I’ve seen it in the sincere questions of anna in philly and in the snide remarks of Armando. There is this idea out there that Hillary Clinton should stay in the race just in case Barack Obama’s campaign implodes and it appears that he is totally unelectable by the time the nominating convention takes place at the end of August.
This idea is based on a total misunderstanding of how the nominating process works. None of the delegates (pledged or unpledged) are legally bound to vote for a particular candidate on the first vote at the convention. For the pledged delegates there is an obvious commitment to support the candidate they were elected to support. But the only barrier to them changing their support is their own conscience. If they can defend their decision to their peers they will have no further qualms about changing their vote.
To take an obvious example, if Obama were to get caught visiting high-priced call girls, like Eliot Spitzer, few pledged delegates would feel obligated to stick with him. In that hypothetical scenario, Hillary Clinton’s strong performance in the primaries and her large bloc of pledged delegates would make her a heavy favorite to be the replacement nominee.
If we are to appraise the current state of affairs fairly and honestly, we’ll realize that Clinton’s chances in such a situation will be unlikely to depend on the number of delegates she picks up from this point forward. She’ll have the strongest case to be the nominee even if she wins no more delegates. It’s possible that the nomination could go to Al Gore or some other candidate, but improving her odds of preventing that is a horribly weak rationale for continuing a campaign built around the argument that Barack Obama is not fit to lead the nation.
As Ben Smith notes in today’s Politico, Hillary Clinton can no longer realistically win the popular vote. That is reason enough for her to suspend her campaign, as Bill Clinton noted last week.
“If Sen. Obama wins the popular vote then the choice will be easier. But if Hillary wins the popular vote but can’t quite catch up with the delegate votes, then you have to just ask yourself, ‘Which is more important, and who is more likely to win in November?’” former President Bill Clinton told ABC earlier this week.
Asking Hillary Clinton to suspend her campaign isn’t “contempt for the voters, of Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and beyond”, as Armando says. It’s an effort to get Team Clinton to face reality and stop making John McCain’s case for him. Suspending her campaign won’t totally preclude the possibility of Clinton being nominated. In fact, it would probably improve her chances. After all, if Clinton is seen as largely responsible for making Obama unelectable, his pledged delegates will be more likely to remain in a bloc and vote for Al Gore or someone else.
The MI/FL thing could be the final straw for many Clinton supporters. It isn’t really optimum, of course – I would rather that we had some way of giving those folks a chance to weight in…
True in the context of this election, but I’ve lived few places where my primary vote mattered at all. The party had made the choice for me and didn’t give a damn what I thought.
This may be the first time in 40 years that our primary has meant anything in a presidential election. I’m used to it, I guess, but I always turn out & vote anyway. If nothing else, the local offices are important to me.
Agreed. But isn’t amazing that our “enfranchisement” has suddenly become important?
wow….cool jolt being compared favorably against armando…let me just sit with that for a minute………………………………..
…………………………………………
…………
ok im done.
thats an interesting point at the end…a lot to be said for it….not being seen as the baddie and actually garnering some support if obama tanks….i can see 2 problems with it….the sense of giving up isnt something americans like to see or feel….its not strong….americans hate losers…esp when they are the losers…..clinton might see it as not an act of strength…it also leaves things open for a different candidate to be considered…which she certainly doesnt want to see….which is actually what im hoping for….i wouldnt be too upset in august if we wiped the slate clean and started from scratch.
did you watch edwards last night on leno? why was he there? he didnt really have anything to say….except to keep himself in front of people….no endorsement….no initiative to promote….just a wave hello to people to say im still here and dont you wish i was still in it if things go really bad.
I too wondered about the point of the Edwards thing. The least he could do is learn to play an instrument or something :-).
No talent.
In politcs OR in music.
Why was he there?
Root reason?
Same as why he ran for Prez.
He is a narcissist.
Fuggedaboudim.
AG
Having seen union politics from close up for about thirty years, I’d suggest that there is a sense of narcissism in almost anyone who seeks office. It’s what they end up doing and not necessarily their relationship to themselves that is most important.
I think that Edwards, this time, at least talked about the right things, but his Senate record was somewhat dismal. So you either believe in a conversion or you don’t.
