Why can't either of the candidates "close the deal"??

[kentuck]

First, Hillary was going to close the deal by Super Tuesday. She had spent most of her money by then and fully anticipated having the nomination wrapped up at that time. Unfortunately, something funny happened on the way to the forum. Obama won several states and Hillary no longer looked "inevitable".

Then, Obama won 11 states in a row, several of them small caucus states. Hillary could not stop his momentum. But then came OH and TX. Hillary won the popular vote in both those states and was declared the winner, even though Obama came out of TX with more delegates.

After six hard weeks of campaigning, they finally settled PA. Hillary won the state with over 200,000 votes but picked up little ground in the delegate count. Although she tried to count MI and FL in her popular vote count, most people shot down that idea, especially when she tried to count Michigan.

Now they are campaigning like mad in IN and NC. Many of the so-called experts think Hillary will win IN and Obama will win NC? However, they still punch each other like crazy to gain an advantage.

Why can't either of them "close the deal"? Maybe, because - if we can borrow a sports analogy - we have two heavyweights in a 15-round championship fight. Everybody likes a knockout in heavyweight fights. But, sometimes it goes the full 15 rounds and then there is a unanimous decision for one fighter or the other. And sometimes there is a split decision. The judges choose the winner by points.

Maybe that is the scenario we are now in? We have two heavyweights going into the 14th round of a championship fight. The scoring by the judges is very close. The 15th round could determine the winner. It does not appear that there will be a knock-out.

[DJ13]

1. Because the MSM oscillates between the two in an effort to keep it going

They dont care about democracy, just the ad revenues.

[Bensthename]

2. You got it.. It;s all about the ratings,

[kentuck]

5. This race has definitely been a gravy train for the corporate media..

No doubt about it. It is similar in a lot of ways to the OJ trial.

[jenmito]

3. 1. Obama is WAY ahead in points. 2. Obama has come from WAY behind both nationally AND

in every state. 3. Hillary's last name is Clinton. If she was anyone else, she would've been forced out of the race by now. 4. Hillary AND the Repubs. are hurting Obama but he's still surviving.

[sushi]

4. Because they're equally popular

Democrats are divided. Very hard to choose between two exciting 'firsts.'

[kentuck]

7. When Marciano fought Joe Lewis...

I suppose the loyalties were similarly divided?

[backscatter712]

6. May 20th is when Obama closes the deal.

Even with wide swings in the election percentages, the numbers of delegates awarded just don't change much, and as a result, it's pretty much inevitable at this point that Obama will get his 1,627th pledged delegate from Oregon and Kentucky on May 20th. At that point, it will be over. The superdelegates will swing to Obama en-masse and give him his 2,024th delegate, making him the presumptive nominee.

[stray cat]

8. They each have a pretty strong consistent constituency

[Liberal Gramma]

9. Because the proportional distribution of delegates

doesn't allow either candidate to amass enough delegates to get to the nomination. The system is set up for some reason, but I can't see what it is, because it appears to me that it would end in a stalemate every time.

[kentuck]

20. Good point.

Why not just have the candidate with the most pledged delegates at the end be declared the winner? Why have the Super Delegates at all?

[Liberal Gramma]

22. How many delegates are there altogether?

We might need a tie-breaker, but not that many!

[kentuck]

23. I'm not sure but...

But it must be about 3550 delegates that are pledged? I doubt that it would come out tied? If it did, flip a coin. That seems to me the most democratic way to determine the nominee. Made by the people instead of the super delegates. They supposedly created the supers so they would not have another McGovern debacle?

[Liberal Gramma]

25. Or so they wouldn't get stuck with a candidate unaligned with the DLC

[kentuck]

26. I don't think the DLC was that strong when the rules were adopted?

I could be wrong? McGovern won in much the same way as Obama. He went against the grain of the Party and won the majority in the primaries. I think he won one state in the General Election against Nixon. Of course, I don't know that the Democratic Party is as naive now as then? Perhaps it is? Regardless, I would still rather go with the will of the majority of the Party rather than a few elites of the Party that know better than the rest of us.

[Liberal Gramma]

27. You seem to be up on party history

and I am not. Maybe I should amend that to "unaligned with the entrenched power in the party"

[kentuck]

28. That would seem more accurate to me.

But it seems like you're much ahead of the curve on this?

[HereSince1628]

10. Two HUGE blocks of dems divided between 2 candidates

I think it's just that simple. Neither can really decisively win without the other candidates base.

[napi21]

11. Because there are VERY FEW undecided voters left, and each

candidate's supporters are unmovable from their position! Unless one of the candidates makes a BIG stumble, it WILL take the SD's to make the final decision.

[SoCalDem]

12. As a Mom, I prefer the "pie analogy"

Mom says.."Who wants PIE?"

Both kids say "I do, I do"

Uh oh..Mom has an Apple pie AND a Cherry pie

One kid has apple..the other has cherry

If Mom had only had an Apple pie, they would have happily each had a piece of apple pie..

By this time in the Primary season, most of the time, we only have ONE Pie...so you either have that kind of pie, or you skip dessert..

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

13. the correct question is why is the media pretending that Obama has not cinched the deal

n/t

[kentuck]

21. Because he's not cinched the deal.

Yet. You can't count the votes, or the super delegates, before he gets them. Simple as that.

[Cant trust em]

14. Two candidates with very different strengths and appeal factors

Clinton has experience, Obama has the freshness.

[Levgreee]

15. Obama has closed the deal. He has an insurmountable margin.

The only other step he needs is to get the 2000+ delegates to actually claim the nomination. The system itself makes it very hard to do that with pledged delegates, however.

[electron_blue]

16. Yes. And if I may add one more element - both appear to have similar levels of support

within high levels of the Dem party. Or else this would have been over a long time ago.

Barring a major stumble on Obama's part, he will finish the most delegates. That is not a mystery anymore. I'd like to know why Clinton is still fighting. Of course, maybe she's hoping for an Obama stumble, but that's a pretty weak reason to stay in at this point.

[QC]

17. Because they're pretty much the same?

Nice corporate centrists who will not upset the ruling class.

[WeDidIt]

18. Neither can close the deal because both are superior

It's really that simple. We have two superior candidates out of a beginning field of eight.

Compare that to the REpublicans who ended up with at best a mediocre candidate out of a field of seven beginning candidates, nearly all of which were completely horrible.

[hfojvt]

19. this was explained by math

There are to simplify it 100 total delegates. To win, somebody needs 51%. Except that only 80% of them are decided by primaries and caucuses. The other 20% are super-delegates. So now the winner needs 51% out of 80%, or needs to win all the contests by 64-36. We already knew after super-Tuesday that that was not gonna happen. After Super Tuesday, one of them needed to win the rest by something like 80-20 in order to get enough delegates to have won the nomination.

I'm kinda glad, in a way, because I hate the "media annoints a winner and everyone jumps on the bandwagon" thing that seems to take choice away from later states. It wouldn't be an issue if one candidate hadn't decided to start fighting dirty.

Also, the fact is that incumbents are very hard to beat. LBJ thought he would lose to Robert Kennedy, but after Kennedy got shot, the nominee was the sitting VEEP. A national name like Ted Kennedy could not beat an unpopular President like Jimmy Carter.

[crankychatter]

24. here's why

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=5696805&mesg_id=5696805

and here

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/Christopherwalls/gGCVyR