For someone with only a 5% chance to become the nominee, people sure are spending a lot of time and ink on her. One would think they’d simply ignore her and turn their attention to the person who apparently has 95% chance of becoming the nominee.

then why hasn’t Obama won yet?

The Obama supporters spin so much we should call them “whirling Obamishes”

For someone with only a 5% chance to become the nominee, people sure are spending a lot of time and ink on her. One would think they’d simply ignore her and turn their attention to the person who apparently has 95% chance of becoming the nominee.

Well, I mean, they have a ready excuse for THAT one. The whole point is that, according to them, she’s just frivolously trying to hurt Obama’s chances of winning by dragging the primary out and distracting the media from Obama v. McCain, presumably so she can run again in 2012.

If they don’t, people will foolishly believe it. Honestly, I know too many people who still believe the “news” and when I tell them they’re lying they ask, “Now, why would they do that?”

is that Obama vs. Clinton is a ratings bonanza for the networks. As HRC’s (media portrayed) chances dwindle, so dwindle the advertising dollars. The media is a willing accomplice in echoing the contrived narratives of HRC viability.

Oh, wait…

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

I don’t get the pro-Obama/anti-Hillary media meme.

Is this the same media that goes on and on about “Where’s the meat to Obama’s rhetoric?” and then ignores all of his past accomplishments in government? Ignored his wonderful speeches on Iraq and the economy last week, only to replay the same 45 seconds of Rev. Wright clips?

Look, the media likes the caricature of the “groundbreaking, soaring speech giving, inspirational black guy”. Seems nice; but it still puts him in a convenient package that ignores much of what really makes him the best candidate for president.

Yes, manahmanah, the media is starting to bare its fangs toward Obama on occasion, as he is the presumed nominee (and I can safely say “presumed,” because everyone in the media presumes it), and after a comedy show famously busted them.

But false meme? Are you joking?

http://www.cmpa.com/election%20news%202_…

Brooks used to be a intelligent individual. I guess the media is contagious and one gets the stupid disease.

What is unsaid is that the campaign turned bitter, not your typical Democratic campaign. It’s bitter because both the media and the Obama camp are dishing out a lot of hate; something the Democrats never thought they’ll deteriorate into. Within the hate morass, three more months do inflict pain and cause scars. Blame the media and Obama for that. So, if Obama loses the GE and is looking for reasons, all he has to do is look in the mirror.

I know it’s not a serious question, but I’m going to answer it anyway. Clinton won’t quit because she may very well pull ahead in the popular vote. Some very rough and quick math. Let’s say that Obama has a current popular vote lead of 526,392 votes, that’s a very generous figure for Obama since while it includes Florida, it does not include Michigan and uses the Washington caucus results (from www.realclearpolitics.com). Now, using that figure let’s look at the upcoming primaries for which we might be able to make some sort of guess or prediction of the outcome.* These of course could change, which is why we have elections:

Pennsylvania - if you assume 60% of its 4 million registered democrats show up to vote and Clinton wins 57-42 (see MyDD demographic analysis), then Clinton will gain 336,000 votes on Obama in Pennsylvania. If 65% of the voters turn out in Pennsylvania, Clinton would gain 364,000 votes. If she were to really crush Obama and win 60% (possible, but probably unlikely), with the 60% turnout model, she’d cut Obama’s popular vote lead by 480,000 votes.

Indiana - there have been no recent polls in Indiana and given that it’s wedged between Illinois and Ohio, it could probably go either way. But let’s say it follows its demographics the same way Ohio did, using this analysis, Clinton would win by ~166,000 votes.

North Carolina - although the latest poll had Obama and Clinton nearly tied, let’s go with the RCP average. Again, assuming 60% of North Carolina’s 2.5 million democrats turn out to vote, Obama should win by about 5 or 6 points based on the Real Clear Politics average (although that average has both candidates in the 40s because it has a large number of undecided voters). We’ll assume the undecideds break about even and give Obama a 53-47 win, which should pick him up an additional 95,000 votes.

West Virginia - the only recent poll has Hillary beating Obama by almost 30 points. Let’s give her a 20 point win with 60% of West Virginia’s approximately 1,000,000 voters, which should net her a gain of 120,000 votes.

