governor of California and quite possibly president. I don't think he was dreaming; the man was a talented politician. So Obama is the next generation.

Are enough people ready to look at the content of his character? Hillary is betting on a "No" answer. It's all down to race for her now. Her only hope is to come close in the popular voting and be able to say to the superdelegates, "Do you really want to take a chance on a black candidate? Haven't I shown you that there's still too much racism out there?"

"So Hillary Clinton, who has gotten 47% of the popular vote to Obama's 49%, is comparable to Jerry Brown, the guy who won the CT primary and basically squat else in 1992? Jesus, you guys are really reaching. "

And, of course, if you include all the states that have voted, it's currently Obama 50.1% to Clinton 49.9%, which will obviously flip back to a Clinton majority when PA votes.

-----

But math aside, it really is amazing how far normally truthful Team Obama folks are willing to go in trying to distort their way to the nomination.

I'm for Clinton and against Obama because I think policy matters, but I won't do Mark's style of rhetorical alchemy to make my case.

hey petey,

thanks for sparing us the indignity of watching you turn base metals into gold.

but no problem turning shit into shinola, huh?

sorry, man---couldn't resist the snark.

but math aside? what's the distortion? let's see your math that puts hillary clinton into the nominee's spot. show me--in detail, contra mark---how clinton erases her 500k vote deficit.

you can slice and dice popular vote percentages any way you like, but it's nigh impossible to see how clinton makes up the deficit mark's outlined.

hey petey,

thanks for sparing us the indignity of watching you turn base metals into gold.

but no problem turning shit into shinola, huh?

sorry, man---couldn't resist the snark.

but math aside? what's the distortion? let's see your math that puts hillary clinton into the nominee's spot. show me--in detail, contra mark---how clinton erases her 500k vote deficit.

you can slice and dice popular vote percentages any way you like, but it's nigh impossible to see how clinton makes up the deficit mark's outlined.

Scottreads is correct -- although it's not the most recent example, Reagan in '76 is probably the best example of a runner-up punching all the way through to the convention. Being a youngster, I don't really recall whether that was more or less nasty than this period.

But there's something about Reagan and Brown: They stood for something. They represented a particular ideological wing of their party that had some demands that they wanted to be heard. Can the same be said of Hillary Clinton?

>They stood for something. They represented a particular ideological wing of their party that had some demands that they wanted to be heard. Can the same be said of Hillary Clinton?

Well at least more than Obama. Of course the more the Obamaholics insist that Hillary has no chance and must quit, the more they reveal that they understand she has a very good chance of taking down the empty suit they support.

"Of course the more the Obamaholics insist that Hillary has no chance and must quit, the more they reveal that they understand she has a very good chance of taking down the empty suit they support."

And Hillary Clinton is what, a full suit?

They both seem to have a pretty good grasp of policy and the political process--maybe a slight advantage to Clinton there.

They've both released comprehensive plans on any number of issues--Clinton is better on some, Obama on others, but they're basically comparable.

Obama does tend to talk about broader themes--the hope stuff--but I don't see a problem with that. Why shouldn't a leader be inspirational? Just because his primary opponent really isn't? It's not like he's neglecting policy specifics with his proposals, and I don't really see any particular virtue to the alternative of just rattling off a million policy proposals, as Clinton does. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't have to be the only way to campaign.

In any event, Barack Obama is hardly an empty suit--Columbia, Harvard Law, and a self-made man through and through. Clinton is hardly a self-made woman, although I'm willing to cut her some slack. It would have been hard for her to break through on her own back in her time without Bill's help. I'm willing to concede this up until the point when she starts acting like she worked her way up through the ranks, which she didn't. Barack Obama did.

For all the flack that all us "Obamaholics" take for basically being gasping goobers who can't get enough "hope" talk (this notwithstanding the high percentage of educated Obama supporters), I can't help but feel that the "Clintards", if you will, are making their case based less on logic and more on one of several factors:

1) That the country is too racist to elect a Black president.
2) That the Clintons deserve their due for whatever they might have done during the 1990s--how quickly we forget things like DOMA and Telecom Deregulation, no?
3) That Obama somehow irks them on an emotional level--perhaps they scoff at his ideals or are reminded of the cool kid in school they always envied.
4) That she's a woman.

I have yet to hear anyone who supports Clinton that hasn't evinced at least one of those four arguments. And Number 2 is the most defensible, really, because despite the negatives of Clinton I there were some positives there as well.

Obama, on the other hand, draws in a wide variety of admirers, from liberals to libertarians (lots of libertarians) to conservatives like Andrew Sullivan. Admittedly, Sullivan is a Clintonphobe from way back, but he's been a fan of Obama since long before the race became about Clinton vs. Obama. Why is this? Because they're all enraptured by some airy talk about hope? Or is it because there is something compelling in his life story and in his world view that makes a lot of disparate people with a lot of political differences find some way to identify with the man? Or is it more logical to believe that everyone else is crazy but you?