Let the lovelight shine… over the bathroom mirror.
How would THIS play in union politics?
I think not.
He’s over the edge of narcissism.
WAY over.
AG
Narcissism is about what’s going on behind the face. John would look good with a hardhat and thermos.
and a thermos full of $20/lb coffee.
Do you actually LIKE what you see going on behind that face?
Behind those exaggerated liguistic tics and the smirkyface that he tries to pass off as a smile when he’s talking bullshit??
I don’t, and if I was ever in some kind of serious buying position with someone who acted like that…real estate, a car, an expensive and possibly dangerous service like a lawyer or doctor or dentist…I would walk out immediately and look elsewhere.
Which on a large scale is EXACTLY what the American voters did during the primary.
The more they saw, the less they liked.
Bet on it.
He lost on merit.
INNER merit.
Sump’n wrong wid dat dude.
Watch.
Wait and watch.
It’ll fall out eventually.
Watch.
AG
Don’t know if there’s something wrong, but he doesn’t come across as having a clear sense of self and where he’s going. We couldn’t figure out what made him tick, even though we liked his platform.
He just doesn’;t want US to know.
With good reason.
He’s just another hustler, Heart.
On the make, just as he was from the day that he realized he was smart enough, dissemblkr enough and good-looking enough to make it out of the lower middle working class.
On the make.
Not QUITE gfood enough for Prime Time, though.
Close, but no cigar.
AG
Speaking of which, he was hustling for the DCCC this week. I got one of his e-mails. I didn’t see the Leno show – was there any mention of the DCCC there?
I did not see Leno last night.
It may hurt Clinton to undermine her rep as a fighter, but it won’t help her win a brokered convention to tear down the nominee. That’s my overall point. She doesn’t have much more than a prayer, and being tough really isn’t going to work in her favor at this point. It is just pissing people like Pelosi and Richardson off, not to mention people like me, and millions like me.
I think part of the calculation on Clinton’s strategists’ part is that since Hillary went down the low road she’s burned too many bridges with too many Democrats. Despite the talk about party leaders deciding that Clinton could rescue a failed Obama campaign it sounds to me that Clinton has pretty much poisoned any campaign by her in 2012. Her time was in 2004, but she decided to wait to avoid running against an incumbent. Four years is a long time. If Obama is nominated and wins she won’t get the nomination in 2012. If she mortally wounds the party this year she might as well join Lieberman as a Republican Lite.
McCain/Hillary 2008? Why not? She’s done more for his campaign than anyone else. They even employ the same people!
Scary thought. Whose convention comes first?
whew time out…..i just went to this site to watch the mtv thingy with young veterans interviewing clinton and obama…it was very moving…i dont know how you watch it and not come away impressed with clinton……but thats not really what i want to say.
the last month i have been visiting my uncle at the va in philly…i have never been so horrified and felt so utterly powerless….in jan he was a strong, independent, mentally sharp 89 yr old coot….no kids, never married, lived in the same house he was born in in south philly, still worked little odd jobs in the neighborhood (mostly illegal), still drove, went to the casinos several times a week, knew everyones birthday and played them regularly….he went to the va for a check up and ended up either mugged or just fell and hit his head, laid on the bathroom floor fr 3 hours in a pool of blood before anyone found him…he was sent to another hospital where they performed surgery to suck out the blood clots in his brain and spine and they fixed him up….well enough that he was coming back mentally and could get up and walk around with help…a miracle they said…then they sent him back to the va to be evaluated and he was supposed to be sent to a nursing home or rehab facility from there…he has been at the va a month….they dont feed him so he has lost a lot of weight and can barely sit up much less walk…they dont clean him …..every time i go there he is laying in waste from his neck to his knees….the staff there has told us directly they dont have the staff to take care of him….i have raised hell with the staff and ive filed a complaint with the local congressmans office veterans affairs contituent services official….there isnt much else i can do and he doesnt really have anyone else….a sister in law who is 80 and doesnt drive….i have been picking her up on my way into the city to see him….and im in the middle of passing a bunch of kidney stones so i cant really even get there that much…when i went on monday i was totally whacked out on oxycontin, knew i should not have been driving, and i havent gotten back there since….he is going to die there and its not going to take long…..watching the mtv thing with the veterans really got to me….do they realize if things dont change they have 50 years of life ahead of them with virtually no services and no help….this may not be the time to be pissing on one candidate or another but i got nothing from obama…nothing…..clinton just showed she has more of a grasp of the complexities of the issue and she has actually done stuff to help….either way we need to be demanding these people get services…this is a disgrace to america and it helps you understand rev wrights comments which i pretty much agreed with anyway. we continue to do things that damn us. individually and as a nation.
