Blog Nightline
27 May 2008 8:06 pm by Taylor Marsh
Guest post by Grey
Jake Tapper questions Sen. Obama’s decision to switch to general election mode given that the number of delegates needed to win the nomination might change on Saturday, pending the Rules and Bylaws Committee’s ruling on the seating of Florida and Michigan’s delegates. That, however, is not the only problem:
And what happens if 900,000 Puerto Ricans turn out on Sunday and vote 70-30 for Clinton? Won’t that seriously buttress her popular vote argument so that she doesn’t have to rely on that fuzzy math where she gives herself 320,000 votes from Michigan and gives Obama zero? And what happens if Obama doesn’t win Montana or South Dakota, states he’s expected to put in his column? Will he regret his time in Las Cruces?
I think Sen. Obama will probably win Montana and possibly South Dakota, but that’s not the point. Much has been made about “sore losers” in this contest, but there is just as much one could say about a (possible) winner’s lack of grace. Sen. Obama’s presumption might cost him in two very different ways; if Sen. Clinton’s November electoral college argument should convince enough superdelegates that she’s the stronger candidate – which it should, because many of the maps we’ve seen prove it – then Sen. Obama will just look like an arrogant buffoon. Conversely, should he win the nomination, he will soon realize that the new map he intends to draw will be the least of his problems. Sen. Obama should be focusing on women and blue-collar workers because, come November, a coalition of liberals, African Americans and the young won’t be enough. Whether Obama is willing to meaningfully reach out to Clinton’s voters is another matter; with history as my guide, I would not bet on it.
The Great Misconception of 2008 is that Sen. Obama attracts droves of new voters. According to an analysis done by Dick Bennett of ARG,
[...] Obama has had his greatest primary (and caucus) victories when turnouts have been low.
Anglachel has an interesting addendum:
My argument here is not that he lacks delegates, but that he has nowhere near the popular support that is claimed. He has lost big states and swing states decisively, with margins getting worse as the campaign goes on. There is no need to reference his increasingly embarassing [sic] poor showing against John McCain as he falls short of majority support within his own party.
That is exactly right; since February, Clinton has won 15 more delegates and 511,941 more votes than Obama. Paul Lukasiak thinks it’s “buyer’s remorse,” but given that Obama’s mathematical advantage materialized mostly thanks to caucuses rather than primaries, I wonder whether the original sale was ever made.
Mark Ambinder says that “the Obama campaign has, for the first time, really, begun to bank delegates:”
The campaign is determined that Obama not end the first week in June without securing the support of delegates numbering 2026 — or 2210, as the case may be.
That’s fine, and if it happens, Obama will then really be the presumptive Democratic nominee, but the vote of the superdelegates is non-binding until they cast their ballots at the convention. Sen. Clinton has told the voters of Florida and Michigan that, if they want her to, she will take their fight to the floor. What if she were to fight just as long and just as hard for her own candidacy? I suspect she would earn the nomination after the first few rounds, perhaps as early as on the third ballot, but that is her decision to make. Sen. Obama, for his part, should do all he can to conclude his run as decorously as possible. The party’s base is fractured and, if he should emerge victorious in August, in November he will pay very dearly for his abrasive, condescending attitude.
Isaac Chotiner claims that the MSNBC-Obama wedding isn’t good for candidate Obama because, one, it creates an echo chamber and, two, it actually helped Sen. Clinton:
In fact, MSNBC’s bias has actually hurt the Illinois senator. After all, it was the Obama cheerleading from MSNBC (among others) that helped lead to Clinton’s New Hampshire comeback. [...]
The problem here is that when supposedly “straight” news anchors phrase questions in leading ways, and report one campaign’s spin as if it were fact, it distorts what is actually going on in the campaign–even for those of us who make a living obsessing over and writing about politics. And when anchormen themselves shill for Obama, the distinction between his talking points and the truth grows even blurrier still. So, as much as I find MSNBC entertaining, their creation of a parallel, pro-Obama universe is the type of thing I’d expect of Fox. That’s when I know it’s time to change the channel.
MSNBC’s gleeful coverage of Clinton’s third-place finish in Iowa might have contributed to her comeback in New Hampshire, but to assert it’s so without empirical evidence is yet another instance of the media’s grandiose sense of self-importance. Chotiner is right to say, however, that MSNBC has been singularly pro-Obama; it’s also been singularly anti-Clinton, and one must wonder just how readily the audience understood that campaign propaganda was being served as though it were news.
Max Blumentahl reports that Joe Lieberman will headline Catholic-hating, gay-hating, Jew-hating John Hagee’s Christians United For Israel Washington-Israel Summit on July 22. Oh, please: give me a break with that ridiculous title: no one (other than Joe) is buying the “conversion,” John. And, Joe: Please stop embracing hateful nutjobs and try to find your way ouf ot the snow.
The shot of sanity for the day comes courtesy of Joan Walsh, who writes about “a new low in Clinton bashing:”
The world is divided between people who consider Bill and Hillary Clinton monsters, and people who don’t. It used to be that the monster faction was limited to Republicans and certain mainstream media fixtures like Maureen Dowd and much of the MSNBC lineup. Now, increasingly, it involves too many Obama-supporting Democrats — and the Clinton-hate is in danger of damaging the Democratic Party.
Joan is right, I think, and the Democratic Party is in for a very rude awakening.
Update: Joan was on Hardball tonight. You can watch her segment here.
