When Is a Victory Not a Victory?
18 May 2008 2:00 pm by Taylor Marsh
Guest post by Scan
Hilarious report in the New York Times today. It seems Obama wants to return to where it all started and might just declare himself the victor in this nominating contest:
Senator Barack Obama has chosen to spend Tuesday night not in Kentucky or Oregon, the two states that will be holding their primaries that day, or even at his home in Chicago. Instead, Mr. Obama’s staff announced on Saturday, he will be returning to Iowa, where he won the Democratic caucuses way back in January and has at least two good reasons to revisit now.
…If things continue to go as well for Mr. Obama this week as they have so far this month, with a romp in North Carolina, a strong showing in Indiana and daily growth in his support among party superdelegates, he could actually end up with enough pledged delegates to proclaim, without fear of contradiction, that he is now the Democratic nominee for president.
You can practically feel the excitement glistening in the reporter’s fingers as he typed this, but there are so many things wrong here that it’s hard to know where to begin. Did the West Virginia slaughter not happen? Pledged delegates decide the nomination? “Without fear of contradiction”?
Barring an unlikely superdelegate deluge, there is no way that Obama can reach the (FL/MI-less) “magic number” of delegates on Tuesday. None. The metric they are choosing to hang their victory hat on is the pledged delegates. Problem is, pledged delegates don’t choose the nominee…all delegates do. And with his more-electable opponent emerging as the likely popular vote winner…those superdelegates may have other ideas before the deal is done.
Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson didn’t miss a beat:
“Declaring mission accomplished doesn’t make it so and taking victory laps before the nomination is actually secured is a slap in the face to the voters of Florida and Michigan, and the states that have not yet voted. There is no standard under which Senator Obama will have secured the nomination on Tuesday night.”
Exactly.
So considering this, I just have one message for Senator Obama: Do us a favor and please declare victory this Tuesday!
The polls in Kentucky will be closing by 7pm Eastern and an early call for Hillary is highly likely, judging by the latest polls. Obama is looking much better in Oregon (though not a sure thing) but the deadline for submitting ballots is 8pm Pacific/11pm Eastern. An early call is less likely there, as normal exit polls will be of little use considering the mail-in nature of this primary. It could, in fact, be a very late night in Oregon and it wouldn’t be the first time.
So…when will Obama declare “mission accomplished” in his quest for the nomination? There are several choices in my mind:
Option 1: Declare “victory” before any of the polls close at all. I think even Olbermann would have to call him on that one, as Hillary’s thrashing in Kentucky would soon overshadow such a proclamation and show it as being detached from reality. Hopefully she’ll give another barn-burner of a speech and do some cable news interviews stressing her impending popular vote victory as well. (Note: This is the scenario I’d most like to see.)
Option 2: Declare “victory” following the results in Kentucky but before the polls close in Oregon. This is going to be prime cable news real estate, and will be tempting. However, declaring victory after another brutal swing state loss would seem a bit desperate, would it not? Russert might want to take a smoke break around that time…it won’t be pretty.
Option 3: Declare “victory” right as the polls close in Oregon and hope for the best. Might look a bit foolish if things don’t end up going his way there, however.
Option 4: Hold off on declaring “victory” until Oregon is finally called one way or the other in the early morning hours in Iowa, hoping that the networks still care and that America hasn’t turned in for the night.
All of these options work for me, and I look forward to the speech…
…just as Hillary is looking forward to Puerto Rico on June 1st.