If you presume these numbers, then Hillary would have a very slim popular vote lead of 608 votes. And things could go better for Hillary relatively easily, if 65% of Pennsylvanians vote and she wins 57-43, that would add 28,000 to her vote total. She could also win North Carolina. And then there’s Michigan, where, according to The Green Papers, Hillary has a lead of more than 90,000 votes over uncommitted.

Things could, of course, go worse for Hillary than this, too. If Obama can suppress voter turnout in Pennsylvania or do better than expected there. If he can win Indiana. If he can continue to keep Florida and Michigan from counting, even in the popular vote (and you can bet that one of the reasons why Obama didn’t want a re-vote was to try to discredit the popular vote in those states).

My point isn’t that Hillary will definitely re-take the popular vote lead, but only that it’s definitely possible for her to do so. Which, of course, is why she must quit because Obaam will probably never be in as strong a position to claim the nomination as he is now (interesting that he still hasn’t claimed it). Now, arguably, he remains in the stronger position to claim it and so, if he ends up the nominee, Clinton’s continued wins may weaken him. This line of reasoning, however, would lead one to conclude that should Clinton end up the nominee, given that she was the presumptive nominee six months ago, the entire Obama campaign (and Edwards and everyone else) was nothing more than an exercise in weakening her for the general election. Therefore, the entire nominating contest was a mistake. Note - I do not believe that, but that’s where you get if you take voting as an act of weakening a candidate to its logical conclusion.

* While CW says that Hillary should win Kentucky and Obama should win Oregon, there is so little info about the remaining states that I’m not even going to try the wildass guess I did for the others. We’re expecting a poll from SD later this week and that should hopefull tell us something there.

I don’t deny that the media trips all over themselves for a negative Clinton story, though any discussion of this should be prefaced by this article.

The study you link, VL, was after just 4 states had voted… an eternity ago. I hardly consider it the authority on how the media treats Obama.

My point is that the media, like they always do, has created their own convenient narrative of the candidates, Obama included. Obama’s portrayal hinders him in different ways, but is still a hinderance. I don’t accept it as an excuse for his success.

How then can his media portrayal not be absolutely critical to his success?

“The study you link, VL, was after just 4 states had voted… an eternity ago. I hardly consider it the authority on how the media treats Obama.”

Well then! Your response is to link to an even older article (11/07)about the glowing Clinton press coverage:
“Despite all the grumbling, however, the press has showered Hillary with strikingly positive coverage… This is all the more striking in light of the press’s past treatment of Clinton—particularly during her husband’s White House years—including endless stories about her personal ethics, frostiness, and alleged Lady Macbeth persona.”

Sheesh.

$10 went to Hillary’s campaign this morning.

“Obama’s entire campaign is his image”

That statement fits into the narrative; and I categorically disagree with it.

::

Wasabi - the story I linked was for background on HRC’s touchy relationship with the media, not the outdated excerpt you pulled out.

“Sen. Hillary Clinton visited the Trib’s office on the North Side today, saying it was “so counterintuitive that I thought it would be fun to do.” …” — http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsbur…

the media is flirting w/Obama (and feeling daring and even racy for doing so), but is married to McCain.

I would love if the Obama campaign just ignored Clinton and started to stump and air ads against McCain. Strategy wise, it may be a good idea now…

Alas, I doubt that we would even hear if this happened. Anybody even remotely linked to one side or the other would be breathlessly quoted (out of context most often) anytime they uttered something that could be construed to be about the other candidate. Oh, and since the Clinton strategy (if they are at all rational) at this point is to convince super delegates that Obama is fatally tainted goods…

on what planet?

Um… you do realize that the popular vote arguments are predicated on the super delegates deciding the nomination? That could be perceived as legitimate by many if the pledge delegate count is very close, but even then is very risky. How many people, in good faith, will view it is illegitimate? The bigger the pledge delegate difference, the bigger the legitimacy problem.

Tread carefully here friends. This is really close to ’destroy the Democratic party’ territory.

PS: I’m all for using this mess to overhaul the Dem primary system. Ranking vote primaries for all states; final total popular vote wins. Have say 4 up-front primaries separated by 2 weeks, then everyone else votes a month or so later. States can use caucuses (my preference) or the primaries to elect delegates to decide party officials, platform committees, ect. Much simpler and vastly more democratic.

Electoral College.

Count every vote, and protecting the right to vote is a core modern Democratic value—very core.

