I'm Ready For This to be Over… Part II

by: Mike Lux

Tue Mar 04, 2008 at 15:25


So I'm having lunch with an old friend from the Clinton administration today, a veteran of the '92 and '96 campaigns and top-notch political operative, a true-blue Hillary loyalist who has maxed out to her campaign, took time off to go to Iowa for the last two weeks, helped out in the Potomac primary, etc. She is feeling guilty about not being in Ohio or Texas for these last few days, bemoaning the way the campaign has gone, talking emotionally about what a great President that Hillary would be.

At some point, I gently ask the question that has been on my mind for awhile: even if you get good news tonight, is there any scenario you see for a Hillary nomination that doesn't involve a really, really ugly endgame? You know, a nasty credentials fight, high-pressure arm-twisting and unseemly deal-cutting with superdelegates, continued trashing of Obama on every imaginable topic?

There was silence across the table. She said, "No, I can't think of any other way at this point."

Mike Lux :: I'm Ready For This to be Over… Part II

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I'm Ready For This to be Over… Part II | 46 comments
Waiting for Obama to self-destruct? (0.00 / 0)
I'd guess Clinton's best shot at this point is to see whether this Rezko thing really blows up in Obama's face. If he handles the Rezko news cycles poorly, Clinton starts looking like a more palatable option.

So far, I haven't seen a tremendous amount of evidence that Obama's campaign is adept at quashing news stories that aren't complimentary of Barack. This whole CTV-NAFTA thing is still getting play, for crying out loud. Now he's got Rezko prominently on his plate, and there are conventional news stories right now suggesting that there might be some dirty tactics going on regarding the Texas caucuses. (The poll-watching allegations in Ohio seem like much ado about nothing, but pre-filling out caucus forms in Texas ... Obama's spinmeisters should really start trying to keep that from getting any additional media play. It really hurts his branding as the candidate of change.) They really should get out in front of this stuff.

If Obama doesn't self-destruct somehow, I think your friend may be right. In that scenario, Clinton's best chance is for things to get really, really ugly.

Thing is... we haven't even got to the (0.00 / 0)
Clinton(s) Rezko stories yet...  Obama has played the Party game -- so far...

However, what's going to stop him threatening or going ahead and doing the same thing she's doing?

I believe the Party has to be seen to intervene -- that is if it can.

I live in WA State, I know democrats who were ex-moderate republicans (also anti-war) that really detest Hillary, if they see her get real ugly then they might well switch to McCain -- and they're anti-war!  The pro-choice issue isn't important to them.

[ Parent ]
I'll throw in Party "Leadership" if there is actually any... (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
The ego, the shortsighted ... arrrgh~! (0.00 / 0)
And it will be for nought. Like the troll that used to be  Nader, Clinton would take us all with her.  

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Your description (0.00 / 0)
Your description of the process is ugly. The process is republican, not democratic; it's what we were bred to believe in, and it's beautiful.
Different standards (4.00 / 1)
Why is this issue always put forth from the point of view of the Obama campaign?  It'll probably be ugly no matter who wins at this point.  Can you imagine Obama winning the nomination only because Florida and Michigan delegates weren't counted?  You don't think that would be ugly?  Things would be so much easier if Obama dropped out.
Count Fl and MI??? (0.00 / 0)
You can't count them both.  Clinton is the only major candidate on the Michigan ballot--if you want to count it then you would have to give Obama all the votes cast that did not go to Clinton (that's half!).  

Even if you count the Florida votes and apportion the Michigan votes on the above formula Obama still has a considerable edge.  Therefore, the notion that Obama should suspend his campaign has no merit, however, there is still sufficient reasons for Clinton to suspend her campaign (not enough delegates to win!).

[ Parent ]
Nope. (0.00 / 0)
If he keeps winning a few more delegates here and there, as he has been for the entire campaign; and if superdelegates start moving his way, there will be overwhelming evidence that Clinton has no chance to win the nomination well before the convention.  

The only way Clinton wins is at the nomination, period.  And, furthermore, it is very difficult to imagine a scenario in which Clinton has more pledged delegates at the convention, especially if Florida re-votes.  So were she to win, it would have to be incredibly ugly and divisive, and would likely result in a massive drop in the number of black and young voters for a decade....  

