Hillary Drawing Thin
By Jason | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, HillaryIn the aftermath of her long-expected victories in Texas and Ohio, many of Hillary Clinton’s supporters are reveling in long-awaited cheering sessions and drawing convoluted scenarios for her nomination. Unfortunately for them, however, Clinton remains behind the eight-ball on the only metric that matters — delegate count. And she can’t beat math. There are few opportunities available for Clinton to make up the 100-vote lead that Obama holds among elected delegates.
The scenarios that Clinton needs to come to fruition in order to trump the elected delegate math are fraught with difficulty and disadvantage.
SCENARIO ONE: The superdelegates to the rescue. Clinton’s primary campaign strategist Mark Penn has long signaled an attempt to strong-arm so-called “super-delegates” into the Clinton camp with a classic Clintonian back-room maneuver. The trouble is that such an effort would almost certainly backfire. Super-delegates are comprised of elected officials who are unlikely to want to be seen caving in to an open and ham-handed effort to force them to defy the will of many of their own constituents simply to serve the interests of a Clinton family dynasty of which many in the party are weary. The most likely breakdown of remaining super-delegates is about 50/50, with little potential for Clinton to make up 100+ votes. Clinton’s earlier advantage among superdelegates has already shrunk dramatically and any reversal will be insufficient to make up the margin against Obama. In fact, there are rumors that the Clinton campaign is already attempting to desperately stem a tide going against them among superdelegates. Even if successful, such an effort indicates that there is not in fact a rich pool of superdelegates just waiting to flow towards Hillary Clinton.
SCENARIO TWO: John Edwards to the rescue. Both Obama and Clinton have strongly courted John Edwards’ endorsement and there have been persistent rumors that one or both campaigns have dangled the promise of another vice-presidential nomination for Edwards. The problems, however, are that Edwards only has 26 pledged delegates to offer and that a trade for his endorsement could likely backfire. Even if Edwards were to accept another consolation prize VP nomination, such a payoff would be seen by many in and out of the party as corrupt dealing. Furthermore, Edwards’ tired class warfare memes might damage the Clinton campaign by undermining one of Clinton’s only bases of appeal to moderates — her claim of relative policymaking centrism.
SCENARIO THREE: Remaining primaries to the rescue. Clinton’s campaign has repeatedly indicated that they feel Texas and Ohio are merely the beginning of a run through the later primaries, especially Pennsylvania. What they try desperately to obscure, however, is that many of those primaries are in southern states where Obama is likely to be very strong. Furthermore, the long-running Clinton campaign strategy of demeaning all states with fewer than 15 electoral votes as insignificant and unimportant weakens her ability to run close in those campaigns even if she were to reverse her previous course and start to seriously contest them. And unless there is a unprecedented meltdown in the Obama campaign, the sole “significant” state remaining — Pennsylvania — is unlikely to generate a large enough margin of victory for Clinton to overcome the lead that Obama already has, let alone the modest padding he will add in the “insignificant” states in between.
SCENARIO FOUR: Dirty tricks to the rescue. If there is anything that the Clintons are known for, it is hardball politics, matched with a nearly boundless ability to claim to be the one aggrieved. Hillary Clinton has repeatedly played the “victim card” with one hand while, with the other, mounting coded and uncoded attacks instructing voters on why they should vote against her opponent. The negative strategy is widely seen as paying off in Ohio and Texas, making it likely that Clinton will escalate the tone and volume of anti-Obama attacks even further while downplaying talk about her own thin record of achievement and experience. The problem here is that such a strategy damages Clinton nearly as much as Obama. Already unusually high for a major-party candidate at this stage of a presidential election, Hillary Clinton’s negative perceptual ratings among voters will only escalate if she continues to reinforce her image as a dirty fighter who will do or say anything to win power and, even better, to personally punish anyone who opposed her. And to the extent that Clinton continues to receive votes from some voters with explicitly racist justifications, she risks alienating one of the party’s most loyal constituencies and dividing the party ala 1968. If successful, such a strategy would produce potentially crippling disadvantages for Clinton in the general election. And if unsuccessful, such a strategy may amount to “scorched earth” by providing the McCain campaign with massive amounts of ready-made grist for use against Obama. Either by being seen as an unacceptably vicious candidate or the person who killed the party in trying to become the candidate, Clinton loses.
SCENARIO FIVE: Florida and Michigan to the rescue. By breaking her promises not to compete in Florida and Michigan, Hillary Clinton built a back-up pool of unauthorized delegates. Her campaign, again speaking through hard-line strategist Mark Penn, has already telegraphed an intention to try to force the credentialing of those delegates at the convention in order to put Clinton over the top. Such an effort is unlikely to help Clinton in the long term, however. First, Obama’s lead among already credentialed delegates might well be sufficient to block such a move on the convention floor. Second, even if successful, such a maneuver would highlight Hillary Clinton as blatantly dishonest. A large part of the party would feel that she had only won by pure cheating. Such a party would be unlikely to unite behind Clinton. This scenario is the only one that has a reasonable potential to play out differently if, as both campaigns have suggested, Florida and Michigan are allowed to redo their premature primary voting.
Intellectual honesty requires acknowledging that Clinton’s campaign victories of March 4 allow her to remain in the race as a credible candidate, probably right up to the convention. But the same intellectual honesty should motivate her supporters as well as dedicated Obama opponents to acknowledge that she is still, as the poker players say, “drawing thin“, with only long-shot prospects for actually obtaining the nomination in a state fit for a viable general election campaign.