Assuming Obama doesn’t bully Clinton to drop out, the nominee is going to be decided by automatic delegates because neither candidate will reach the magic number on pledged delegates alone. The idea that Obama can get the nomination solely through pledged delegates is simply incorrect. Why pledged delegates, who are alloted through an almost arbitrary apportionment system and are irrelevant to our chance in November (we won’t be trying to win over delegates, we need voters), should be viewed as having more legitimacy in terms of swaying automatic delegates than actual voters is simply beyond me. Other than the fact, of course, that the pledged delegate count will favor Obama and the vote may not.

Given that it’s the Obama campaign that is arguing that pledged delegates are more important than actual voters, including the 2 million voters in Florida and Michigan, I’d say any crisis of legitimacy will not be of Clinton’s making.

As for how Clinton wins, it’s relatively simple. I think she need to re-take the popular vote lead, probably at least the one that doesn’t include Michigan, but does include Florida. She needs to finish strongly, particularly in Pennsylvania. Assuming she wins Pennsylvania and is ahead in the popular vote, even if it’s not the most favorable Obama count of the popular vote (e.g. excluding MI and FL), she’ll be able to say that she’s the choice of the voters, that her wins came in large primaries whose dynamics most closely resemble a general election, and that she won in big states that are must wins for Dems in November (Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey), and that Obama’s slim pledged delegate lead is the result of lopsided wins in states with favorable demos or caucuses and does not indicate the kind of broad electoral strength he’ll need in the GE.

In other words, it’s not much different from Obama’s - who will argue that he’s ahead in popular vote (excluding MI and FL, and I wish him luck on getting SDs to ignore FL), that his pledged delegate lead shows organizational strength, and that because he won in a wide number of states he’ll be stronger in November.

http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4489

“… Campaign ’08 has been particularly rich in bogus media narratives. Ever since the races began in earnest last year, the blown calls have just kept on coming. Many of the storylines around which the political press has pegged its coverage haven’t even come close to falling within a reasonable margin of error. …”

Um… you do realize that the popular vote arguments are predicated on the super delegates deciding the nomination?

So is the “pledged delegate leader” argument. *Neither* candidate can win outright at this point with pledged delegates, so the supers decide who gets the nomination.

Yes, even Obama can’t win without the supers. Being the candidate who’s ahead or who’s “winning” does not equal being the winner. Haven’t you heard of buzzer-beaters?

The irony of the popular vote argument is that Obama’s popular vote numbers are supressed due to his success in caucus states. Turnout is significantly lower in these states, so in turn, Obama’s net popular vote margins are artificially reduced. And all this time conventional wisdom told us that caucuses favored Obama.

Also, to have a proper agrument on the “big state” impacts, please familiarize yourself with this analysis: FiveThirtyEight.com

Anyone touting “popular vote” winner is about as lame as the media which has continues to report winner of IA, NH, TX, OH, etc. as if they are winner-take-all states. The Dems decided to have pledged delegates based on their goofy formula, so thems the rules. WHO CARES who the popular vote winner is? The rules are percentile based pledge delegates, and if you were smart about campaigning you could easily lose the popular vote in many states and still come out with more delegates.

This is stupid to pretend it is winner take all. It’s like saying Clinton did better than Obama in CA. Who cares, will that matter in a Dem vs. McCain race? No, so quit talking about it. How much does CA contribute to the “popular vote” winner.

Fact, Dem Primary is based on pledge delegates in crazy formulas sometimes involving CDs and/or extra bonus for the state popular winner. Also, the electoral college is not based on popular vote, but rather winning enough key states.

If you want to be technical, the DNC should take all the BLUE-BLUE states and RED-RED states and remove them from delegate and “popular vote” discussions. Then have super delegates look at the remaining pledged and popular vote and make a decision.

Well, it’s arguable whether Obama would’ve won primaries in all of the caucus states. See Texas. And if he did, he likely wouldn’t have won them by as large a margin, at least % wise. See Washington State.

As to why the popular vote matters, I agree that the Dems have set up a pledged delegate system. However, in this election neither candidate can get to the needed number of delegates solely with pledged delegates. So they will need automatic delegates. There is no rule that automatic delegates must follow the pledged delegate leader. Indeed, if that were the case, there would be no point in having the automatic delegates at all. Under the rules and the system set up by the party, the automatic delegates can vote for whichever candidate they want, for whatever reason they want. The popular vote is simply one argument that can be used to try to sway them to one candidate or the other. That is the system we have and that is the system that will decide the nominee. Pretending that the system is only about pledged delegates is wrong.