I guess Mr. Schmidt would have us just cancel the rest of the primaries and annoint Mr.Obama...too bad this is America.

Cheap shot I know, but he just teed up the opportunity so nicely.

And what is wrong with
4) That she's a woman.
All other things being equal? Isn't Obama getting 80% to 90% of the AA vote because he is black?

I'll add one more thing that causes me to lean against Obama. His post partisan positions and promises to reach out to republicans cause me to worry about the chances of a progressive agenda in an Obama administration.

A quick note to jmod: Obama is also winning other groups, like the well-educated, youth, and white men. Also, it wasn´t until Bill Clinton played the race card (and the BET founder) that HRC begin to really lose the black vote.

But yeah, that´s not what I wanted to say. I just want to say, HRC is pulling a Reagan 76. She is only trying make sure that Obama doesn´t win so she can take the nomination 2012. Otherwise, there is simply no explanation.

"And, of course, if you include all the states that have voted, it's currently Obama 50.1% to Clinton 49.9%, which will obviously flip back to a Clinton majority when PA votes."

Good luck using that Michigan "election" where Obama was not on the ballot as an argument for Superdelegates.

THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!!

"And, of course, if you include all the states that have voted, it's currently Obama 50.1% to Clinton 49.9%, which will obviously flip back to a Clinton majority when PA votes."

It's a bit early to go counting states where the DNC tried to buck authority and got the whole voting population disenfranchised. Maybe if Obama had been on the ticket, but even then in Florida there's an argument to be made that the news that their votes' wouldn't count suppressing voters who otherwise wouldn't be voting for referendums and the like.

Obama is actually leading in popular vote by over ~900,000. The DailyKos did an analysis including projections from the states that have not released their votes yet.

Link to analysis:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/11/143228/984/382/473558

SO exactly how will Hillary surpass him?

Petey, even if you count those states (FA and MI) Obama will still have a 300,000 lead.

Where is Al Gore? Does he want his party to become a race-baiting do-anything-to-win party? The math doesn't add up. It is all ready decided. These superdelagates are complacent through their silence. At least the republican's know a winner when they see it. I know the Republican's are all evil but maybe we can learn from their better abilities like ORGANIZATION.

Yes, and she will need between 50% and 64% of (non-super)delegates from remaining states to achieve a majority. (Depending on whether MI and FL are among those upcomding states.)

http://trueconservative.typepad.com/trueconservative/2008/03/the-real-delega.html

Unless she achieves one of these--and absent an Obama meltdown each is inconceivable--superdelegates don't matter.

It's over.

Oops type in the last post:

...between 58% and 64%...

Hillary won MI with 328,000 votes to 0 for Obama - a real primary she would probably lose. So to be fair - split her popular vote count and split the delegates. Adding all the states including FL Clinton is down by ~240,000 votes and an insurmountable # of P delegate's. This thing is over and she lost - barring Barack being found with a dead woman or a live boy (to steal an expression) she's cooked. Hilly needs to go back to NY and coach Silda about running for senate.

Hillary knows that Obama's campaign is fragile. Sure, he's ahead and, all things being equal, she can't catch him, but things aren't equal.

Obama is vulnerable on his experience, qualifications, his cultish campaign, his loudmouth wife, and his fringe race-based church and its loony pastor. Plus Obama is a rookie when it comes to adversarial campaigns. Bottom line is that Obama could implode any day now -- in fact the new ABC video of his pastor could be the spark.

If Hillary wants the nomination as bad as she clearly does, she would be a fool to quit. The odds are plenty good that Obama will hit his Howard Dean scream soon enough.

I am wondering:

--Who will have more popular votes in all the primaries and caucuses?

--Who will have more votes in just the primaries? The caucuses are a bit suspect, to me.

--Who will have more votes, excluding Republicans crossing over into Dem primaries?

--Who will have more votes, from Dem Party members?

--Who will have more votes, excluding Puerto Rico and Guam?

It's my opinion that:

--Clinton's "victories" in MI & FLA are tainted. Her suggestion, that defeating "Undecided" in MI was meaningful, is unworthy of her.

--Superdelegates should vote by their own criteria, and should use the advantage of being able to decide late, even as late as the convention.

--Superdelegates, being mainly people who have won elections, represent a less pure democracy than primary results, but are more democratic than caucus results, where a candidate may prevail because his/her supporters have fewer varicose veins and can stand up longer.

--Superdelegates should get a new name. Something thing that doesn't sound so immodest.

Obama supporters remind me of --I know this is a low blow-- Mandy Patinkin. In "The Princess Bride", he exhorts the Dreaded Pirate Morgan to hurry up and finish climbing up a steep mountain, because he (Mandy) can't wait to kill him (Morgan). "I'm sorry," Morgan apologizes. "You'll just have to wait."

--Paul Bosco (Manhattan)