Hillary's Too-Long Goodbye

Kristof's column:

After the Tuesday primaries, Hillary Rodham Clinton now has maybe a 2 percent chance of winning the Democratic nomination. But if she pursues her losing battle, she has perhaps a 20 percent chance of costing the Democrats the presidency in the fall.

So should she soldier on if continued campaigning is 10 times more likely to benefit John McCain than herself?

My percentages are, of course, wild estimates, but they suggest the orders of magnitude. With Mrs. Clinton trailing by 700,000 votes in the cumulative popular vote, and also behind in pledged delegates and number of states won, she just doesn't have a plausible route to the nomination. Even if you include Florida, she's more than 400,000 votes behind.

In contrast, Mrs. Clinton does have a plausible route to winning the election for Mr. McCain.

The most terrifying numbers for Democrats in Tuesday's exit polls should be those showing how many of Mrs. Clinton's supporters are planning to vote for Mr. McCain in November.

In Indiana, only 49 percent of Clinton voters said they would cast votes for Mr. Obama in November if he were the nominee; in North Carolina, the figure was 47 percent. In both states, a majority of Mrs. Clinton's supporters said that they would either vote for Mr. McCain or stay home.

Ron Wyden, a senator from Oregon who is uncommitted as a superdelegate, is among those who take the more optimistic view that the contest will end in June, that tempers will cool and that voters will come together long before the general election.

"I don't buy this theory that the other's supporters will walk in the fall -- not when the choices are so stark," he said.

It's true that most of Senator Clinton's supporters presumably will flinch if they contemplate a McCain Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. But the longer this primary warfare continues, the less time to heal the intraparty antagonisms.

In 9 of the last 10 elections, the nominee chosen first has ended up winning the general election.

Suppose that 80 percent of people who voted for Mrs. Clinton in the primaries end up supporting Mr. Obama in November, but that 20 percent stay home or vote Republican. That 20 percent would amount to far more popular votes than Ralph Nader won in 2000.

One worrying parallel for Democrats is the 1980 election, when Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter's re-election and continued until August of that year. "I have a real chance to win," Senator Kennedy declared on Aug. 9, long after he his chances had utterly evaporated, and he claimed that the clash would be good for the eventual nominee.

Mr. Carter probably would have lost anyway to Ronald Reagan, but it didn't help that his own party was fractured and demoralized by the endless challenge from Mr. Kennedy.

The upshot is that Mr. Obama's election prospects in November may depend on Mrs. Clinton. If she stops the attacks and withdraws gracefully -- perhaps after winning West Virginia next week -- and then she and Bill Clinton campaign for Mr. Obama, then that will boost his prospects. But that's not the scenario that Mrs. Clinton is signaling.

"I'm staying in this race until there is a nominee," Mrs. Clinton declared on Wednesday. If the battle continues all the way up to the convention in August, the chaos over delegates from Florida and Michigan will complicate the Democrats' chances of winning both states. In that case, Mrs. Clinton may be remembered as the spoiler of 2008.

That would be partly the fault of the uncommitted superdelegates. Their fence-sitting is dragging out the contest and undermining their party's chances in the fall.

One of the reasons that Mrs. Clinton is resolved to keep fighting is, I think, a resentment that she and many of her followers feel over sexism in the campaign. On that issue, she has a point. One of the political lessons of this year -- backed by psychological research and polling data -- is that the bar is probably higher for a woman candidate for president than for a black candidate.

It's interesting that two strong women -- Katie Couric as well as Mrs. Clinton -- have foundered this year in roles that are stereotypically male. Granted, the presidency is very different from the job of an evening news anchor, but some psychology experiments suggests that one factor in each case may be public resistance to a woman in a position in which we are accustomed to seeing a man. One of Mrs. Clinton's legacies will be that she will make it easier for the next woman candidate.

So Mrs. Clinton's frustration is understandable. But if it leads to the election of a president whose views and values are antithetical to everything her career has stood for, that would be inexcusable.

"The most terrifying numbers for Democrats in Tuesday's exit polls should be those showing how many of Mrs. Clinton's supporters are planning to vote for Mr. McCain in November."

I am surprised that Operation Chaos was so successful

Part of the problem is that a resident of Guam had their vote counted and those from Florida and Michigan didn't

and those from Florida and Michigan didn't

And that was just fine with Hillary before her campaign started falling apart.

Fair-Weather Wolverine:
Hillary Clinton wants to seat Michigan and Florida delegates.
She sang a different tune last year

It was a different story in October. Back then, Clinton was far and away the national front-runner--by some 20 points in a number of polls. With much less at stake in the matter, she told a New Hampshire public-radio audience, "It's clear, this election [Michigan is] having is not going to count for anything." Clinton was unwilling to take her name off the Michigan primary ballot, as Obama and her other significant rivals did, but like them she agreed not to campaign in Michigan or in Florida before their primaries.