[ Parent ]
Its not (4.00 / 1)
Its not from the point of view of the Obama campaign; its from the point of view of the leader in the race, which happens to be Obama.  Big difference.  Its looking like Obama can win this without it getting ugly but Clinton would need a credential fight etc. to win.
[ Parent ]
From Obama's point of view? (4.00 / 5)
Sorry, this is from a who is ahead point of view. I have been neutral this whole race, swaying back and forth personally, alternately praising and challenging both campaigns depending on the news of the day. But Obama is substantially ahead in delegates; is very likely to win upcoming battles in WY, MS, NC, IN by sizable margins; is likely to do well in the overall delegate count even if he loses the popular vote in TX and OH because of TX screwy delegate system and a big win in VT. That means that even if FL and MI were fully accredited (which would be highly controversial) and Hillary wins PA, Obama likely goes into Denver with a decent sized delegate lead. If Hillary still wins the nomination at that point, it will be by winning ugly. Them's just the facts.  
[ Parent ]
Because this is an issue that frontrunners bring up. (0.00 / 0)
The reason to bring this up from the point of view of the Obama campaign is that under the current rules (no Florida and Michigan) he's the front-runner by a significant margin. He's also getting very close to the point where seating Michigan and Florida won't eliminate his lead - even if he nets a slight delegate loss tonight, he may well reach that point with (very likely) large wins in Mississippi and Wyoming prior to Pennsylvania.

By contrast, Hillary would need a combination of a major shift in her campaign's performance, astonishingly large wins in the remaining states, a total reversal of superdelegate movement, and a change in the rules in order to seat the Michigan and Flordia delegates in order to win. While any and all of these are possible, they are extremely unlikely and certainly won't happen without the kind of ruthless endgame that Mike is worried about. Obama may well get the nomination without having to as negative as Hillary would have to in order to win.

[ Parent ]
He leads in delegates now even with the supers counted (0.00 / 0)
Per Chris:  
An interesting side note: if you use my pledged delegate count (Obama +161), and CBS's superdelegate count (Clinton +35), then Obama leads by five delegates even with superdelegates, Florida, and Michigan included.

If the story about the 50 super delegates is true, it would wipe out whatever she wins tonight.  How is it then not ugly for her to continue?

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.

[ Parent ]
this is the very thing (4.00 / 3)
Mike, this has been my great worry. It's what has driven me beyond distraction, and made me less than my usual patient self, to the dismay of others and myself.

Few have focused on what it will take, what the end game must be, for Clinton to take this nomination. The media egg it all on, because if you were them, why wouldn't you want to cover a fight to the death.

Which is what this will be, in my opinion. Others -- colleagues of yours and mine -- disagree with me about this, believing we could put it all behind us.

But the practical consequences of taking the nomination away from the first African American in U.S. history to earn it will be profound. We can't wish them away. It would be nearly the same were the situation reversed, and Obama went to Denver substantially behind in delegates and managed to take the nomination away from the first woman in U.S. history to earn it.

For it to be over, (4.00 / 2)
folks like your friend -- proven Clinton loyalists -- are going to have to awaken HRC's better nature and enable her to pull out for the good of the party. Trouble is, just what makes her a strong candidate is what makes this hard for her.

Can it happen here?
Also worth noting: (4.00 / 1)
The party will not allow the doomsday scenario to occur. Therefore, Hillary Clinton can not win the nomination.

This really can't be emphasized enough.

The party (4.00 / 1)
isn't an actual entity, it's whatever a majority of delegates who are eligible to vote in Denver say it is.  
[ Parent ]
Right (0.00 / 0)
And that's exactly what I meant by "the party."
[ Parent ]
The primary process has been a debacle in waiting from conception (4.00 / 1)
Quickly...if the tables were turned with Obama behind in delegates he would keep going on.....many would expect him to keep going on....and would cheer him in doing so rather than condemn him for potentially harming the party.

However the problem is the now the nexus between the disastrous and stupid parts of the proportional voting sytem and the growth of the internet....both in terms of organizing and fundraising.

Initially the nominating process relied on the winnowing role of Iowa and New Hampshire to keep comity within the Democratic party.   The internet has completely thrown that out the window.  

Indeed Tad Devine, one of the architect of this misbegotten attempt at more democracy,  wrote in his early strategy memo about potential outcomes,  that 2 out of 4 scenarios involved just this kind of potential battle.

IN THE FUTURE THIS WILL HAPPEN AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.  

Internet organizing and internet fundraising has made this debacle inevitable.  

I think we should go back to winner take all....It makes no sense that here in the NY 8th Congressional distict...Clinton won by 16-17 points, yet the delegate split was 3-3.  I am not complaining of unfairness.  I am complaining of a process in which building an undeniable lead has to be done slowly bit by bit....it guarentees a long slow drip of a campaign....which could indeed lead to a contentious convention.

Another fix, but mathmatically more difficult to figure out, is to make sure that there are no EVEN NUMBERED CD'S.  Odd numbered CD's would theoreticially allow the build up of a significant lead.   Or the vote is proportional to the state....

This process is disastrous and MUST BE CHANGED TO A MORE CLEAR CUT METHOD.

