What you really need to watch for is the popular vote margin. That’s what really counts here, tonight. With Florida included (no serious analyst would include Michigan’s totals), Senator Clinton will only be down by about 315,000 votes. Her only feasible path to the nomination is through a popular vote victory — which she’d have been assured, anyway (and likely a pledged delegate victory, too) were it not for the ludicrously antiquated caucus system.
The headlines will focus on the percentage margin of victory, though, which is fine — for us, at least. It’s just enough for her supporters to feel emboldened, but not enough to really turn this thing around. But if she can keep narrowing Obama’s popular vote margin (with the exception of North Carolina, everything else looks tailor-made for Hillary, here on out [yes, even the Great Plains states that have yet to come, so Hillary can hold her own, allowing her to make the case that Obama's blowout caucus wins in the Midwest were due to the fact that her supporters didn't have time to come out to vote]), we could be talking about a brokered convention, great television, and some wonderfully disaffected Democrats ready to fly into John McCain’s wide-open arms.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Hillary HAS NO PATH TO THE NOMINATION. Tonight, she needed to win by more than 60% to 40%. She didn’t. So now she has to win by more than 60-40 margins from here on out IN EVERY REMAINING CONTEST. This so-called race is actually an Obama cake-walk. There is no drama. She has no chance. Don’t tell the Dems….they don’t allow somebody to be a Democrat if they have any grasp of math or econ…but they are spending tens of millions of dollars and getting all worked up for no reason whatever. Obama won this thing in February, and here we are in late April.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Blowout caucus wins? Like Nevada?
I read a report not so long ago that pointed out that most caucus states would have heavily favored Obama had they been primaries. However, that doesn’t stop Clinton from saying it as if its true.
One point that should be made is that the Dem party elders who set the calendar were friends of Clinton anyway. They were waaay too overconfident. They should have seen the caucus issue (if it was one) and the delegate allocation issue and adjusted it to suit their candidate. But they didn’t, and now they’re being punished…
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:52 pm
The thing is, even if Hillary has 30 pt wins in KY and WV and Obama has, say, 10 pt wins in NC and the western states, Hillary will still trail Obama by no less than 100 delegates once the dust settles. With 300 superdelegates left, how on earth does Hillary convince two thirds of them to vote for her? The popular vote argument may be strong but will it really win her the remaining superdelegates 2 to 1? If they split down the middle, Obama’s the nominee.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Blowout caucus wins in the Great Plains states, JayPe. Idaho and Kansas, for instance.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Re: 2
Well, if it weren’t for the caucus system, it strikes me as unlikely that Obama would have won Iowa to begin with. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that without Iowa, he would have won little more than Illinois and Hawaii.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Popular vote trumps pledged delegates in the Democratic Party. Have you folks forgotten 2000?
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Alex – MidWest, not West. That makes more sense, thank you.
Zach – Why wouldn’t Iowa have gone for Obama? This is the same Iowa that likes good-speaking concensus building liberals (e.g. John Edwards in 2004). Furthermore, Obama tends to do well in states that are heavily white (as well as heavily black, but not in between – quite a conundrum).
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:37 pm
6 — That’s why Hillary’s in, of course. She’s got some great opportunities lined up. Puerto Rico, Kentucky, West Virginia — great opportunities.
She ain’t gonna drop out before the convention if Florida would give her the winning margin.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:37 pm
JayPe, you’re right. I’ll change it.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:02 am
JayPe,
If you recall the Iowa caucus, you’ll remember that Obama won because, there was like some big decision among the Edwards folks to cast their second ballots for Obama if Edwards didn’t get above 30% (or whatever the threshold was) on the first ballot in a particular district. There were alot of indications that the caucus would have been well and truly a dead-heat if we just counted first choice voters. So it’s not a question of “why couldn’t of Obama won Iowa?”, because of course he could have won Iowa without a caucus. But, the point is, he almost didn’t.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:40 am
[...] Alex Knepper: What you really need to watch for is the popular vote margin. That’s what really counts here, tonight. With Florida included (no serious analyst would include Michigan’s totals), Senator Clinton will only be down by about 315,000 votes. Her only feasible path to the nomination is through a popular vote victory — which she’d have been assured, anyway (and likely a pledged delegate victory, too) were it not for the ludicrously antiquated caucus system. [...]
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:02 am
Apparently I’m a local blogger from Tennessee.