NYT:
The Low Road to VictoryThe above isn't the first NYT's article critical of Hillary's tactics, but the piece fails to mention the most despicable smear: Hillary pushing the notion that Obama is linked to terrorists. From the recent debate:
SEN. CLINTON: Well, I think that is a fair general statement, but I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position.
And if I'm not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said that he was just sorry they hadn't done more. And what they did was set bombs and in some instances people died. So it is -- you know, I think it is, again, an issue that people will be asking about. And I have no doubt -- I know Senator Obama's a good man and I respect him greatly but I think that this is an issue that certainly the Republicans will be raising. And it goes to this larger set of concerns about, you know, how we are going to run against John McCain. You know, I wish the Republicans would apologize for the disaster of the Bush-Cheney years and not run anybody, just say that it's time for the Democrats to go back into the White House. (Laughter, applause.)
Unfortunately, they don't seem to be willing to do that. So we know that they're going to be out there, full force. And you know, I've been in this arena for a long time. I have a lot of baggage, and everybody has rummaged through it for years. (Laughter.) And so therefore, I have, you know, an opportunity to come to this campaign with a very strong conviction and feeling that I will be able to withstand whatever the Republican sends our way.
linkHillary is arguing that she is more electability based on everything from Obama's indirect connections to Farrakhan (despite her Ed Rendell's praise of him) to knowing a member of the Weather Underground, overlooking her links to the group:
After Mrs. Clinton criticized Mr. Obama for not severing all Ayers ties, Mr. Obama said, “By Senator Clinton’s own vetting standards, I don’t think she would make it, since President Clinton pardoned or commuted the sentences of two members of the Weather Underground.”
That referred to commutations by Mr. Clinton in January 2001, shortly before leaving office, for Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg. Ms. Evans had been convicted of weapons and explosives charges connected with eight bombings in the mid-’80s and sentenced to 40 years in prison. Ms. Rosenberg had been charged in connection with a 1981 armed robbery in which two police officers and a security guard were killed, and was serving 58 years after being convicted of weapons charges in a 1984 case.
linkInside Edition interview I missed yesterday, Hillary takes a question about Bill's commuting the sentences of two former Weather Underground members.
"I didn’t know anything about it," she says.
Video:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0408/Clinton_What_weathermen.html">Hillary Clinton Dodges Bill's PardonsNone of this changes one glaring fact: Hillary cannot win the primary. A fact that appears irrelevant to her campaign and backers. It has been inevitable for some time, but Hillary's camp simply moves the goal post via spin, making up the rules of the game as they go along.
by Hunter
Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 06:11:45 AM PDT
Forget the spin: the race is where it is. Clinton won Pennsylvania. The overall delegate margin has barely budged, however, and it is now even more assured that there is no reasonable scenario where Clinton can pull out a primary win absent intervention by the superdelegates.
I was never a Clinton fan, in this campaign. I have previously stated my deep discomfort with the notion that the person most deserving of the Presidency of the United States just miraculously happens to be the person married to the last Democratic President of the United States; it smacks far too much of the usual intra-Washington narcissism, and carries the strong whiff of American monarchy, something already wafting through the air after the ridiculous rise of the Boy King. At the same time, however, there seems little value in debating whether Clinton should or should not leave the race. That is entirely up to Clinton, and any candidate with a mathematical chance -- even if slim -- of pulling out a win has every right to see the race through until that last fateful day. I don't buy the notion that the campaign is hurting the Democratic party: any election that generates this level of excitement among Democratic voters is hardly a bad thing.
What bothers me, however, is the increasingly insulting quality of the campaign and surrogate spin as each successive campaign day wears on. It is fine to celebrate a Pennsylvania win -- by all means, a victory is a victory, and a significant and hard-fought one at that -- but all I ask in politics is that the spinners of each camp try their best to not make it
quite so obvious that they think the rest of us really are a spectacular new species of rubes, able to be led by the nose to whatever ridiculous and improbable conclusion would best benefit a particular camp.