"Incrementalism isn't a different path to the same place, it could be a different path to a different place"
Stoller

Process. (0.00 / 0)
I totally agree that it is a flawed process, although I'm not clear that winner take all is the answer.
And if Obama was as far behind in delegates, I and a lot of other folks would be urging him to get out.
[ Parent ]
I know you would (0.00 / 0)
but I am not sure that you would have any company amongst Obama supporters.

"Incrementalism isn't a different path to the same place, it could be a different path to a different place"
Stoller
[ Parent ]
if Obama had lost 11 straight ... (0.00 / 0)
... the media and party elders would demand that he exit the race.
[ Parent ]
Yeah, it wouldn't matter what us Obamabots thought... (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
Obama (0.00 / 0)
I don't know that I believe Obama would keep going on.  Hillary has just not done well in this race, though everyone keeps expecting her to come back because her last name is Clinton.  Obama exceeded expectations on February 5th and won the most delegates.  He won by extremely high margins through all of February.  If this was reversed, and Obama had been beaten in those ways, I believe people would see him as a spoiler, especially with the schedule favoring Clinton(reversing everything).  I believe he would be dismissed if the roles were reversed.
[ Parent ]
Based on the ferency of his supporters (0.00 / 0)
I doubt he would just give up.
[ Parent ]
Yes (0.00 / 0)
The process seems to be designed to actually make it harder for a candidate to build a lead than if it were just raw popular vote.  That's insane, if things like winning general elections are at all of interest.
[ Parent ]
How about winner take all in each CD plus a bonus (0.00 / 0)
That way different parts of the state would be heard.  The problem is that it means that areas that would go heavily for one candidate won't get attention.

Ok then, winner take all in each CD but a bonus number of delegates for winning the state's popular vote.  That would  encourage GOTV in areas of each candidate's strength to ratchet up the popular vote.

Another way is to remove the requirement for proportional rep and let each state decide.  I think that's what the GOP does.

The main problem is that rules are done 2 years before the convention, and the party is always trying to correct perceived past mistakes and give a bonus to whomever feels 2 years out that they will have an advantage, but that is soo unknowable, really.  

The one thing I like about the rules this year is that the prize seems to have gone to the candidate with the campaign that showed the most organization, flexibility and adaptability, and those are very good qualities in a President.

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.

[ Parent ]
Nah. This isn't his only shot so he could and (0.00 / 0)
likely would gracefully exit and throw his support behind the Dem nominee. He's young and has no need to slash and burn his way to the white house.  
[ Parent ]
Winner take all (4.00 / 2)
First, if the situation were reversed and Obama had experienced 11 straight losses by 17 points or more and was so far behind in delegates that his campaign was reduced to spinning fantasy scenarios to explain how he could still pull it out, the media would be treating him the way they're treating Huckabee, not the way they're treating Clinton now, and it's likely his fundraising would have dried up and he'd have dropped out.

Second, winner take all is an incredibly undemocratic system. That's why people hate the Electoral College. The way the Republicans run their races, a candidate can win a state 35-30-20-15, and get all the delegates. The 65% of the state who voted for other candidates are ignored.

A winner-take-all system also makes it much more likely that the loser of the overall popular vote can win the most delegates. Remember that's what happened in the 2000 general election because of the winner-take-all Electoral College. I'm much more concerned about that than about a candidate getting a delegate or two more in one state while narrowly losing the popular vote for that state.

[ Parent ]
I hope you know your assumptions are wrong (0.00 / 0)
you say "Or the vote is proportional to the state...."

As you can see from the data on the front page, Obama has gotten 52% of the vote (counting only him and Clinton) and gotten 52% of the pledged delegates (counting only him and Clinton's.)  So you can complain about odd-even and some particular congressional district, but the net effect has been very little, less than 1%.  


New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.

[ Parent ]
Your friend is not very imaginative (0.00 / 0)
And I don't expect Hillary Clinton to put the Party through a Doomsday process on an off chance at victory.  She and her husband have 40 years of Party loyalty in the books, with a very very good loyalty report card.

Obama's press during the last week has been very bad, and a bit short of catastrophic.  He is still facing some very embarrassing open questions about Goolsbee's NAFTA chat and Rezko.  It is not at all out of the question that he could tank, and that's not just because of Hillary's dirty politics, etc., it's because of his own mistakes and his campaign's inability to handle them.

If that doesn't happen over the next month or so, she should pull out, and I expect she will.  If it does happen, Clinton could easily finish the primary season with a series of impressive wins, a 10-15% lead in the polls, and blood still in the water around Obama, in which case superdelegates would naturally flock to her without arm-twisting, court battles, smoke-filled rooms, or any of that good stuff.