(Cross-posted from PoliGazette)Â
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Hillary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 5th, 2008 at 11:28 am
I woke up this morning to see a fellow Highbrid Nation writer reporting that Hillary has won the Ohio and Texas primaries and how this is getting bad. And like him I feel like this battle between Obama and Hillary has went on too long and now they are in danger of hurting the party by allowing McCain to take shots at them while they are dealing with each other. Howard Dean should step in and say “Look, Obama is going to be the canidate and Hillary you can be his running mate if you chooseâ€â€¦I know I know that would never happen but a guy can dream right?
March 5th, 2008 at 11:58 am
I think the convention trainwreck scenario is getting a little bit overblown, because we’re all getting caught up in the media narrative. Reaching the convention in a tie is not by itself a trainwreck. The trainwreck would be failing to resolve the tie acceptably by behaving like petulant jackasses and corrupt wheeler dealers. I think the chances are better of bad behavior, but not guaranteed. The dems could use a few statesmen here.
I think the re-do is what makes the most sense, and I’m glad that both candidates are accepting of it. The unanswered question regarding this remedy is “can they do it?” What has to happen for a re-do to ,occur? Are there arcane laws against it? Could the GOP push the rules and regs to prevent it, preferring to force dems to stew in their own juices?
You could argue the dems deserve to stew. I said at the time that the unseating of the FL and MI delegates was utterly idiotic, and now it’s bitten the party in the ass about as badly as it possibly could have. Problematic as it is, I have a deep appreciation for the poetic justice of it. It was an act of grand hubris for the party to tell the states they couldn’t have their primary when they wanted to, and then to punish them. After all, who PAYS for these primaries?
That raises a worthwhile issue. If the dems want a do-over, who has to sign off in each state? Both states are well within their rights to tell the democratic party that if they want a do-over, the party can pay for it. They already got their freebie, and it was rejected. If it was my state, I’d make the party chairman deliver the state one of those big giant checks to pay for the new election, along with a public apology.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I guess that would be me. Except that I am not necessarily a Clinton supporter. Call me undecided.
#1 and #3 are all that is needed. “Strong- arm” and “ham-handed” are emotionally loaded words, but that does not matter. Superdelegates will vote for what is good for the party, and the fallacy in your argument is that superdelegates voting in alignment with the pledged delegate lead is what is good for the party. It may be or it may not be. It’s all about perception, and Obama has a perception problem.
Obama went for the knockout punch. He outspent her 3 to 1, he had more troops on the ground and a better organization, he pulled out all the high profile endorsements and superdelegate conversions. He threw everything he had at her, and she won. This is telling. Weakness has been exposed. The superdelegates see it. He may have peaked. He is now the one with something to prove in Pennsylvania and he has seven weeks to do it. If he loses there, he loses the superdelegates and the nomination, regardless of the pledged delegate count. He gets the VP as a consolation prize to unify the party.
Oh- and the “tide-stemming” of the superdelegates is old news as of the results last night. They now stay on ice with Clinton’s big wins.
One more thing – how do you do that “Read the rest of this entry?” on this post? I need to know how to do that for my posts.
March 5th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Pro-Hillary folks are going to spend the next month plus claiming that only PA really matters, but that’s spin. Obviously there’s some Obama doubt now, but Hillary still has to build on it. My BS meter goes off when either side undertakes special pleading regarding which state wins do and don’t matter.
Hillary’s side suggests that only her wins in big state matters, because these are states the dems must win. But we know that these results don’t really speak to whether Obama can beat McCain in these states. Nor do they really speak to whether Hillary can beat McCain in such states just because she beat Obama there. They really speak just as much to Hillary’s insider advantage in industrial dem machine states.
Here’s the thing. The blues won’t swap. NY and CA are in the dem pocket, IMO. And TX is dead red. Probably Florida too, given the “no cigar” results in past elections and the dem party snub on delegates.The purples can go either way. Places like NJ, OH, and PA are VERY likely to be in play come November regardless of who the dem nom is, and to pretend otherwise is blowing smoke..
Obama’s side suggests that the number of wins Obama has piled up are what matters. But these results cut both ways. They DO show that Obama has appeal with independents, because he’s gotten great turnout in states where dems struggle. But when it comes time to do the red/blue/electoral map thing, we know that it’s suspect to think Obama can carry many or even any of the reliably red states. His only real advantage is that he can definitely deliver a higher turnout and more lopsided than usual dem advanyage among blacks.
Let’s all join together and acknowledge that all of us are indulging in gross speculation about what the superdelegates will do. Every one of them CAN change their minds, and few of them will actually feel bound by previous pledges for either candidate if it comes down to a convention spectacle. Many of these folks are elected pols with jobs they want to keep. Placing a vote that doesn’t accord with their constituents is bad for job security. Right now, their plan A is to hope their vote doesn’t matter, unless they have a promise for a better job. [which, granted, Hillary has probably handed out like candy].
I know that mileage varies on the superdelegates, but I think we can probably acknowledge that at the very least, they’ll all think twice and three time before swinging the nomination to the candidate who’s behind in delegates and who has shown inferior support in all but the big industrial states and California.
There are 10 states and a couple of territories left. Suppose Obama wins the next 2, and then closes a 15-20 pt deficit in PA but only comes close. Then he’s still ahead in delegates. Then everyone starts talking about NC and IN, which may well be a split of pretty big delegate states. Hyperventilating about FL and MI grows. Let’s face it…most of the superdelegates will be crapping themselves under the mounting pressure from all sides. They could do anything.
March 5th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Well, we are blogging kritter. Don’t you think that is kind of a redundant statement?
March 19th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
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