On Aug. 25, when the DNC's rules panel declared Florida's primary date out of order, it agreed by a near-unanimous majority to exceed the 50 percent penalty called for under party rules. Instead, the group stripped Florida of all 210 delegates to underscore its displeasure with Florida's defiance and to discourage other states from following suit. In doing so, the DNC essentially committed itself, for fairness' sake, to strip the similarly defiant Michigan of all 156 of its delegates three months later. Clinton held tremendous potential leverage over this decision, and not only because she was then widely judged the likely nominee. Of the committee's 30 members, a near-majority of 12 were Clinton supporters. All of them--most notably strategist Harold Ickes--voted for Florida's full disenfranchisement. (The only dissenting vote was cast by a Tallahassee, Fla., city commissioner who supported Obama.)

Six days later, when the party chairs in the DNC-approved "early" primary states urged Democratic candidates to sign a "four-state pledge" promising not to campaign in any state that violated the DNC calendar, Clinton did not object. She waited, with characteristic prudence, until the other candidates had signed, then signed herself.
. . .
In October, after Obama and some of the other candidates withdrew their names from the Michigan ballot, Clinton declined to do the same. Her stated reason, however, was not to dissent from the DNC's decision to disenfranchise wronged Michigan, but rather to mend fences with Michigan voters come November. Besides, Hillary said, there was no reason to remove her name if the results weren't going to count anyway. "I personally did not think it made any difference," she said.
. . .
What a difference four months make.
www.slate.com

Indeed.

The real irony is if the dumbass Democrats from MI and FL had played by the rules in the first place, there primaries would have had real meaning. But no, they wanted to leapfrog so their votes would "matter".

It seems the guys who purposely shot themselves in the foot are now pissed they're walking with a limp.

One of the reasons that Mrs. Clinton is resolved to keep fighting is, I think, a resentment that she and many of her followers feel over sexism in the campaign. On that issue, she has a point. One of the political lessons of this year -- backed by psychological research and polling data -- is that the bar is probably higher for a woman candidate for president than for a black candidate

Sexism v. Racism?

Interesting but kinda not the real point here.

There may be a certain element of sexism inherent in the anti-Clinton voting block but in the main most Dem voters whom Spud has read in blog-world contend, as Spud does, that a woman POTUS would be a fine thing, indeed, the election of a woman President is historically overdue.

That sed, NOT THIS WOMAN.

The idea of Dynastic politics while not unknown in American politics (Think Kennedy, Bush, Roosevelt, Adams et al) is still antithetical to the very notion of a Democracy based on merit and a class free society.

GHW Bush was essentially Dick Cheney during Ronnie "The meat puppet" Reagan's reign of errors. Viewed in that light the Bush/Clinton/Bush Dynasties go back 28 years.

The development of the overly cosy, highly destructive relationship between BigGov and BigBiz (particularily the MIC) has benefitted massively from this continuity.

The more aware people are politically the more they are prone to a growing aversion to the status quo. They see that it is working out only for a very few individuals and is working against the vast majority.

What has been put (rather over-simply in Spud's judgement) as "Clinton Fatigue is in reality a fatigue over the sense that the "fix is in" in DC (for indeed that is the case).

The Powers-that-be in the US through their complient lap-dog MSM are invested in wot Spud refers to as the 51/49% solution. A permanent state of gridlock between so-called left and right elements in politics that allows their influence to have the most sway.

In a very real sense it doesn't matter who wins to them as long as the race is tight.

Hillary, by staying in the race, despite being unable to win satisfies this agenda.

What the powers-that-be fear most of all is wot they refer to in their client states as "super-nationalism" ie. a powerful political majority working to effect change that helps the vast majority of the people rather than just the people with all the money as well as the psychotic corporate personages who currently call the shots.

McCain and Hillary ar two peas in a pod in that regard. They are both thoroughly co-opted, corporately pre-approved, disingenuous, inauthentic, "say anything" pols.

Barack Obama while obviously a creature of that culture (no politician can afford not to be) is nowhere near as commited to and corrupted by the status quo.

G08ama '08.

Be Well.

/Yup, tis the Tater o' Doom, on his third coffee no less, entering the fantabulous realm of the blog-god, the Drudge Retort, as ya do
stage left.

It seems the guys who purposely shot themselves in the foot are now pissed they're walking with a limp.

Ahhhhh!

Sweet!

Good 'un, 4thDan!

Spud is luff a good analogy.

That there was a great one.

Some things bear repeating.

Be Well.

I am surprised that Operation Chaos was so successful

Posted by vernon

Well, what do you expect when McCain clinched half way through the process? Republican's had no obligation to vote in a GOP primary after that, so in states where you can vote in primaries where you are not a member of the party, why not?