Using Slate's nifty delegate counter, I ran the remaining primaries using very Clinton-optimistic (but not fantasy-Clinton-optimism, more like Obama-continues-tanking Clinton-optimism) assumptions, and had her slicing his pledged delegate lead down to 43 by the end, and that does not count FL & MI, which I think are going to have to count one way or another.  If the way they count is through a re-vote, and Obama has been tanking as this scenario presumes, then 20% Clinton wins in those two Clinton-friendly (old people in FL, unions in MI) states are not really a stretch.  That would actually give her the pledged-delegate lead.

This scenario is not probable, but it's not a fantasy dream scenario, either, not with Rezko's trial about to happen and some of the scuttlebutt about what might be revealed there.  Like I said, your friend is not too imaginative.

Mistakes. (0.00 / 0)
I would agree that this is not a fantasy, although some rocky waters this week is a long way from catastrophic. If he makes more mistakes, or doesn't react well to the shit Hillary and the media are now giving him, then all bets are off.  
[ Parent ]
Agree (0.00 / 0)
This week was probably more than my "bit" short of catastrophic, more like well short.  Nothing at all happened that's not survivable.

If this continues, Clinton is viable, and I don't blame her for hanging in there to see it does.  If it doesn't, like I said, I expect her to withdraw and I'll be personally disappointed if she doesn't.

I think Gore withdrew at the right time in the recount battle.  He fought every viable fight and no non-viable fights.  Once his real chances were gone he stepped aside to allow the country to heal.  I hope, and think, that Hillary would use that as a model.

[ Parent ]
According to a Washington Post poll (0.00 / 0)
most Democrats think Clinton should stay in the race if she does okay tonight.  They don't seem worried about some kind of bloodbath.  They seem to expect the candidates and their supporters to act like adults when this thing is over.  I think that's reasonable and I think it will happen, despite all the current hyperventilating.  It's in no one's interest to take part in a train wreck.  (As for "trashing" Obama--he's better off getting some of this stuff aired before the Republicans start pounding him.  He's not a perfect candidate.)
Fortunately or unfortunately the Clinton's new (0.00 / 0)
dirty laundry hasn't been aired at all yet. Is the MSM saving if for the GE?
[ Parent ]
I've been (0.00 / 0)
wondering about that stuff too.  I can think of 3 "stories" that haven't really gotten any coverage.  Obama, to his credit, hasn't stooped to trashing her with them.

vodamusic.com
[ Parent ]
I think the donor who gave them a plane (0.00 / 0)
to fly around in and 30 million bucks should have gotten some attention but it's not really on the radar. Coupled with a basic refusal to release their taxes and the fact that they've become very rich in a very short amount of time the MSM, who do not like the Clinton's one bit, would be able to create a major cloud over them. It really does seem like they're waiting to spring it on her.  
[ Parent ]
Don't forget Vince Foster (0.00 / 0)
God, are we back in the 90s again?
[ Parent ]
Well- its about Mike wanting it over (0.00 / 0)
and thats important.
Thanks. (0.00 / 0)
That's what I keep telling people.
[ Parent ]
Although I am neither a Clinton supporter or (0.00 / 0)
Obama supporter (was for Edwards so now I'm agnostic) here is the most level headed statement I've read:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008...

The fact is neither of these candidates if either continues can win it out right-- as the Armstrong write-- why should Clinton drop out anymore than Obama based on what is a small percentage spread of delegates if neither wins outright through the delegates, and she somehow wins the popular vote? What's the argument other than some want Obama to win and that's the media narrative?

[ Parent ]
What's weird is the CNN delegate (0.00 / 0)
counter shows that he can win it outright. If you project the likely wins and split the remaining SDs 50/50 he gets over 2100 delegates and she's under 2000.

Is that counter just screwy?

[ Parent ]
Not sure. (0.00 / 0)
I don't pretend to understand the arcane rules of delegate counts. I just feel like the Obama folks have been over selling their case a bit too much, and that the liberal blogs have been overselling super delegates are per se bad too much. Until today, I admit I didn't realize Obama couldn't win out right either under hte count without resorting to super delegates.
[ Parent ]
I imagine you wiill say , by the way, for the "good" of the party (0.00 / 0)
but I am a little confused why Clinton dropping out, given the scenario mentioned, anymore than Obama?
[ Parent ]
For the good of the party (0.00 / 0)
I think one of the two candidates needs to drop out as soon as possible. After PA at the very latest. Whether that is Obama or Clinton is not as important as that it is someone.

But the more likely scenario at this point is that Clinton will drop out, since Obama is the frontrunner.  

[ Parent ]
Maybe so, but way too many (0.00 / 0)
over sold the case for why she should have dropped out by now.
[ Parent ]
I'd prefer it to continue (0.00 / 0)
And for McCain to be praised by Hillary more.  Obama could totally use that praise in general election adds to hurt enthusiasm in the conservative base.

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I'm Ready For This to be Over… Part II | 46 comments
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