Letters to the Editor
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about calculus
math isn't something to be challenged, unless you don't know how to do it. Yes, she did need a 20% win to be on the road to a pledged delegate victory. It was a decisive victory in PA, but not big enough to fight the cold equations (bonus points for those who get the reference!) of the nomination delegate reality.
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do the math!!
she needed 20+ to still be in play here.
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Cold equations. Nice.
That was some sci-fe story about a stowaway who has to be killed to conserve fuel, right? I think I read it in high school. See? I know some shit.
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Sci-fe, of course...
being sci-fi stories written in Santa Fe. Or some such.
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Nice attempt, Katherine
But no cigar. This was not enough of a win for Clinton. Your turn to quit spinning.
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Yes, quote Jerome at MY DD
there's a way to show that Salon has not become a fully owned subsidiary of Clinton.inc. Good show.
So Clinton was up 20 points but not every single month so that means she wasn't really up by 20 points, because well, everyone knows that you have to poll every single month at the same figure before it becomes a figure. All campaigns go by that rule, of course.
Yes and I'm sure the Clinton campaign itself would disavow it, if it found itself up by 20 again, saying oh no, it has to be every single month at the same level before you can cite it as a figure.
Right.
Hey, so that means that her 8 point win last night was not really, because it was just one night! And her 12 point slide downward wasn't really a slide, er, wait, or was it....
Welcome to the Clintonverse. Where a 12-point drop in support is a gain. Where an opponent's 12 point GAIN in support is no gain.
I wondered how Salon would spin that NY Times editorial. Guess what? I guessed right.
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Poor New York Times
Poor New York Times they jumped the gun and embarrassed themselves. They went with the editorial before the 10%+ Clinton victory. They referred to her victory as inconclusive. They were probably going with Drudge's 52/48 call, shades of Truman/Dewey. Their credibility has been suspect for years even before their phony reporting on the leadup of the Iraq war. Ask John McCain if you don't believe me. The NYT is losing money. Poor Sulzberger, I can see Murdoch looking over his shoulder.
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Ambassador College
...sold the HLH bill of goods.
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Hillary's victory was huge.
She had everything going against her.
Except the voters.
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The Times is right, but not for the right reason
The demographic in Tuesday's turnout hugely favored Clinton. Three women voted for every two men. Only 10% of Pennsylvania's population is African-American. Obama took urban and suburban Philadelphia voters by a huge margin. During the right-wing Disney-owned, ABC "debate," the two moderators including former Clinton-staffer George Stephanopolous pecked incessantly over drivel while Hillary stood smiling by. Hillary has far more "baggage" than Obama, but we heard none of it in Pennsylvania because she's doing corporate America's work for them and they know who the real danger is.
Despite those handicaps, Obama's loss in the delegate count was minimal. By midnight, Philly's vote lacked 3% in completion. Since Obama was leading 2-1 there, he'll pick up another 1,200 votes over Hillary before the count is complete. She won't regain any in uncounted votes on balance in the rest of the state.
So Obama, really the sole target of negative campaigning, from Hillary, McCain, the right wing and the media, didn't do badly at all.
If you look at the other side of the ledger, however, something very interesting took place. The Republican primary turnout was incredibly uninspiring. Even sure-thing McCain showed signs of weakness. Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee together picked up more than one of every four hard core votes.
Hillary was toast before Pennsylvania's primary and made no progress toward making any serious dent in Obama's insurmountable lead.
The sad part is that Hillary is unable to admit that, just as Bill could not confess to his indiscretions. Until the party pushes her to that admission, she will drag Democrats down even further than she already has done. What can she be waiting for? "Obama had sex with Reverend Wright. Film at 10!"?
She will obviously be hard pressed to split Oregon and Indiana and will get slammed in North Carolina and Puerto Rico. South Dakota and Montana are inconsequential. That leaves Kentucky and West Virginia and not enough delegates to make a dent. She's 20 points down with one minute on the clock and the ball is on the 50 yard line. At this point, it doesn't matter who has possession.
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I don't really agree that negative campaigning hurt her
I honestly think the result we have seen would have been the same if she didn't go negative. This because the demographics were in her favor. As this post notes, there weren't many 20 point polls when the race seriously began.
That editorial seems to be written by an Obama supporter that wants Hillary's negative campaigning to matter when in fact it probably didn't. This is no different from any other statement from either side. Everyone wants this race to be decisive in some way and to show that there is one thing that we can point to in order to see it. I just don't see it happening.
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It's 3AM, Do You Know...
.. a baby is crying to be fed?
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good
When the NY Times scolds you, you must be doing something right.
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The song remains the same...to what end?
I admit that the NY Times article was a bit harsh, but they aren't incorrect in their assessment. Remember, the NYT Editorial Board endorsed Clinton too, so the peice isn't just coming from some Obama shills like me.
As for Salon? What gives with quoting Jerome Armstrong's analysis? It's not even accurate. Look at realclearpolitics.com average of polls. For most of March Clinton was level at about 52% and Obama hovered around 35%. That's a 17% difference averaged across multiple polls. Fine, it's 3% less than 20%. It's also not too hard to find a handful of polls that had her close to (or over) 20% a lot more recently than January. For example:
ARG: 4/12-13 Clinton +20
Survey USA: 4/05-4/07 Clinton +18
PPP: 3/15-3/16 Clinton +26
The bottom line is that Senator Clinton had a good showing in Penn, but it wasn't enough. She did need a very large margin of victory to make up ground on the pledged delegates. Pennsylvania was her last best chance to make a strong case. The results are luke-warm at best. The remaining contests need to be blow-outs, and that's just not likely to happen.
Let's have those contests and see, shall we? There is no Ed Rendell machine working for Hillary in any of the remaining states. There are still votes to count, and we should count them, but I have to admit I'm not sure what the point will be. The results will be the same: Obama wins the most states, the most pledged delegates, the popular vote. Hillary wins the big states. We still haven't counted (and probably won't count) the votes in MI and FL.
Obama has results, and Hillary has an argument.
Since there's nothing convincing or definitive about Hillary's argument, I think we need to stick with the results. Anything else seems likely to pull the party to pieces.