Indiana, as you just might have heard, held its primary yesterday (along with North Carolina). No shock here, I cast my ballot for Obama (and gubernatorial candidate Jill Long Thompson). But after a 2% Clinton "victory," the Clinton camp is oh so excited that they won their "tie-breaker" state, managing to declare victory before there was a projected winner.You heard it here first, Indiana is a democrat tie-breaker state. I guess that's true if you factor out... well, reality, I guess.
I just don't get it. Bad media narrative aside, this thing has been all but over since early March. The good news is that, last night, the major media networks finally got hip to the fact that Clinton has absolutely zero chance of winning this thing. But that reality hasn't managed to leak down to Clinton's surrogates. I know they have a job to do and all, but I still can't quite wrap my head around the level to which these people will sink to not only make this race sound competitive, but to make it sound like Clinton is winning. That takes a special kind of delusion. Sure, if you just look at the delegate counts it might look close. They're only a couple hundred delegates apart out of about 3,000. But with only a handful of unpledged and supers left, Clinton has zero chance of having them all break her way (which is what she needs at this point).
I particularly like hearing the Clinton people talk about how, "Obama hasn't won a significant primary in two months," nevermind how disingenuous that sentiment is. Obama cleaned house in Frebruary. There were exactly three primary dates (totaling 6 states) in March. There was one in April. A total of seven states. Obama won three of those states outright (Vermont, Wyoming and Mississippi), so I'm sure those states will be relieved to know that the Clinton campaign still doesn't think they count. And that gives Clinton credit for "winning" Texas, even though by the only barometer that matters -delegates- she actually lost Texas (99-94). But they're right, North Carolina was Obama's first win since the Ice Age.
I get that this is easy for me, being an Obama supporter sitting over in the cheap seats. And I know this is a race for the White House and all, but there is such a thing as losing with a little class and dignity, something that said bye-bye to Miss Hillary a long time ago.
The thing is, I always had a favorable view of both Bill and Hillary Clinton. BJs from not very attractive White House interns aside, I always liked Bill Clinton. There's no doubt he earned the name, "Slick Willy," but I do think that he ultimately wants to do right by this country and I think he largely did that. As for Hillary, the fact of the matter is, my biggest grudge with her at the beginning was her last name. 20-30 years of Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush-Clinton-? is not what our founders had in mind. This is not an aristocracy. I started to lean towards Obama very early in the primary season -hell, I started to lean Obama after his 2004 convention speech- but it wasn't until this primary season really got going that I started to outright loath the Clintons, something I didn't think was possible.
I don't like people who are willing to do or say anything to win an election. Granted, most any politician fits that bill, but some will take it a little farther than others. It was one of many reasons I didn't like Bush when he ran in 2000. It's the primary reason I have absolutely no intention of voting for McCain, whom I liked back in 2000. (For those of you still clinging to the notion that McCain is a "centrist" and Repub party "maverick," I've got a bridge to sell you.) But back to Clinton...
In the Clinton-narrative, the only states that count are the ones that vote for them. The rest, I guess, can all go out drinking and fuck themselves once they get home. The only polls that count are the cherry-picked ones that show them in the lead. Which is sort of like determining the winner of the Super Bowl by going with the team to which Vegas offers better odds. Michigan and Florida are maligned innocents that the Obama campaign is stamping down, as if Obama controls how the DNC elects to handle this clusterf#@ of a situation. Obama can't win the big swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania because, well, apparently these record democrat turnouts in the primaries will all just stay home or vote for Bush's third term, I guess. Nevermind that national polling has Obama competitive with McCain in a lot of states where Clinton is not and that the electoral math favors Obama. (There's a bunch of detailed electoral math posts at Daily Kos to this effect.) And all that is after Obama's 3-week Reverend Wright nightmare, gas tax pandering, and the other obligatory nonsense about lapel pins, elitism and bittergate. If Obama was going to sink under the weight of all this junk it would've shown up in the results last night. No such luck for Clinton.
What I really don't get, though is that two months of outright shameful campaigning has worked for her in a lot of ways. The more mud she slings, the more "reality" she invents, the better she seems to do with her core supporters, who don't seem to care that her campaign has tried to move the goal posts at every single opportunity as soon as their narrative of the day was no longer convenient for them. Nevermind the reality that the only thing Clinton really had going for going into yesterday was a media narrative that parroted her campaign's garbage for everything it was worth (and more).
Thankfully, that appears to have ended last night. I flipped back and forth a lot between CNN and MSNBC and the storylines were all the same. Without a huge win in Indiana and at least a close loss in North Carolina the door was going to shut on her chances of winning the nomination. She didn't get it and as hard as the Clinton surrogates tried last night to spin otherwise, the overarching narrative last night was that she's now fighting an impossible battle. The only question is just how far she'll go. My guess is, not much farther.
Clinton's only real hope up to this point was coup by superdelegate. And her "insurmountable" lead in that segment of a few months ago has all but disappeared. It seems like every day another superdelegate drops into Obama's column and after last night, I'm betting the superdelegate floodgates really start to open over the course of May. At the end of this month the DNC is going to meet to determine just how to handle the Michigan/Florida question. Once that is dispensed with I'm betting it's just a matter of days to the end game.
I don't know how they should handle that. You need to find a way to seat the delegates for the convention. But you can't count the primary votes in those states at face value. Even if the rules are idiotic, they're the rules everyone agreed to and Michigan and Florida broke them. (Hell, only Clinton's name was even on the Michigan ballot and 40% still voted uncommitted.) It's ludicrous to think that should change just because the clock's running down in the fourth quarter. Not that it matters. Even if you gave Clinton her 55% in Michigan and 50% in Florida it wouldn't put her back in the nomination race.
For reasons passing understanding, Clinton's going to get her big numbers in West Virginia and Kentucky over the next two weeks. That seems pretty clear at this point. But after that, the well runs dry. Though, I suppose Guam could break for her. (Woo!) But even then it won't be nearly enough without locking up nearly every uncommitted superdelegate left in the game and that's fantasy land. (Granted, the supers can change their mind at any time, but these people are not going to just hand Clinton the nomination when the pledged delegates significantly favor Obama.)
Clinton needs to use the next two weeks (and their primaries) to put on a good *clean* show for her supporters, one that focuses on McCain's shortcomings and not Obama's, and then she needs to rally her base behind Obama and bow out. It's the only thing she can still do to retain any shred of credibility in the eyes of this voter.