Listening to Clinton campaign surrogates on television, before the PA votes ever started to trickle in, was truly painful. Suddenly
one state was the only state that mattered. All those other states were merely prelude: if Clinton could eke out a victory in
this state, trailing in the delegate count would no longer be significant, and it would be a brand new race, and Obama would be on the ropes, and Clinton would suddenly win a billion dollars, a pony, and the moon;
attention must be paid. It is not enough for Obama to simply be winning the nomination according to the rules laid out in advance: no, he must win the "right" way, according to the Clinton campaign and surrogates, or it doesn't count. He has to win the "right" states. And he has to win primaries, not caucuses. And he has to "close the deal", shutting Clinton out of remaining wins entirely, or it proves something ominous (the fact that Clinton has not been able to "close the deal" against him, and is instead trailing him badly and irreparably, barring superdelegate do-over, somehow does not count against her own merits.) And he not only has to win the "popular vote", but he has to win that, too, the right way, which is to say by counting only certain states and not counting others. And he has to win small towns, not just big population centers, because winning big population centers is elitist. Except that if he wins small towns in the West and Midwest, that doesn't count, because it's more important to win the big population centers. And all of this somehow proves that Clinton is a better candidate against McCain than Obama is, even though the polls to date have consistently shown Obama is a better candidate against McCain than Clinton is.
Now, I'm all for surrogates talking up their candidate,
assuming they don't insult my intelligence in the process. But with the ever-changing rules and subrules of Clintonball, my intelligence feels fairly insulted, at this point. There seems to be an ever-expanding list of rationales why the delegate counts in front of our faces don't actually matter, or don't actually exist, or are terribly misleading. There seems to be an ever-expanding list of supposedly devastating Obama faults, such as the supposed
elitism of the black guy from Chicago (seriously?), and there is a cynical and mocking dismissal of political eloquence from a campaign that once counted the political eloquence of their former president as one of their greatest assets. People have muttered over the negative tone of the campaign of late: hell, go negative. It's about time the Democrats figured out how to competently go negative, even though so far they have only bothered to practice it against each other. More irritating is that the negative attacks presented are, well, stupid, and seem increasingly to be predicated on the notion that voters, the press, the pundits, and we political hangers-on are all idiots seeking to cling to the most shallow of accusations. The press and the pundits? OK, I'll give you that one. The rest of us, however, weren't born yesterday.
All the spin boils down to a simple truth: Clinton now has almost no chance of winning on the delegate count. Barring Obama getting eaten by a bear, it's not going to happen, so the Clinton campaign wants the superdelegates to overturn the primary and caucus results at the convention and appoint her the rightful winner, even though she is, at this point, clearly losing. That's going to be a tough sell, if all Clinton has to offer is one state's worth of "momentum" or the rather odd logic that, since Obama has supposedly not sufficiently proven his campaign viability by kicking her completely to the curb by now, the superdelegates should instead hitch their wagons to a candidate who has been proven to be less viable than him.
The problem is those arguments simply aren't credible. You can't spin away an insurmountable delegate disadvantage with declarations of mulligans or claims of an "electability" that hasn't been able to actually get you elected. And with the ongoing declarations of which states should and shouldn't count (Pennsylvania yes, North Carolina no, one half of Texas yes, one half of Texas no, etc.), Clinton surrogates are rapidly running out of states and people to dismiss or insult. It has been a very, very nasty habit of her campaign -- seemingly Mark Penn inspired, but expansively used by any number of surrogates.
If Clinton wants the superdelegates to overturn all the voting up until now, fine: she's got every right, according to the rules of the contest, to campaign for that. All I'm asking is for her surrogates to come up with rationales that aren't absurdly premised and/or dismissive of the electorate. Given that I can't think of any such non-absurd arguments, that may pose a problem.
Then there is this question if she pursues the superdelegates: Can she win?
If the remaining superdelegates (311) moved to Hillary's column, she would be 130 delegates short of the nomination:
Hillary's current total delegates plus remaining supers: 1584 + 311 = 1895
What are the chances that 130 Obama superdelegates would move to Hillary's column?
By contrast, if the remaining superdelegates (311) move to Obama's column, he would have the 2025 delegates needed for the nomination, requiring no movement from supers currently backing Hillary:
Obama's current total delegates plus remaining supers: 1714 + 311 = 2025
Calculatoredited typos, 2025 needed to win.
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