In Focus: Hillary and the Superdelegates
As if the targeted jabs being exchanged between John McCain and Barack Obama weren’t enough, Hillary Clinton’s irrelevance grew three sizes today with the announcement that yet another superdelegate won’t let his personal support for her interfere with his party duties.
The New York Times reports that Georgia Rep. John Lewis, an old hand in the civil rights movement, will likely vote for Obama at the DNC because that’s what his constituents want. This comes shortly after fellow Georgian Rep. David Scott, another Clinton booster, pledged to do the same on behalf of his district.
Clinton’s diminishing hope to beat the Hope Candidate now rests on a trifecta of strategies. The first two are Texas and Ohio, where she still enjoys a slim lead over Obama and might still win enough delegates to stay competitive (even though his losses in those states would, at the same time, give him a proportional gain in delegates of his own). The third strategy is her ability to convince proxies like Lewis and Scott that casting autonomous votes for her will prevent an internecine conflict in the Party and decide the nomination without recourse to a messy brokered convention. But that’s precisely what Lewis and Scott are aiming to avoid by swaying with national opinion.
The element of race in this story is, once again, being needlessly overplayed. It’s elementary politics to ensure one’s re-election by not flouting the people capable of making it happen. A cynic might say that Lewis and Scott, both black, fear being labeled sell-outs to their skin color by serving as undemocratic kingmakers for Hillary–but then, that hardly stopped them from endorsing her in the first place, did it?
“Momentum” really isn’t the right word to describe Obama’s unexpected success in this election. His advantage is more the result of a series of reverse ripple effects–winning over wide circles of supporters, which then lead to increasingly smaller yet more influential ones. Superdelegates represent the epicenter to which which Team Hillary has decamped with a foolish “wait and see” attitude.
Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake says it’s all a guessing game until all the primaries are done: “A superdelegate vote is only as solid as the public opinion numbers of the moment. A pledge is not enforceable. Because most are elected officials, the public mood counts for how their votes are ultimately cast at the DNC in August, which is a long way off in terms of primary votes to come.”
At MyDD, Jonathan Singer writes: “Now I think that Clinton could potentially come closer to erasing Obama’s pledged delegate lead. I really do. But that would entail running a smarter pledged delegate campaign. No more overlooking caucuses. No more staying out of states until the Saturday before election day. And no more suggesting that superdelegates should reject the will of actual voters, both because that strategy isn’t working and because it’s counterproductive in terms of turning off actual voters.”
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo is also skeptical of Clinton’s strategy, which he calls “audacious” and “unrealistic”: “The super delegates who are gettable for Clinton by loyalty, conviction or coercion are already got. And enough’s been seen of both candidates for everyone to be more than acquainted with them. The ones who remain — who make up roughly half the total — are waiting to see who the winner is.”
Michael Weiss is the New York Editor of Pajamas Media. His blog is Snarksmith.
“Obama’s unexpected success in this election.”
Unexpected? Speak for yourself. Barack “Barry” Obama was going to do well simply because he is half black. There are far too many yuppie whites who want to seek forgiveness and redemption—and blacks who believe “it’s our turn.” No, the Obama phenomenon should not be the least bit surprising. Hillary Clinton had the odds against her because she is merely a white woman. If she was also half black—she would easily capture the Democratic Party nomination.
Barack Obama’s dark skin is the only real reason why he is deemed a “serious” candidate. Other than that, he wouldn’t even be slightly considered for the highest office in the land. When is this “I want to prove that I’m not a racist” nonsense going to end?
Barack “Barry” Obama
Shouldn’t that be Barack “Bob” Obama? Because Barack “Bob Hope” Obama might be a copyright infringement…
The Obama campaign feels more and more like a cult. It seems totally centered around the wonderfulness of being an Obama worshiper and experiencing the cult of Obama. It reminds me of the original EST from the 1970′s run by Werner Ehrhard, who himself used to be in Scientology.
At some point Obama will be forced to make known in detail what his position will be on taxes, Iran, Israel, Iraq, federal budget deficits and school vouchers. I am afraid hope, good vibes and change seem like vague and ephemeral hot air slogans in a balloon that will be punctured in the fall by McCain.
Cults do not last long and often have ugly endings.
BareTalk Oblameus vs Shillary (or is that Shrillary…can she be debarked like a Basenji, or worse, is that cackle contagious?)
B.O. is barreling down a track toward the European Socialism Party’s nomination, picking up stench and steam based upon a platform written in invisible ink, upon a voting record of “present” and upon white papers written on an Etch-a-Sketch, which…when shaken vigorously, fade to gray (we don’t say the word black, it’s simply implied) so that new positions can be drawn tomorrow.
Baretalk’s positions are like the Kama Sutra for Seniors. Lots of positions, I just can’t seem to bend enough to get into any of them.
The You Bet Your Life magic word for his campaign is “change”, I know, I’ve seen the duck drop down with it in his mouth several times…but what precisely is the change from “present”?
Absent?
Of course, the “Two-fer” candidate (much like Bennifer or TomKat)…is our own Shillary and do not ever count out a comeback kid. After all there are over a billion Chinese and if votes can be bought for a couple of nights in the Lincoln bedroom and a few military secrets, given our porous borders, anything is possible.
If only Chicago was repositioned in San Diego. The Bears might find a quarterback after 50 years of searching, the Cubs could find a World Series after 100 years of searching, and all those poor dead people wouldn’t have to be bothered by precinct captains for yet another election day “dig” for votes.
Lest we forget Baretalk is not the only one with Chicago democratic machine connections, where the “graveyard shift” works overtime on election day, and remember our Maine Township girl did get one Kennedy family member endorsement.
(Although as noted above, something must be done about that cackle, is it possible to get Hollywood to infuse a laugh track at appropriate moments? Not likely, since the TinselTonsils set are bloviating for Oblameus)
Of course, it’s not as spontaneous as “live laughing”, but at least it won’t sound as if her next puff piece with a fawning Meredith, Diane or Matt will have her traveling to the set on a broomstick.
You would think the Republicans would have a cakewalk to at least the debates…but they seem to have borrowed Dick Cheney’s hunting rifle and are looking down the sight toward their own figurative foot.
Rush has launched a “McCain Ain’t Able” campaign and if the conservatives decide to sit it out while the Euro-Socialist party serves up the bubbly on election night in November, the hangover when we all wake up the next day will be half coronation, half coronary. (What did I just do, Jimmy Joe?)
And Huckabee Finn is floating his campaign upstream which,other than creating mischief, appears there to no real end, other than to make a good run spoiled.
In the end of the primary silly season, it appears that the debates will be McCain vs Baretalk and it will play out like a Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) song:
McCain at 72: “It’s not time to make a change, just sit down, take it easy, you’re still young, that’s your fault, there’s so much you have to know…”
Baretalk at 12 1/2:”If THEY were right, I’d agree but it’s THEM you know not me…”
Oh, well. American politics is like eating blowfish. It costs a fortune, is tasteless and it’s likely to kill you…but, that’s the thrill of it, I suppose.