Political Shorts
Posted by David Darlington on 23 April 2008 | 19 responses
1. A blogger for the liberal magazine Mother Jones calls Hillary Clinton “the undead” candidate. She doesn’t have a shot at winning outright, but she has enough support to justify, to her at least, staying in the race.
2. In other news, there’s still a conservative who cares about civil liberties, privacy rights, small government, and stopping the unchecked expansion of executive power. Ladies and gentlemen, former House Manager for the Clinton impeachment, now Libertarian Party presidential candidate, Bob Barr. Ron Paul with less crazy? Color me interested.
3. An Inconvenient Truth 2: Hybrid Boogaloo
4. Indiana, you’re on the clock.
19 Responses to “Political Shorts”
Bob Barr is running? This is welcome news.
I checked and Barr is polling at 7% with just 36% name recognition. Of course, I have high doubts that he’d win, but I think once people get to know who he is, he could pull in numbers similar to Ross Perot in 1992.
Neither Dem nominee has a clear path to the magic # of pledged delegates — both will need the SuperDs for a win. So the logic of certain partisan lib pundits as to why one or the other should drop out escapes me. I wish these guys would shut up and let the remaining primary voters cast their votes. And then the SuperDs will cast their votes. That’s just the way it is.
Jerry,
The rationale isn’t hard to understand. Time spent fighting an eventual ally is time that cannot be spent fighting the opponent in the primary.
In any case, Obama DOES have a pretty clear path to the magic number of pledged delegates. It’ll take a month’s worth of primaries, but he could have them before May ends.
The prospect of Bob Barr garnering Perot-like popular vote counts is rife with irony and history repeating itself. The first President Clinton was helped into office by a third-party spoiler, so wouldn’t it be remarkable if Hillary Clinton wins the nomination and is helped into office by another spoiler? And not just any spoiler, mind you, but a man who helped to impeach her husband?
Hillary may be the undead candidiate, but the dead are supporting Obama.
Michael
You could also argue that more time spent fighting the primary opponent is less time (any time?) for McCain, more time for registering new Dems, and perhaps most importantly, building up ground games in the remaining primary states.
Delegate-wise, Obama is ahead 1795-1786. There are 55 uncommitted (31 for Edwards), 408 remaining delegates, and 340 remaining super delegates. That’s how close this is, and there’s no clear path to the nomination via pledged delegates for either candidate.
So again I say, partisan pundits and Bill Richardson should just shut up and let this play out. It’ll all be over by the end of June.
Jerry:
“Delegate-wise, Obama is ahead 1795-1786. There are 55 uncommitted (31 for Edwards)”
Where do you get your numbers? As of April 24, CNN has it 1,724 to 1,589.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/Delegate-wise, Obama is
Anonymous
I got the numbers from DemConWatch (DCW). They include FL and MI (because I don’t think Dean and the Rules Committee have signed a Democrats’ suicide pact, so those delegates will eventually be seated.)
Here’s the link:
Jerry, you really think an Obama candidacy would be “suicide” for the Dems? I do think Hillary would be a stronger campaigner, but she’d also motivate GOP voters more than anything or anyone else could, so in my estimation it’s a wash.
Also, if Hillary manages to get FL or MI delegates seated, or even gets a re-vote in one of those states, and wins the nomination with those delegates, the Obama campaign will rightly complain that the party changed the rules to help Hillary win–and the GOP will gladly echo that complaint in the general election.
Eric,
No no no! Either candidate will do just fine against McCain in the GE, IMO. But it would be suicidal for the Dems not to seat the delegates from FL and MI. Not seating their delegates would probably guarantee that large #s of angry Dems in both these crucial swing states will stay home in Nov.
Good lord…. Hillary has pulled even in Indiana (check out the last link). She really is indestructible.
Some wild outliers in that group of polls, DMD! SUSA has been pretty reliable so far in the primary, so as a non-pro election watcher, I kinda look to that one as my guide, and it still has Clinton up by double digits in IN, as I thought she has been for awhile. It was my impression that OBAMA is the one who has ground to make up in IN. I guess I have been mistaken.
Meanwhile it looks like Obama is still up in NC, but after she got endorsed by the gov, SUSA has her within 5 points. If she wins in IN and if she wins or comes close in NC, I’d say all bets are off from now until June. That, I imagine, would put the superDs in quite a quandry.
Personally, I think she’s been energized and he’s been exhausted as the campaigns drag on. How else to explain his recent series of mis-steps, culminating in his telling Chris Wallace that Rev Wright is a “legitimate political issue?” But he still is the one to beat.
Realclearpolitics’ poll of polls still has Obama up by double digits in North Carolina (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/nc/north_carolina_democratic_primary-275.html), but there’s been some serious movement towards Hillary Clinton in Indiana. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/in/indiana_democratic_primary-639.html#polls).
But it would be suicidal for the Dems not to seat the delegates from FL and MI. Not seating their delegates would probably guarantee that large #s of angry Dems in both these crucial swing states will stay home in Nov.
If that is true, then I submit that Dems in FL and MI are behaving exactly like spoiled children. They openly flouted the DNC’s rule that no primaries other than IA could be held before NH, so the party kept their word and stripped their delegates. And now that they’ve been duly punished, they are going to pout?
Personally, I don’t believe Democrats in FL or MI will stay home over this issue. I’d believe that some Hillary supporters would stay home if Obama gets the nomination, and vice versa, but whether or not their states’ delegates get to vote at the convention won’t matter in the end.
Eric
There’s a really good piece online about all this by Wayne Barrett, called, “Could the Republicans Pick the Democratic Nominee: The Untold Story of How the GOP Rigged Florida and Michigan.” Don’t let the title be a turn-off, it would have been more accurate description to say “Accidentally Rigged,” but that might have drawn fewer readers.
Basically, Barrett found that a good case could be made that Dem legislators in both states mounted serious efforts to stop the move-up primary legislation. If the DNC had followed its own rules it would have conducted investigations into those efforts, and that if it had found the efforts to be in good faith, no punishment at all would be required. But no investigations by the DNC ever occurred.
Further, the correct punishment for the move-ups is the same as the GOP’s, which is to seat half of the pledged delegates. (Or seat them all, but each gets a half vote, I forget exactly).
So it appears that as far as the rules go, the DNC has broken its fair share, too. And in doing so has created a MAJOR problem with regards to the GE (Everything I’m reading indicates that Dem voters are very angry in both states over this). The DNC messed up badly. But that’s par for the course with the Dems if you ask me.
“Could the Republicans Pick the Democratic Nominee” sounds like Rush Limbaugh’s and Ann Coulter’s efforts to support Hillary Clinton by bashing Obama.
DMD,
Again, as I tried to explain earlier, the headline does not accurately portray the content in Barrett’s report. Your take, based on the title alone, is waaaay off. Completely off, actually. I’m not sure how these things are done – sensational headline creating – but what Wayne Barrett, investigative reporter for the Village Voice, actually wrote is that the GOP legislatures in FL and MI had their own reasons for pushing ahead their primary dates that had nothing to do with sabotaging Dem primaries. It just turned out that way, luckily for them, because of the DNC’s response.
I suggested the article to refute another writer’s contention that Dem legislators in FL and MI behaved like “spoiled children.” If anybody appears to have misbehaved in this sorry fiasco, it’s the DNC.
Jerry, I understood your point earlier. I was going for the quick sarcasm.