April 23, 2008
Groundhog Day
Punxsutawney Phil has just informed us that we have at least two more weeks of this race. On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania by a little over 9 points, putting her effectively in the same position she was in after Ohio. Prior to the Texas and Ohio primaries, Clinton was perceived dead in the water, trailing by too much to possibly come back from. She won the two states by enough to stay in the race, but not enough to shake the perception of a campaign on its last legs. Pennsylvania yielded the same results, with a margin of victory big enough for her to have a claim to stay in the race but small enough for it to be a bad claim.
Prior to Pennsylvania, intrade had Obama at an 81.6% chance at the nomination, and after the shock of a near-double-digit loss in a big state, that number moved down only 1.6% to 80%. This, in a nutshell, has been Clinton’s problem all along. Even when all the cards are stacked in her favor, she fails to win in landslides.
Take Texas and Ohio. These were states that were entirely in her favor, with a large hispanic population in Texas, a working class white population in Ohio, large primaries in both states, large proportions of catholics in Texas, etc. Given this perfect storm, and 20 point leads she had held in both states, she could have expected to win both states by at least 15%, instead finishing with a 10 point win in Ohio and a loss, delegatewise, in Texas. In two perfect storms for her, she was able to get a net margin of less delegates than Obama got out of Idaho. In Pennsylvania, it was a slightly different story, with Clinton taking a net margin of 13-15 delegates, but it was still a bad performance. Some polls had Clinton up more than 25 points in the weeks leading up to the primary, but again she squandered any chance of making a sizeable dint in Obama’s delegate lead, which still stands at about 130 delegates.
The reason this is worrisome for her is because blowouts win Democratic nominations, due to the proportional representation. Obama won several contests by more than 50 points, and has won the majority of his victories in landslide wins. A 10 point win may not seem much different than a 20 point win, but in terms of delegates, a 20 point win is twice as useful as a ten point one. One of Clinton’s fatal flaws has been forfeiting states like Idaho, Alaska, Maine, etc, and allowing Obama to rack up huge delegate margins. Obama has shown what happens when you contest a state that you never had a chance of winning. Clinton won Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas combined by about the same margin of delegates by which Obama won Kansas, meaning that victories in three of the six biggest states were made effectively worthless by Clinton not seeing that running up the score makes a big difference.
Due to her underperforming in those three pivotal states, Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, Clinton has no choice but to do something she has done in only one out of 45 contests thus far; overperform. She has to win the most votes in North Carolina, and win Indiana by over ten to tread water. The problem with this expectation is that Obama leads by 10 in North Carolina and trails only by 2 in Indiana. Thus far, Obama has improved his numbers by at least few points by election day in virtually every state he’s campaigned in. Clinton will have to not only stop that trend, but reverse it. If she pulls off the upset win in North Carolina and dominates Indiana, she really will be able to open up questions about Obama’s ability to win big states and working class whites, otherwise there will be no more field in which to move the goal posts.
Clinton Loses The Support of Her Most Steadfast Ally…And Makes a Bone-Chilling Comment
The editorial board of the New York times, often considered by far the most pro-Clinton news source, wrote a scathing editorial about the New York senator, saying her recent advertisement was out of the playbook of Karl Rove and blaming her for what they called “mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests.” The final straw, it appeared, that made the Gray Lady effectively withdraw their endorsement of the Gray Lady was the phrase the the senator uttered on ABC yesterday morning, reiterating the position that she had stated on “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” the night before:
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran[...]we would be able to totally obliterate them.”
The Princeton dictionary defines obliterate as: “do away with completely, without leaving a trace.” There is no mistaking for the meaning of her statement, which is that she intends to anihilate a nation of 72 million people if they attack our allies. To put that into perspective, about 72 million people died in the entirety of world war 2, and that extent of destruction would take 450 copies of the nuclear bomb we dropped on Hiroshima. Clinton twice in two days advocated for a reactionary genocide against Iran if Israel is attacked. I’m sure that’s not truly her position, but she should really apologize for, and clarify her position ASAP, as the statement she made made Obama’s statement that “we will strike” Pakistan seem pacifistic.
That’s the Muse.
