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Is anyone else struck by how this contest seems very two centuries ago? It's organizing based, there are really no policy disagreements, the party rules and establishments are fighting with each other over identities, partisanship and participation are quite high, regional disparities are hugely significant, and the will of the public could easily be thwarted due to party machine control. I'd love some historians to chime in, but it certainly looks to me as if we are entering a new era of courts and parties.
I've just gone over the Obama campaign's projection spreadsheet, and the campaign is seriously overperforming so far. They grabbed a three delegate margin from the Virgin Islands, instead of a one delegate margin, they took eight from Nebraska instead of six, twenty six from Washington instead of twenty, and eleven instead of six from Louisiana. That's a net gain of fifteen over what they had projected. And the DC, Maryland, and Virginia primaries are going to obviously exceed projections for Obama. In fact the leaked projections are so cautious that it leads me to think that they are not at all what the campaign genuinely thinks but an expectations management tool.
Still, it's pretty clear that Obama is systematically overperforming, and if this trend continues he should come out ahead by a couple hundred pledged delegates (even including Michigan and Florida), though not enough to seal the deal without help from the superdelegates. Based on last night's vote, Obama has more delegates, more votes, and more states than Clinton.
The Clinton's will not give up, and lots of the caucus states have obscure rules that suggest that delegate fights could happen at state conventions all over the country, leading to the overturning of caucus results. I remember watching Harold Ickes vote count at the DNC Convention in 2005 for a Vice Chair race; he is experienced at this stuff. If she can, she will win the nomination outright, but if she cannot, she will use any tool legitimate or not to do so. And frankly, I would expect nothing less of Obama. This is how the DNC set up the process, there is just no incentive for any kind of compromise here, and there is no 'Nash equilibrium', as Steve Clemons puts it. You can't bargain over the Presidency, the prize is just so big and it is not divisible. And once there's a nominee, this person has zero incentive not to break any deal they cut with the other candidate; there's no tit-for-tat here since the game is played once.
I've heard a number of rumors that Hillary Clinton wants Evan Bayh as her VP, and it goes without saying that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama want the VP slot. Moreover, I just don't see any way that a cautious party establishment would put a black man or a woman on the bottom of a ticket headlined by a black man or woman, and certainly not in the name of unity. Party unity is not very important to anyone, really, except base Democratic voters and activists, and it's obvious that both groups will solidify against John McCain very quickly.
Anyway, given that the Republican Party establishment is essentially stealing the nomination for John McCain against the wishes of the Republican voting base, and given that there is record turnout and organization on the Democratic side, I'm not as worried that Democratic party division is a bad thing. In fact, I think it's a very good thing, as the number of donors and activists is exploding, and nothing gets you ready for a contested election like... a contested election.
There will be bad blood for a long time over this nomination, but that's going to be relatively confined to insiders since the candidates don't actually disagree on any major policy ideas. Remember, Democrats not on the internets and not in the political junkie class tend to like Democrats. And the superdelegates will probably submit to public pressure to go with the person who swept their state or district, since both Obama and Clinton have substantial party machine support in their corner.
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