By Brendan Loy
With Hillary Clinton appearing to have an insurmountable edge in Pennsylvania, Mark Halperin says the "developed consensus" is that "Clinton probably has to win North Carolina’s May 6 primary to fight on
with a real chance — but/and Obama has to win it to avoid a prolonged
fight." Polls there show a slight Obama edge.
You'd think that, at some point, the focus would become exclusively on delegates, rather than on objectively meaningless "wins" and "losses." But of course, you'd be wrong. The objectively meaningless could be subjectively pivotal, because of the importance of the superdelegates, the media narrative, etc.
Thus, although it advances the "wins" vs. "losses" narrative, I gotta ask: what about Indiana, which votes on the same day as North Carolina? Might not Obama need a two-state May 6 sweep to really get the "Hillary should drop out" meme going?
TNR's Noam Scheiber thinks so. Here's the key excerpt from his excellent piece on the "Democratic death march" toward Denver:
Democrats have never been known for Spock-like rationality, but
even they see the logic of avoiding a convention fiasco. "It's in
nobody's interest in the Democratic Party for that to happen," says
Mike Feldman, another former Gore aide. "There is a mechanism in
place--built into the process--to avoid that." That mechanism, such as
it is, involves an en masse movement of uncommitted superdelegates to
the perceived winner of the primaries. Almost everything you hear from
such people suggests this will happen in time. "I think once we have
the elected delegate count, things will move fairly quickly, " says
Representative Chris Van Hollen, who oversees the party's House
campaign committee. Increasingly, there is even agreement on the metric
by which a winner would be named. Just about every superdelegate and
party operative I spoke with endorsed Nancy Pelosi's recent suggestion
that pledged delegates should matter most.
Assuming Feldman and Van Hollen are right, that means Democrats won't
wait much past June 3--currently the last day on the primary
calendar--before crowning a nominee. At the same time, it means there's
very little chance of ending the contest sooner. Undecided
superdelegates on Capitol Hill, along with party elders like Pelosi,
Gore, and Harry Reid, "don't want to be seen as elites coming in and
overturning the will of the people," says one senior House aide. A
Senate staffer says his boss "thinks this give and take is natural, it
will be helpful in the end." "That's a view held by a majority of these
guys who have been through the cut and thrust of politics," he adds.
Which means early June it is. ...
The most optimistic scenario I could plausibly construct didn't end the campaign until the second week in May.
To make it happen, Obama would have to overtake Hillary among
superdelegates--a key psychological barrier. He'd have to limit his
margin of defeat in Pennsylvania to ten points, then hold serve two
weeks later in North Carolina and Indiana, a pair of states he's
slightly favored to win. At that point, Hillary would face nearly
impossible odds of overtaking him in the delegate race.
Unfortunately for anyone who wants the race to
end soon, there are several problems with this scenario. For one thing,
even if all this comes to pass, Hillary would still have to bow out
voluntarily--an unlikely twist in any event, but highly implausible if
the limbo states of Florida and Michigan still offer her hope.
Meanwhile, any one of the aforementioned steps could easily fall
through. Polls currently show Obama trailing by double digits in
Pennsylvania; the good Reverend Wright could make that tough to change.
And, though Obama now leads in North Carolina and Indiana, his
advantage is either small or, in the latter case, based on a single,
flimsy poll. As for superdelegates, as of this writing, the last two
out of the closet opted for Hillary.
So, to
review: The most optimistic scenario we have relies on a highly tenuous
assumption; it's unlikely to happen even if that assumption holds; and,
regardless, it allows the Democratic contest to drag on for six more
brutal weeks. The dream may never die, but it's seen some better days.
The focus of Scheiber's article, as that latter point implies, is the damage the Democrats are doing to one another. At one point, he writes that "debating national security credentials during the primaries invariably
alters the general-election landscape. You can now count on seeing
another '3 a.m.' ad sometime this fall--not to mention a '3 a.m.'
debate question from Tim Russert, and a shadowy, '3 a.m.'-obsessed 527
group. ('Insomniac Prank-Callers For Truth'?)" Heh.
He also notes, referring metaphorically to Democrat-on-Democrat attacks, that "any missile that hits its target would also destroy the person who launched it":
Given the delegate math, Hillary's only path to the nomination, barring
a meltdown by Obama, is to destroy his electability. But harsh attacks
on Obama will inevitably discourage African Americans from voting in
the fall, and Hillary can't beat McCain without strong black turnout in
places like Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia. Conversely, any
attack on Hillary that alienated moderate Republican women could
cripple Obama's chances.
Indeed.
My other sites