A friend of mine just e-mailed some thoughts about the national spotlight shining on Lake County, Indiana for a few hours. He talked about Wolf Blitzer trying to pin down some of the Lake County officials for a rational explanation of why it was taking so long for Lake County to turn in its results. I was thinking “God bless Lake County, they just do what they do.” But, he captured it much better with a Chinatown reference, “Forget it Wolf. It’s Lake County.”
Anyway, Clinton comes away with a squeaker of a win which, in my opinion, ends any hopes of a legitimate win for her. Whether she wants to continue campaigning is entirely up to her, but the superdelegates have to know that they’ll have a tough time giving her the nomination and living (politically) to tell the tale. Obama won big in North Carolina and Clinton only squeaked by in Indiana. He expanded his lead in pledged delegates and the popular vote. Clinton will presumably have solid wins in Kentucky and West Virginia, but those have minimal population and minimal delegates to offer. Obama would presumably win in Oregon and quite probably South Dakota and Montana. I have no idea how Puerto Rico might skew. But, even if Clinton swept the table, the math is just awful for her.
I think a narrow loss in Indiana is ultimately better for Obama than would a narrow win thanks to the mysterious workings of the Lake County electoral process. He gets most of the benefits of a win in Indiana without a lot of news coverage associated with him that looks under the rock of Lake County politics.
Update I liked Kos’s comment about the numbers coming out of Gary:
If this was legit, that’s some serious machine action at work. If it’s not legit, that’s some serious machine action at work.
I’ll get on making some “Lake County: serious machine action at work” demotivational posters just as soon as I finish writing papers for my graduate seminars …
Yeah, whether it be incompetance, corruption, or a little of both, you learned everything you need to know about Lake County Democrats last night.
Yet all the incumbant Democrats for county positions (Commisioners, Coroner, Surveyor, etc.) won their primaries pretty easily. This, despite scandals and the tax situation.
Revolution? Throw out the incumbants? Not in Lake County.
LC Democrats are a machine in the worst sense of the word.
And the national media did not do a good job on catching onto that political machine angle when talking about Lake county. If it had been Cook county holding up Illinois results…tongues would have been wagging!