First, with all the delegates at stake, you might think this could be a big day for one of the candidates. It won't. I'm predicting a delegate margin of less than 10 for the day.
Vermont and Rhode Island: Obama wins Vermont in a landslide and Hillary wins Rhode Island comfortably. As a result, the states will cancel each other out in delegates. Oh, and McCain wins comfortably in both. Move along, nothing to see here.
Ohio: Hillary wins by a narrow margin, but gains only a small delegate advantage. I was tempted to go with Obama because he's been gaining quickly and he's been outperforming the polls recently. But the Hillary started moving back up recently and I wasn't so sure. What pushed me over to Clinton is the recent Zogby poll showing Obama in the lead. Contrary to popular opinion, Zogby isn't actually the worst pollster. But he's bad enough to bet against with confidence. Oh, and McCain wins comfortably.
Texas: The counting goes well into the night with Obama winning by a razor-thin margin. But because of the bizarre delegate system in Texas (check the comments on the previous post for more detail), Obama actually gets a bigger delegate margin than Clinton gets in Ohio. As for McCain, if there were any chance of him losing the nomination, this would be a close race. But the far right has a campaign to vote for Hillary and Texas allows crossover voting. So McCain still wins comfortably.
Final Results: In terms of delegates I'm calling it a net 4 delegates for Obama, and a tiny win for Clinton in the overall popular vote. It doesn't really matter for McCain, Huckabee will finally drop out. But what about Clinton? She will end the night a little more behind and her chances will look pretty grim. But she won't drop out because she won Ohio, THE MOST IMPORTANT STATE IN AMERICA. She'll argue that she has more appeal in the swing states and deserves the nomination even if she can't win the pledged delegate battle.
But Wait, Is There More?: Yes, there could be. Gov Charlie Crist of Florida has offered to re-run the Democratic primary. Hillary would rather take her previous win, but she might not get it if the Rules Committee doesn't go along. So she might bite at that offer. And Obama would look really bad if he balked. He'd have to go along. So maybe Hillary could pick up some more delegates in Florida. What's especially interesting about the timing of the offer is that it would allow Republicans time to switch parties and throw the election more towards Hillary. Who knows? This move might put Florida Republicans in the position of deciding the Democratic nominee. I'll note that Gov. Crist is a big supporter of McCain and let you be the cynic.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I'll try to post more later, but the thing that rings most true with me is something Begala said on CNN last night (quoting someone else):
"Democrats want to fall in love. Republicans want to fall in line."
That right there is the essence of the Republican advantage, and why i think it's more and more likely that we'll be saying, "Hello President McCain" next January.
I'll second Begala's sentiment. It's almost as good as Will Rogers: "I'm not a member of any organized party, I'm a Democrat!" Watching the right wing blogosphere, I can see that they are already falling in line behind McCain, even though they hate him. In the end, I'll vote for Hillary if I have to, but many independents won't. What's sad is that McCain left himself really open to attack with the John Hagee endorsement. But Hillary and Obama were attacking each other instead. And the media would never attack McCain on their own. It's pretty amazing that a candidate for president would seek the endorsement of a man who advocates a global genocide against all non- Christians, and nobody cares. Hagee is talking about killing more than four billion people, McCain has a two hour meeting with him to discuss foreign policy, of all things, and nobody seems to care. Obama gets endorsed by Farakhan, rejects the endorsement, and Obama is the one with the problem in the media's eyes. Amazing.
I'm so sickened to be a Democrat. Even taking into consideration that both Clinton and Obama are excellent candidates for the Presidency. But how the people of this nation can not coalesce behind a single candidate is beyond me, and speaks to the failure of the Democratic party as a whole.
We have a President who has destroyed the economy, continues to advocate fighting a wildly unpopular war, has pursued disasterous foreign policy, circumscribed personal liberty and freedom, avocated torture, ignored sound environmental policy, stood in the way of scientific progress, and worst of all, squandered the worldwide good will the nation carried in the wake of 9/11.
But somehow, the Democrats still argue of choices 1A and 1B, while the Republicans solidify their base, hone their message, and get ready to kick some pathetic Democratic ass yet again. How is this possible, given that list above, which only scratches the surface of the case against another Republican administration?
I've said this many times before, but the Democratic party is completely ideologically bankrupt and incompetent. There is no base, there is no coalition, there is no clear set of values advocated by all. Most Democrats are like me, who only identify themselves as Democrats because "at least their not Republicans".
Death to the Democratic party. A more pathetic bunch of losers I've never seen in my life.
And Tom, you make an excellent point on John Hagee. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Why aren't the Democrats jumping up and down on McCain over this? Is the "liberal media" asleep at the wheel?
I guess I'm not too upset about not coalescing around a candidate. There are good reasons to support either candidate, so the decision really isn't that easy. Yes, it gives McCain a pass on some of his bullshit for now. But there's plenty more bullshit left in McCain, so I think the dems will be okay in the general election. Unless we bomb Iran, and then people may rally around McCain (Americans love wars, especially the ones they haven't lost yet). But the ongoing primary does keep McCain off the news cycle (mostly). What I'd like to see, however is for Hillary to stop her love fest with McCain and start criticizing him. And I'd like to see Obama criticize McCain more than he has. But most of all, it's high time that the media realize that John McCain is not a saint, that he does have some crazy ideas, and that he deserves some criticism. They can start with acknowledging that McCain actually supports the use of torture, despite his claims to the contrary. He even supports redefining torture in such a way that his experience could not possibly be considered torture, but still reserves the right to claim he was tortured. And let's lose this "maverick" characterization. He's not a maverick, he's just a dick. Just because all his colleagues hate him doesn't mean he's right or noble.
In an ideal world, where political discourse and the exchange of ideas informed debate and policy, it would be a great thing to have this go straight to the convention, and continue to vet these candidates further.
But we know that's not the case so they will take the gloves off and slug it out, and hope that the other makes an unforgivable gaffe that eliminates them from contention.
My problem is not with the candidates. It's with the party itself, which has no idea who they are appealing to. Republicans know who their base is, and people who identify themselves as Republicans know what they believe in.
Democrats are incapable of this. They're much more focused on what they don't want, rather than what they want. Again, I have no problem with two strong candidates vying for the nomination. But that's not what's happening here.
Obama had clear momentum going into Tuesday. But he showed the famous Democratic unwillingness to deliver a knockout blow. Clinton doesn't suffer from this by the way. She'll saw him in half to get the nomination.
In the end, what do these candidates have to offer other than, "at least we're not Republicans". What about the Audacity of Hope? For God sakes, step up to the mike and be a driving force for change. The country is hungry for it, and demands strong leadership. If only a Democrat would rise to this challenge. The closest Democrats have come to this in recent years was Howard Dean, who in retrospect, was a candidate that should have received greater consideration. I didn't even consider him myself with my own vote.
His stewardship of the DNC has not been stellar, however. And his campaign was sunk as his voice cracked with enthusiasm. This is American Politics.
Robert Heinlein in his Future History timeline deemed these The Crazy Years. Prescient words from the Grandmaster.
Post a Comment