forgot the link
http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1583792&vid=217744
I missed Edwards but I too wondered what the point was of him going onto Leno.
I thought about your question the other day, especially your reflection that they BOTH could implode before the convention. I came to about the same conclusion that BooMan did. The only way they BOTH implode is if they both stay in and Hillary is seen as complicit in Obama’s implosion.
If Clinton suspends her campaign all the oppo research and attacks on her go away so the chances of her imploding are minimal. If he then implodes before the convention she is the logical choice for the superdelegates. UNLESS she is seen as implicit in his implosion. Then there is civil war in the party and we’re all screwed. Because being forced to go to Al Gore or someone else is a sure defeat. imo
The thing is though. The chances are infinitismal that he’s going to implode – either all on his own or with only right wing help. And she knows that. It needs help from Democrats if it’s going to happen and even then the odds are tiny.
As for Armando. I don’t read TalkLeft anymore. But if, at this point, Armando isn’t starting to prepare the TalkLeft readers for the very real probability of Hillary’s defeat, he isn’t doing them a service. It’s one thing to call out the Obama supporters for being too dreamy eyed about their candidate’s prospects (that certainly needs to be done on a regular basis) but it’s another to mislead the Hillary supporters as to her chances. Political bloggers should be honest with their readers. They can skew to one side or the other but they should, in the end, be honest. (I of course don’t expect that from Jeralyn because I don’t think of her as a political blogger.)
Yes. And what will Jerome Armstrong, Taylor Marsh, Susan at No Quarter and Joe Wilson do if Obama becomes the nominee. Join the McCain campaign??
I don’t think the candidates are as vitriolic as some of their suppoeters.
Well that’s too bad.
ABC News The Note: After Midnight – Obama-rella gives a round-up of Obama having a tough week ending with some very good news.
I’m reposting this: Fox News is falling in line. Watch the videos in this story. No, it’s not typos in the header:
That’s a mutiny for the better.
To preclude a common complaint: no, all of this isn’t somehow “testing” Obama, to make sure he can take the heat of an actual fight. As we (should have) learned from the Dean and Kerry campaigns, attacks are perceived differently coming from “allies” and “enemies”. The Clintons, despite all evidence to the contrary, are still seen by many as Obama’s allies because they are, at least theoretically, part of the same party. Even the most arbitrary, unjustified attacks by them against Obama carry much, much more weight than a reasonable attacks by any Republican.
Hillary’s lost. The people have voted, and they’ve voted against her. But she doesn’t care. She’s determined to use this power as a supposed ally of Obama to make him radioactive, harass him, prevent the party’s support from coalescing behind him, etc. All in the hope that she’ll be able to force the party to overturn the will of the electorate, or be able to prevent Obama from winning in November so she can run again in 2012.
I predicted that she’d use exactly this strategy weeks ago. The Clintons have no interest in the good of America, the good of the Democratic party, or the welfare of the people. Just like Dubya, they’re interested in exactly one thing: power.
Funny that, ‘just like Dubya’. Nowadays they make me think more and more of James Carville and Mary Matalin. Can anyone explain that?
When the other Party attacks you, people tend to dismiss it as “just politics”. An attack by your own Party is regarded as significant.
At this point, I could care less if she drops out or doesn’t. What I am concerned about is the insanity of the privatization of the government and the outrageous acts perpetuated on all of us by these “CONTRACTORS”!
For crying out loud- now we have Obama’s pasport being examined by contract workers at least three times! Then, Clinton reports the hers was examined. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
We are all aware of the chaos caused by Blackwater, KBR etal.Is there any part of the government not under the control of these god damned private companies?
would be liuke asking the weather to change.
useless.
She is IN it.
