For all the talk of Hillary Clinton winning Texas, it looks like Obama actually won more delegates which was, after all, the point of the exercise. Texas has an oddly bifurcated primary system where part of the delegates are allocated based on an ordinary primary vote and part are allocated based on a caucus. Clinton outperformed Obama in part 1 but Obama outperformed Clinton in part 2 by such a margin that he will wind up with more delegates than Clinton which, in a race for delegates, is the definition of victory. The final results aren’t in, but it looks like Obama will take 98 Texas delegates compared to 95 for Clinton. Obama also just won Wyoming in a 23% blowout, netting him 7 delegates to Clinton’s 5.
So, with Clinton’s net gain of 9 delegates in Ohio, it looks like her performance for the week is a net gain of 4 delegates. With Obama leading by over 100 delegates, that’s a pretty anemic performance for Hillary Clinton, all of the media sound and fury notwithstanding. At this point, her only path to the nomination is to slag Obama with a storm of negativity for the next 5 months and hope to engineer a coup at the national convention. Good luck with that if that’s the route you want to go.
She has one big victory left in the tank – Pennsylvania. I doubt she can win by a big enough margin to net enough delegates to make any kind of moral claim to the nomination. After that, the big day is in May when North Carolina and Indiana go to the polls. I don’t think we’ll make a big difference in the dynamics of the race, but it will be nice to have our vote courted for a change.
Update Just in case anyone cares, here is the remaining primary schedule:
3/11 – Mississippi (40 delegates)
4/22 – Pennsylvania (188 delegates)
5/3 – Guam (3 delegates)
5/6 – Indiana (84 delegates); North Carolina (134 delegates)
5/13 – West Virginia (39 delegates)
5/20 – Kentucky (60 delegates); Oregon (65 delegates)
6/1 – Puerto Rico (63 delegates)
6/3 – Montana (24 delegates); South Dakota (23 delegates).
It remains to be seen whether Michigan or Florida will make arrangements to have legitimate primaries.
This upcoming Indiana primary will be the first that I will cast a vote since 1976, which was the first election I was eligible. All of the other years I have not bothered, as the candidate(s) had already been selected. In the 1976 primary I voted for Carter. This time I’m for Obama. I hope history repeats and my choice wins the general election as Carter is the only presidential candidate I have ever voted for who actually won. Which means that in all these years I must have been totally out of step with the rest of the nation…
I also suffer from the “my candidate never wins” syndrome, and I also support Obama. So, perhaps his chances are grim.
Pretty pathetic reasons for not voting. My candidate doesn’t always win, but I have a right to vote, and I will use it.
Reasons for getting involved this year are the”excitement”, the “charisma”, etc. What happend to all those now crawling out from the woodwork in all those other years? And what happens in the future if an election doesn’t generate this much excitement?
Will they crawl back into their caves and not vote for another decade or two?
Apparently, they didn’t think their right to vote was very darned important.
There really isn’t any excuse for not voting, but the majority of American voters sure try to come with ones.
Um, she’s been doing that for a few weeks now. Like I said, willing to destroy the party to win the nomination.
Charlotte, I think you misinterpreted Neil… he said this would be the first *primary* that he has voted in (since 1976). With Indiana’s primary so late in the cycle, we have the burden of the expense for a pointless exercise – historically, by May the nominees have already been selected by the parties.
I once got roped into going to a “get rich quick” meeting (old boyfriend – long story). The “orator” stood if front and said “raise your hand if you want to get rich” and everyone, like monkeys, raised their hands… yes, I suppose they were “voting” but I failed to see the point.
The reason to vote in the *primary* this year doesn’t have to do with “excitement†and “charisma” – it has to do with the possibility that there will be more than one name on the ballot.
Of course, this is presupposing an utter lack of interest in any State and Local offices that might be up for grabs.
Yes, I absolutely meant I haven’t voted in primaries. I’ve voted every two years since 1976 in the general elections. And most of my choices for whatever state and national offices have failed to be elected.
The weekend media political scuttlebutt has it that Clinton’s campaign is starting early to define in their terms what ‘leading candidate’ means.They foresee a dream ticket of Clinton/Obama, in that order.Clinton fears that Obama will have the most delegates,regardless of what happens from now on. It’s now going to mean ‘electability’ rather than who has the most delegates. This smacks too much of our current regime who have always defined and redefined terms to put themselves on the right side of the dictionary .The primary process started out with the assumption that whoever tallies the most delegates is the winner.
