Hillary

So, the choreography of the abridgement of the roll call, ending with Hillary moving to nominate Obama by acclimation, was very nicely done.

Sadly…why did they have to go and spoil the festivities with Chuck Schumer’s call for assistance in getting the Dems to 60 votes in the Senate?

The threat of either party having too much power is what drives folks like me to vote in support of divided government.  I think Obama’s interesting…but the thought of no one being able to act as a check on Congressional Dems is just as disturbing as the Bush/GOP virtual monopoly on federal power was.

This afternoon, Hillary was overheard to say that she’d be willing to accept a nomination for Vice-President.

That statement got me to thinking:  What if McCain tapped Hillary for the number two slot?

Even though they differ in politics, McCain and Hillary are good buddies.  I’d bet that Hillary could draw enough support to deny Obama the win.  

Would McCain and Hillary want to win badly enough to set aside their political differences, and share a ticket to maximize their odds of winning, I wonder.

I doubt it…but it’s an interesting thought, isn’t it?

Seen on the AP wire:

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois sealed the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of becoming the nation’s first black president.[...]

Obama sealed his nomination based on primary elections, state Democratic caucuses and delegates’ public declarations as well as support from 22 delegates and "superdelegates" who privately confirmed their intentions to The Associated Press. It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination at the convention in Denver this summer.

From what I understand, reaction from the Clinton campaign was:

"I’m melting!"

(Yes, I know that’s horribly unfair of me.  But, while I respect the Clintons’ skill as politicians, that doesn’t mean I like Hillary.)

Seen at the Washington Post’s "The Trail" blog:

One thing about superdelegates is they can change their minds.

Even though I do not want to see a Democratic monopoly on power in Washington next year (all D’s is almost as bad as all R’s, in my opinion), it’s just about time to put the nominating campaign to bed, and quit the intraparty squabbling.

While a floor fight in Denver would be entertaining to watch, it’s bad political business.

If Hillary wants to sway some superdelegates, the thing she ought to be doing now is plastering all the superdelegates (especially the uncommitted ones) with clear, cogent arguments about how she would be more electable than Obama.   It should be short, concise, and not rely on funny numbers (like the spurious popular vote argument).

For example, consider the latest tallies at electoral-vote.com:

• Obama 276, McCain 238, 24 tied
• Clinton 327, McCain 194, 17 tied

That’s a pretty decent argument to make, I think.

I would rather not see Hillary get the nod…but the game she’s playing is not fair.   There are better, stronger arguments available to her, if she’d like to come across as the voice of reason rather than a sore loser.

I have CSPAN on as I type, after having sweet-talked the remote away from my wife.

Looking at the "every vote counts" protest, I’m still left to wonder — whatever happened to belief in the fairness of playing by the same set of rules?

Seen in the New York Times:

Democratic Party lawyers have determined that no more than half the delegates from Florida and Michigan can be seated at the party’s August convention, dealing a blow to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s efforts to seat the full delegations from those states.[...]

In asking that the full delegations from these states be seated, Mrs. Clinton hopes to narrow Senator Barack Obama’s delegate edge and make the case that by including the votes from these states, she will have more of the popular vote in the nominating contests, an assertion that has come under some dispute. But the legal analysis, based on party rules and contained in a 38-page memo to the committee, says the committee can either seat only 50 percent of the delegates or seat them all but give them only half a vote, which amounts to the same thing.

Letting Michigan and Florida delegates cast half-votes, the same sort of penalty that’s being imposed by the GOP for the states’ decision to have their primaries so ridiculously early, is actually the most sensible compromise in my mind, if only because it’s half way between “the rules are the rules” and the strategic folly of not seating the delegations from two potentially large swing states.

The rules committee is meeting Saturday, and the pundits think a decision will be made that day.  Personally, I think it would be more strategically appropriate to withhold a ruling until late next week — after the final primaries have been held, and undeclared superdelegates have an opportunity to chime in.

The way Obama’s been collecting superdelegates recently, if the rules committee postponed their decision, it’s entirely possible that the outcome of the primary season could be cleanly settled, without having to touch the question of Florida and Michigan.   If that were the case, any decision could be rendered moot, allowing for easier compromise.

With the potential of a 31 May ruling…well, the Dems have a shot at looking more like their nominee is being determined by party bigwigs in the (admittedly semi-transparent) back room….an image the D’s should be shying away from, unless they really are trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Last week, I posted my back-of-the-envelope arithmetic to double-check the sanity of Hillary’s delegate math.

In case anyone’s interested, here is an update to that reckoning:

Last week, the “% unpledged Hillary needs to win” figures were 80%, 56%, and 64%.

If Hillary could pull off an bigger rout of Obama than is expected — say by getting a margin of victory beyond 225,000 — she would have a better claim to winning the popular vote.

However, it looks like she hasn’t gained much traction with that argument among the superdelegates, so far.  That bodes ill for her candidacy, since in the end, it’s the delegate count that matters.

Well, another primary night has come and gone.  Hillary gets congratulations for winning Kentucky, Obama gets congratulations for winning Oregon, and Hillary gets congratulations again for her creative arithmetic and her tenacity for vowing to stay in the race until the final primary.

One happy thought — in two weeks the primary season will be over….and perhaps sometime in the next 3½ months we might reach a definitive answer on who the Dems’ nominee might be.

In the wake of the vigor the Clinton political machine has been putting into Hillary’s campaign since Indiana, I’ve been wondering “why”?    I’ve seen various pundits talking about different scenarios in which Hillary could stage a come-from-behind coup…but I haven’t yet seen a nice, clean description of how it might occur.

So, borrowing data from RealClearPolitics, RedState (which I might frequently disagree with, but their projections on the remaining primaries pass the sniff test), and Wikipedia, I’ve put together the following table:

Read the rest of this page →

Congratulations are in order for the Clinton clan it seems.

MSNBC declared Hillary the winner just as the clock turned 7:30, marking the official poll-closing time in West Virginia, suggesting a 2:1 margin of victory, and a net gain of roughly 10 delegates.

Of course, MSNBC also helpfully pointed out that if Hillary repeated that margin of victory in the remaining states, she’d still have to win 80% of the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to capture the nomination (somewhat less if Florida and Michigan were seated….)

As annoying as I find Hillary, I have to give her credit for giving it her best to turn the presumption of Obama being the nominee around….much like you have to give Huckabee credit for fighting on until McCain clinched the delegate count.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention electoral-vote.com’s electoral vote projections:

• Obama 237, McCain 290, Ties 11
• Clinton 280, McCain 241, Ties 17