“… the reality is that Barack Obama cannot win the national election in November without the faith and enthusiasm of a good chunk of white middle class and lower class America. So the Obama Campaign can keep sending out daily press releases reminding us that their candidate leads in pledged delegates, number of states won and the popular vote until the cows come home. They can do the math over and over again demonstrating that it is impossible for Clinton to catch Obama in any of those categories. But absent the bigger picture it’s whistling Dixie. …” — http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fo…

popular vote of what? If you are the super delegate (WTF is with this language bullshit at the last minute) Congressperson, should your vote be based on your CD or the state?

If you are a Gov “automatic” super delegate it seem if you are using the popular vote metric it should be based on your state. If you are a mayor or county committee then what? All super delegates have to vote as the state does?

Why not vote like your CD did?

Are you saying that the plan is to make supers be winner-take-all? That seem pretty stupid considering they are designed to give a vote to key dem leaders in state and local politics.

Fact, the super “automatic” delegates were put in place to let the party still have some control in case a popular movement could usurp the DNC control. The supers will be voting that way regardless. That is why the exist. I don’t believe for one minute that supers are going to be forced to vote by winner-take-all popular vote (unless the DNC crunches the numbers and decides that’s what it wants anyways)

popular vote is how the majority of Americans look at elections and popular votes determine legitimacy. It’s not how the system works but it’s how we think and we hold voting to be important—we don’t hold delegate allocation or whatever stupid state rules to be important. We are citizens, and voting is what citizens do. We vote for candidates for all offices—not for delegates (even tho for the presidency and party candidates alone, it is for delegates)

I distrust anyone who waits until mid-March to change their vocabulary from “super delegate” to “automatic delegate”. It’s as transparent as McCain “straight talk”.

what do you expect from us?

no other votes we cast have anything remotely like them. If we vote for a proposition or budget or tax or mayor or gov or Senator or Rep or Judge or Councilmember, etc. — no Delegate bullshit for any other vote.

“popular vote is how the majority of Americans look at elections and popular votes determine legitimacy.”

The majority of Americans then are ignorant of how elections work. I’m sorry that people can’t graduate high school without a simple Government class explaining how things work. I will concede in a super duper simplified view of elections, the popular vote does pick people like mayor, governor, etc.
But that it not how Presidential Primaries or even the Electoral College works. Rove is the one who introduced this concept of having to win the popular vote.

… are there to exercise their judgment, and them’s the rules, then you want to put talking points before them to help, or persuade, or intimidate them into exercising their judgment their way.

1. That’s what “AAs will sit it out” is doing.

2. That’s what “women will sit it out” is doing.

3. That’s what “____ got the popular vote and that’s the best mandate” is doing.

4. That’s what “____ got the pledged delegates and that’s the best mandate” is doing.

5. That’s what “Caucuses are not democratic and are therefore less legitimate than the secret ballot” is doing.

Now, I happen to believe that, if you’re breaking a tie, which is what’s going to happen, #3 and #5 are true and rest are false.

But it’s all academic anyhow. Buzzer beaters happen, for example. Look at Spitzer.

But regardless, all of this points are being made for reasons that have nothing to do with truth or falsity.

And let’s not forget that soft power is real, and that a win seen by most as legitimate is needed.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Except I don’t think #5 is legitimate. Caucuses may have flaws, but Obama had nothing to do with their use this cycle. And his success in caucuses has everything to do with his organization and impressive campaign machine. Can’t hold it against him.

Again, ironic how Obama’s #3 (popular vote) is hurt by his domination in #5 (caucuses) - see my post above. To those who doubt, consider: if a 20 point margin is reduced to 10 by switching from caucus to primary, but turnout is 3x, then Obama would net 50% more popular vote.

I’d like to add:

6) coattails
7) expanding the electoral map

Maybe I’ve never experience the Party “party” that is a caucus, but in my opinion, caucus are weird and backwards and anti-voting. If it’s not ok and would violate many state laws to vote for President using a caucus, why is it ok to pick the two choices for President that way.

The Obama folks have now gone around the bend — it’s beyond entitlement now.

Here’s my post I just finished here at Corrente about it.

only undeclared, Ind, and GOP who went Obama will go McCain—we’re not gonna lose groups, and will only gain w/Hillary.