After Clinton's win in Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago, it looked to some like her campaign might have a chance. If you tossed in the vote in Michigan and Florida, you could make the case that although Obama was leading in delegates, Clinton was leading in popular vote. She was hoping to couple that with a big win in Indiana and a close vote in North Carolina to convince superdelegates that she was more electable.
But last night ended that hope, and may have effectively ended the campaign for Clinton. Obama scored a huge win in North Carolina. He scored a 14 point victory and extended his delegate lead. He will get at least 13 more delegates from that state than Clinton will get.
At the same time, Clinton was unable to score a big victory in Indiana. As I write this, there is only a 16,000 vote lead for Clinton out of more than a million votes cast. There are still votes to be counted, and it now looks like whoever wins will do so by less than 5,000 votes. No matter who wins, Indiana has to be considered a draw, especially in delegates (which is the only thing that really matters).
Clinton gave her "all the way to the convention" speech last night, but this has to be considered a crushing defeat for her. In fact, she has cancelled her morning appearances on the network news shows. She will be meeting with her superdelegates today.
Obama now has at least 1818 delegates to Clinton's 1669 according to CNN. That gives him a lead of around 149 delegates. He only needs 207 more delegates to reach the magic number of 2025.
For all intents and purposes, this race is now over.
UPDATE - For what it's worth, MSNBC has declared Clinton the winner in Indiana.
Obama should follow up on his big night last night by announcing that he supports seating the full delegations for Florida and Michigan. This wouldn't give Hillary enough pledged or overall delegates to eliminate Obama's lead in either category, and it would earn him a great deal of goodwill with remaining superdelegates as well as voters in both states. Plus, it would take away the last real reason Hillary has to stay in the race.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, I'm glad this is almost over. I never thought we'd live to see the end of this thing.
I agree- the voters in Michigan & Florida should be heard. This will come back to haunt democrats in November if it isn't done. The race continues- Hillary is the most recent winner, so her momentum should continue.
ReplyDeleteGood post jobsanger, as usual. I referenced you at our blog. Please consider this comment as my posthumous request asking permission!
ReplyDeleteBig Tex, great point, and maybe you're right, but how would they divide the delegates from those states 50/50? In that case, I'd say yes. I really don't want to breathe any life into the Clinton campaign, since it is time to get to the general election.
dp-
ReplyDeleteYou don't need to ask permission. Feel free to use anything you want from this blog.
Big Tex -
I want Clinton to cease campaigning, and then I'l be ready to seat Michigan and Florida.
rufus-
How could you possibly think Clinton has any momentum after her crushing defeat last night?
Um, she won Indiana! Newsflash! On to West Virginia!
ReplyDeleteWhat is the latest a nominee has ever lost a primary election?
rufus-
ReplyDeleteYou didn't do very well in math at school, did you?
Rufus: you're out of our mind if you think that Hillary got any juice out of losing NC by 14 and ekeing out a 2-point win in a state that the polls were projecting her to win by anywhere from 5 points to double digits. She does have momentum, but then, so do most people who have fallen off a cliff.
ReplyDeleteDP: According to Chuck Todd, who does a really great job crunching the numbers, he has said that even if they went with the numbers from the FL/MI primaries (assuming that the uncommitted delegates in MI were allocated to Obama), Hillary would have a net delegate gain somewhere in the 50's. The math would be better for her, but she'd still have to do improbably well in the remaining contests to have a chance of overtaking Obama. It's been suggested that they seat the full FL delegation as is, and work a compromise for MI's delegates - Hillary wants to use the primary totals, which would give her a 20 delegate majority for the state, and Obama wants to split them 50/50, so the compromise would be to seat the full delegation and give Hillary a 10-delegate majority in the state.
jobsanger: My fear is that if we wait for Hillary to quit campaigning, she might choose not to do so until the convention. I think that resolving the MI/FL issue now would suck what little life remains in her campaign - it appears to be the only thing that she and her supporters have left to cling to at this point.