I don’t have any problems with what Clinton would do as president,and maybe in the political world a president has to be hard-nosed and conniving to be sucessful.It’s also possibly true that Obama might be destroyed by the evil world he’ll have to confront and Hillary knows how to fight better on this really mean and unfair political stage.She has certainly been dealt considerable unfair,personal attacks in the past. But it still is irksome that the above is a neatly contrived political strategy by Clinton campaign started months in advance of convention. I’ll vote for Hillary if she is the presidential candidate, but I surely don’t like what’s going on.
The latest talking point that I’ve seen going around is that caucuses are not representative of the “will of the people”, and the superdelegates, being elected officials one and all, are.
Thus, when Hillary Clinton wins the nomination on the basis of the superdelagates, she isn’t stealing the election away from Obama.
I love how people think that just because Obama is up by 100 delegates that Hillary should just bow out. In essence, the two are splitting everything 50/50. Why should Hillary quit? I say, let her stay in it for the long haul. If she is so bad, as you are saying, shouldn’t Barack be slaying her? But yet, he isn’t.
Just sit down and hold on everybody, because this primary is going to be a long haul!
You are right, I did overlook the word primary in Neil’s post. I apologize for that.
I guess I am so used to hearing people say they don’t vote, be it a primary or a general election, that I assumed he meant voting period.
I still vote in primaries even though there may not be a choice of candidates sometimes.
What really irritates me about this election cycle is that it seems that the only way we can get “young” people out is to have an exciting, knock down, drag out for the nomination. I just hope they stick around for all those other unexciting and routine elections that don’t draw quite the attention.
What about off-year elections? What about local elections? All elections are important even at the local level.
I still go with Sean Penn’s character in “All the King’s Men” when he said (and this might not in the correct sequence) – “You ain’t nobody if you don’t vote.”
If either Democratic candidate is nominated,not leading with elected delegates,but winning by dint of superdelegates voting to overturn the popular vote,I for one for would refuse to vote in the November election,and I have always voted in every election dating back to 1964.Many might do the same.There are only two candidates to choose from,not several.
I have a question for everyone that is leaning toward Hillary Clinton to ponder. Given the current condition of our economy brought on by a hugh trade deficit,and one of the key fators in all this is our cheap Chinese imports, do you think Hillary will rectify this problem in any way, shape or form. Consider she used to be a corporate attorney for Wal-Mart, who is the biggest importer of Chinese products, and I believe you have your answer. She’s not going to bite off the hand that used to feed her.
Also this idea of her having 35 years of experience in foreign affairs has also been disproved, because she was the first lady only 15 years ago, and according to a reality check on her claims like being involved in opening the borders of a country for refugees, she didn’t show up until after the process had already occurred.
And her commercial about who you want to answer the phone at 3:00 AM, I wouldn’t want Hillary because she’s likely to say ” Why do I always get the first phone call?” Remember that debate about always getting the first question. Sounds like a good leader to me. Not
The more and more I hear about her, the worse the taste in my mouth gets. I guess if someone wants the same old Washington politics, then go for it. As for me I see an opportunity for the United States to end the strife in the world, and to once again be a leader. As it stands right now, we’re supporting China’s military build-up (via buying Chinese products), and supporting Al-Qaeda by using oil (fuel) in the war in Iraq.
Can you imagine the effect ending the war in Iraq would have on oil (fuel) prices. Does anyone want to guess how much fuel is consumed each day in Iraq. Remember their are alot of tanks and heavily armored hummers over their that if you think your vehicle is a gas hog, you haven’t seen nothing. And given the fact that this is Bush’s & Cheney’s war, and have profited quite well from it, ending the war can’t come soon enough.
The race issue in USA is very powerful and it suddenly has become a part of Clinton ‘kitchen sink’ campaign strategy. Race is always just below the surface in the best of times waiting for someone to light a match to it. Evidently the match was lit when someone in Clinton entourage( was it Hillary herself?) referred to Obama in SC as the ‘Black condidate’..
. If race is the deciding factor on who wins the Democratic nomination ,then it really won’t matter much what happens in November..more of the same even with a change of parties…Hillary won’t get the Black vote,and Obama won’t get the White vote…What a country!