I’m just dropping in real fast to leave some rabbit-pellet sized commentary on the results of the Pennsylvania primary last night. Hillary won big. Check out all the pollsters and commentators to find out why or how. I just want to comment on a few things, all of which, to some degree are related to why I haven’t blogged about the state of the campaign for a while.
None of this matters anymore. Obama and Clinton will be charging my state, Indiana, now. As a matter of fact, I think she’s in my city, giving a speech right now, as I write this. I thank them both in advance for the wheelbarrows of money they bring with them. I will gladly where a PORCH DOG PROUDLY SUPPORTS ___(Fill in the blank)___ for whichever candidate will pay for the insane amount of money it now takes to get to and from my poorly-paying non-profit job.
And this amount of attention has already inspired some of the local commentariat to say something akin to “for the first time, Indiana matters during the primaries.” No we don’t. No state has mattered since Tsunami Tuesday when both candidates proved that both would stay in and continue to split each states’ votes basically down the middle thereby depriving both of them the overwhelming majority needed to lock up the nomination.
More to the point, Obama came out far enough ahead on February 5 that it was mathematically impossible for Clinton to win the lead at all and pragmatically impossible that either would do it. So, while previous Super Tuesdays reduced the remaining states to no more than symbolic democratic value by choosing the nominees before their primaries, Tsunami Tuesday has reduced states to merely repeating the decision of all previous primaries. Each subsequent primary has amounted to negligible gains in the overall division of delegates.
The voters in Indiana don’t matter. Superdelegates in Indiana matter. For example, some of the talk today is whether Baron Hill will endorse Clinton (because that’s who his district seems to support) or whether he will go for Obama to undercut the progressive vote that currently supports one of his three competitors in the primary.
And Indiana superdelegates are just a smaller version of what the race has come to mean nationally. Large victories in certain states, like Pennsylvania, are supposed to act as messages to unpledged superdelegates around the country. Clinton’s 9-point victory in the Keystone State yesterday is supposed to reassure the ambivalent that she has what it takes to win in November.
But that is all neither here nor there. What it has really come down to is this: the superdelegates are either going to vote for Obama and therefore confirm the votes of the majority of the nation, or they will vote for Clinton (who cannot earn the majority vote at this point) and deny the majority opinion. How you feel about that is the largest determinant on how you feel about this continuing primary season. Personally I would prefer if Indiana’s vote didn’t matter in the old fashioned way it used to not matter.
Clinton has been unrelenting in her pursuit of seating the Michigan and Florida voters–a tactic that is as undemocratic as it is disgusting. But if she finds a way to convince the rules committee that doing so would benefit the party (it won’t) she stands a better chance of gaining the nomination but still at the risk of alienating a large segment of her voters.
Furthermore, Pennsylvania proved nothing. Pennsylvania will go to the Democrat in November (most likely) regardless of whether Clinton or Obama is on the ticket on Election Day. They will go Democratic because 160,000 Republicans have already switched parties there (a deficit of 320,000 to the Republicans) and that number is likely to grow between now an the general. They will go Democratic because of the war in Iraq and they will vote Democratic because of the economy which is only going to get worse between now and the fall. At the very least we are going to see increased gas prices during the summer which is sure to hurt McCain’s continued support of Bush’s military and economic “strategies.”
Sure Pennsylvania is a swing state, but the numbers are in and in the general they support Clinton and Obama not one or the other. Voting preference in the primaries does not reflect voter preference in the general and superdelegates are more aware of this (I would hope) than the general public and (apparently) the reporters covering the race.
Clinton deserves kudos for her big win last night (kind of) but she should still just sit down and let Obama and the DNC take on McCain.
Okay, you’re absolutely right. But you’re being logical, and when has our politics ever been anything even close to logical?
Comment by Kurt — April 23, 2008 @ 6:07 pm |
yep.
her supporters are right, Hillary is History
The only winners in the Big Primary Win: State of Denial (& John McCain)
http://loomisnews.wordpress.com/
& check out NYTimes editorial there for her “kudos”
Comment by loomisnews — April 23, 2008 @ 6:07 pm |
That’s a very thoughtful and thorough analysis. I would argue that the eleven states after Tsunami Tuesday were really what did Hillary in, but I don’t think that really affects your premise.
You’re absolutely correct about them splitting the delegate vote down the middle. Obama has no larger a pledged lead now than he did two months ago, but does have a bigger lead overall because of the superdelegates. He’ll make up whatever he lost last night in two weeks. And Hillary will be right back where she was Monday, and where she was before Ohio/Texas. Hopefully realism will set in sooner rather than later.
Comment by thegreatgeno — April 23, 2008 @ 6:20 pm |
Kurt: Actually politics seems to follow some pretty broad patterns that we can recognize and name with a certain amount of confidence. It appears less logical when we mire ourselves into the particulars. I like to think of politics as being less like math and more like the weather. Barring something catastrophic like global warming or a reversal in the magnetic poles you can expect North American summers to be warmer than its winters. The structure is pretty regular. It’s the agents, the individuals that sometimes try to buck the system that leads anomalies like the continuing Clinton campaign. Although I think I know where you’re coming from. Politics appeals to its own logic, quite distinct from the simplicity and clarity of thought we tend to associate with the word.
Loomis: I think I agree with this comment for the most part. I don’t think the Democratic primary is currently helping McCain in a positive way. Rather, it’s helping him by preventing the Democrats from attacking him instead of each other. Hopefully the DNC is saving up the goodies so they can just hit him one after the other in such quick succession he can’t recover before Election Day.
Geno:
Thanks. I’d have to go back and look at the numbers but I’m not even sure that those 11 Obama victories in a row helped all that much since they really did basically split the delegates right down the middle. It certainly helped him shore up a substantial amount of the added popular vote which helped sway hesitant superdelegates to his side early. If Clinton and Obama had shared those 11 victories say 5/6 or 6/5, I think we would still be looking at exactly the same picture as we are today. –Which, I think just is the long-winded way of repeating what you essentially said.
As far as making up what he lost in 2 weeks, whether he does or not won’t change anything. He could lose every primary between now and the convention and he’ll still have a majority of the pledged delegate vote (provided they continue sharing states at 60/40 or 55/45 as they have been.) Word here is that he’s losing Indiana but it just doesn’t matter.
I honestly can’t think of why’s she’s sticking in. She obviously isn’t aiming for a VP slot. She knows she’s not helping the party…or the country. It seems that she’s really out to confirm for everyone that she really feels she’s the best one for us right now and that to back out of the race would be to perform a disservice to her country and its people. If that’s true, you have to admire her tenacity, because it is exactly what we should demand from our politicians: integrity in the face of adversity; self-discipline, and the pursuit of high ideals at all costs. The problem is that I doubt it’s anything so high-minded. I think that she feels the rules committee will rule in her favor, seat MI and FL, tilt the popular odds in her favor in order to score the superdelegate vote. If that’s the case, well, golly, it just seems a deeply cynical way to “win” the presidency and one that will taint her stay in the White House for however long she can hold onto it. It’s win-lose for her and lose-lose for us.
Comment by JimPanzee — April 23, 2008 @ 7:22 pm |
Thanks, Jim. That does make a hell of a lot more sense.
Comment by Kurt — April 24, 2008 @ 12:45 am |