General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why all of a sudden is it so important Hillary have competition within the party? [View all]karynnj
(59,503 posts)Until SuperTuesday, she was by far the overwhelming favorite. If there had not been a surge for Obama in the last week of January and the first week of February, HRC would have been the defacto nominee on SuperTuesday. That was their game plan and why allies of hers argued for the unprecedented number of states all on one day.
For example, if HRC had gotten the percent of votes that were predicted in CA, MA, NJ, and NY in early January when the primary occurred, she would have gotten FAR more delegates than she did. I know how the numbers shifted in NJ, where I lived and I had good friends who had expected MA to be far worse for Obama. Mark Penn actually expected Clinton to get a high enough percent of the CA vote that neither Obama or Edwards would exceed the threshold - giving her all the CA votes.
It was not until SuperTuesday that the race was even seen as close -- and even then, there was no call for her to end her run. There were some calls as the season wore down - and I thought them wrong - based on polls and the likelihood it would end up as it did. However, where MOST of the calls came was in the nearly one month after all the primaries were over -- when the effort was precisely to influence the superdelegates.
PS It is strange that you say that you don't want to argue it, but then you make an assertion that people told HRC to step down in January. Did you really think that that was not engaging in a discussion - and that I should just walk away - even though it is clearly at least debatable?