She doesn’t drop out of ANYTHING. She stuck with Bill through thick and thin. This is just a walk in the park compared to that shit.
I mean…let’s get real.
Even if she is defeated…how much money and power has she accrued over the last year or so?
Get real.
Conscience?
This is POLITICS.
Lord, what fool these mortals be.
AG
OT: Hillary should be hit very soon with her being a friend of “The Family,” an incredibly reactionary prayer group wherein a prayer leader uses Hitler and Mao as leadership models. Apparently, the inner circle of the family includes Brownback, Inhofe, Santorum and the like. “The Family” seeks out powerful people. H. Clintion mentions them in her autobiography.
A photo op of her husband with Reverend Wright will be the least of her spiritual concerns.
no one will touch that. Think about the unstated power of the Moonies.
You’re probably right. I only just heard about “The Family” this morning. It certainly hasn’t been circulated in the mainstream press. You’d think that if all things were equal and one candidate had a minister who said the government created AIDS you’d want to say, hey, don’t forget that that candidate has a spiritual advisor who thinks of Hitler as a role model. People who call themselves liberal and who support H. Clinton would be gobsmacked by this story.
So I googled it, and this story has been out there for quite awhile, at least since last fall in a narrow set of “leftist” publications. But it won’t crack the MSM.
I guess if Brownback, Santorum, Inhofe, Coburn, even Lieberman (!!!) has a spiritual advisor who admires Hitler, then what’s there to question?
Yeah, I guess that the media is bending over backwards for Obama while picking on Hillary. [snark/]
The story of Hillary in this prayer group as you say has been around for awhile(Mother Jones did a great job on this story)yet completely ignored by the msm. I know when I read about this prayer group this is one of the things that turned me off and even scared me about Hillary. This isn’t some nice little progressive prayer group, not by a long shot. Having the ‘government’ infiltrated and taken over by all these fundamentalist ‘christians’ is scary scary stuff.
Radical Islam/Radical Christianity-what’s the difference? And I’m certainly a hellofa lot more worried about radical christianity here than the other.
I’m going to go back and read these articles. This is really creepy. When I see this kind of stuff it makes me feel that all this alleged hatred between Hillary and the Right-Wing is just professional wrestling. For the reactionaries she’s the bad guy. For her supporters she’s the good guy. But she’s just another wrestler. After the show she gets together with Inhofe and the rest and pray and contemplate Hitler’s leadership style. For Christ’s sake.
A month ago it became apparent that HRC could not catch Obama by the numbers. The only way for her to win is to win ugly, by tearing Obama down. There is no other path to the nomination for her. She isn’t going to win it by going out and cheerfully talking about healthcare and education. She must tar Obama with the brush of unelectability, and that is not in the best interest of the Democratic Party. The failure of HRC and her supporters to understand this simple dynamic is appalling.
Is it me or does this Clinton gambit that ‘she stay in the race to ensure that an electable candidate in case Obama’s candidacy implodes’ strike you as well, I won’t state the obvious but messed up beyond belief.
In the end are we back where we began–He won’t win because, America won’t elect a black man. And at this point Wright has nothing to do with this. Crazy preachers fall out of trees in America let’s face it. Separation between church and state anyone?
If all Clinton has at this point is playing to voters lingering obsession that no black man will make it to the presidency, which I believe is the case at this point, then yes she should drop out and let history run its course. Only someone beginning with blindness and bad faith can maintain that Obama is some resurgent agent of the black panther party. Let it go!
Of course there are principled reasons to not like his platforms, but the electability angle doesn’t work. Wouldn’t the democratic party want to be in the strongest position to win in Nov.. Wouldn’t we at this moment when McBush is all but handing us foreign policy red-meat through his idiotic gaffes displays of senility want to place front and center a rational, unambiguous, committed anti-war voice to counter him. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Instead we shiver in fear of the reactions of scared white people. What will they think, oh dear!!!! Let’s grow the hell up! If your fears of a Mau-Mau under the bed is enough to allow you vote for either Mr. 100 year war or Ms. I will buckle under to republican pressure if the polls tell me to, plus I AM LOSING THE NOMINATION. Then Godspeed. But I sure as hell will fight.