Clinton Camp: Hillary Will Not Drop Out
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, HillaryThese moments are usually telegraphed WAY in advance, so this latest news could mean she’s merely suspending her campaign until Obama gets the superdelegates he needs to clinch this thing.
Senior Clinton campaign aides privy to the construction of tomorrow night’s election night celebration in New York insist that Sen. Clinton will not use the occasion to drop out of the race.
So again…what to make of this? Will we see a conciliatory Hillary or one who’s making a power play to lean on Obama for the VP slot? My guess is the latter. She knows her campaign has done well in this last stretch and the VP slot could be the only way for her to become President one day.
I guess we’ll see, but my money is on a suspension of the campaign since there are no more primaries.
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June 2nd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Honestly, I don’t think she’ll take the VP spot. It may be offered, and she may want it, but I doubt it, and I doubt she’d take it. Instead, I think the VP spot will go to someone with less baggage (hopefully Richardson, who was auditioning for the part MONTHS before all this unfolded), while Hillary may instead play her cards and gun for President pro tempore of the senate. This would allow her to keep (a) her presidential hopes alive and (b) have stronger standing within the party than as the VP. This may also be the only way she can save her legacy.
June 2nd, 2008 at 12:57 pm
I don’t think she’d take the VP if offered. There’s a shorter path to power.
I think she has such a strong feeling the Obama can’t win that she’ll distance herself from his campaign. If the party passes her up for the nomination and she’ll just wait for 2012 to run again with an “I told you so…” platform.
In the immortal words of the “Terminator”: “I’ll Be Back”
Remember in T2 Arnie comes back as the good guy.
I hope Obama does win and ruins that plan and others can say “Yes We Can” (and a silent “Oh, No you Didn’t” muttered under our breath).
I think she’s also waiting for Obama to get hit pull force by the Repug attack machine and see if the SD’s budge.
“Ready on Day One”
“Never Stop Fighting”
June 2nd, 2008 at 12:58 pm
These are my thoughts guys:
Obama has a 115 pledged delegate lead over Hillary. Since the delegates are to represent the voters of each state, then there is no way possible Hillary can have more popular voters than Obama.
Each state has the right to chose the manner in which they conduct their elections for the presidential nominee, they can have either caucus or primaries. Based on the number of votes, delegates are chosen to represent the voters choice. Just based on that alone, Clinton’s claim of leading in the popular vote has to be wrong. However, let’s calculate a possible popular vote based on Hillary’s numbers.
Hillary has 17,692,901 including Michigan. From those votes she received 1624 pledged delegates. These are the delegates based on the actual votes. That amounts to each delegate representing 10,895 votes. Now, Obama received 1739 pledged delegates, to keep this simple we will multiply this by the Clinton factor 10,895 votes per delegate and we arrive with Obama having 18,946,405 popular votes!
I figure this math is as good as the Clintons
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:21 am
I have been trying to figure out the popular vote vs. more delegates thing. It is not clear to me that Hillary has the popular vote as I say the below, its just an hypothetical theory (exaggerated to make the point) on how perhaps it could be possible to garner popular vote, but not more delgates.
For instance, Alaska has 13 delegates to give. To my knowledge those would be allocated whether there were only 13 voters, or 13,000,000 voters.
My guess on how someone could have the popular vote (overall, not per THAT state so much).. lets pretend Alaska got an unusually large turnout, and its entire voting population voted, and voted for Hillary.
Lets say another state, perhaps Illinois with 153 delegates to offer….. perhaps they got lower voting turn out… and so only (this is just a fake number), only 100,000 people went to vote. And Obama got the majority in that state, and therefore more delgates…. lets say he got 75% of that vote (75,000) … and so perhaps that would be about 120 delgates.
I know this is a fake example, (and exaggerated to make the point, so just close the gap when you look at it, after you understand the direction I’m taking)… But, in that example, Hillary got over 1 million voters, but perhaps only 40 delegates between the two states. While Obama gets not even 100,000 votes and yet well over 100 delegates.
I am sure the answer (the rules of course) are out there.. but so far, this is the answer I can come up with.
I think we forget that its majority rules, its still state per state, rather than one large oveall number.. Hillary is stating she has the overall popular vote… perhaps in all the US combined she does.. but, she could have the higher votes in states that “count” for less, or something similar.
So,.. even with the every vote counts, and popular vote ideals.. its still not perfect from that point of view. But, its created that way (I think) so each state can have its own bit of power….