Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Will it still be "over" after West Virginia?

By Brendan Loy

Hillary says she'll fight on, though the congealing consensus is that she's likely to behave like Mike Huckabee after Super Tuesday, running a purely positive campaign from here on out. (I'll believe that when I see it.)

In any event, the media CW that "it's over" remains firmly entrenched, as illustrated by the following clip from tonight's CBS Evening News, currently linked at the top of Drudge:

Here's how the New York Times put it: "Very early this morning, after many voters had already gone to sleep, the conventional wisdom of the elite political pundit class that resides on television shifted hard, and possibly irretrievably, against Senator Hillary Clinton's continued viability as a presidential candidate."

But is the shift truly "irretrievable"? The big question in my mind is whether the "it's over" meme will survive Clinton's 30-point win (or more!) in West Virginia next Tuesday, followed by perhaps a 40-point win in Kentucky the following week.

Will the MSM have enough discipline to recognize that, in this primary season where demography is destiny, these inevitable Clinton landslides will tell us nothing new about either candidate, and will not demonstrate that Obama "can't close the deal" or that Hillary is "fighting back"? (In truth, the results will demonstrate only that two of the three most naturally Hillary-friendly states in the nation -- the other being Arkansas -- coincidentally happen to hold their primaries right near the end of the process.)

Or will the MSM once again fall prey to the allure of shiny moving objects, allowing Hillary to successfully use this coincidence of the calendar to generate fake "momentum" down the stretch? Will her utterly predictable blowout wins turn the media storyline back in her favor, freezing the superdelegates and focusing everyone's attention on May 31 and June 1 (i.e., Michigan, Florida and Puerto Rico)?

I honestly don't know the answer to that question, but it will determine whether anyone takes Hillary Clinton seriously during the final month of this long campaign.

Can Hillary win the popular vote?

By Brendan Loy

The short answer is: probably not.

The long answer is: if she wins by massive margins in Kentucky and West Virginia, pulls a stunning upset in Oregon, and romps in a Puerto Rico primary with unprecedented turnout, she could still potentially win an arguably plausible version of the popular vote tally.

By "arguably plausible," I mean a tally that does not depend on either a) a 328,309 to zero "win" in Michigan, or b) the total disenfranchisement of voters in Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington (caucus states that, as I've discussed before, don't report popular vote totals, but that do provide turnout numbers which allow for a rough estimation of vote totals). Any argument that purports to present Clinton as the "choice of the people," while ignoring those four caucus states (in which Obama had a 110,222-vote advantage) and/or giving Hillary credit for her Saddam Hussein-style "victory" in the Wolverine State, is laughable on its face, and such a tally will never be taken seriously by anyone outside Clinton's innermost circle of devoted sycophants.

However, I'd say it's arguably plausible to include Hillary's 294,772-vote Florida margin, even though it came in a beauty-contest primary that both candidates pledged not to campaign in. Similarly, it's arguably plausible to give Hillary the benefit of her 90,141-vote "win" over "Uncommitted" in Michigan's similarly meaningless primary, with Uncommitted's votes going to Obama. (Admittedly, not every Uncommitted voter favored Obama. But it's intuitively obvious that there were a lot more Obama supporters who didn't vote -- because he wasn't on the freakin' ballot, and the primary didn't count -- than there are Uncommitted voters who weren't for Obama. Awarding Uncommitted's votes to Obama doesn't overstate his popular support in Michigan, it understates it. And in any event, a 328,309 to 238,168 margin is much closer to being an accurate reflection of the will of Michigan's people than a 238,168 to 0 margin is.)

Of course, claiming "victory" based on such a tally is highly dubious, not only because it counts the Florida results and a modified version of the Michigan results, but because the "popular vote" is an inherently flawed metric and is not a legitimate way to determine the "winner" of the primaries.

But I said "arguably plausible," not "legitimate according to Brendan Loy." So, with that understanding, I ran the numbers, as promised yesterday. Details after the jump.

NDLS 2L wins Long Island Marathon

By Brendan Loy

Remember Dan McGrath, the Notre Dame law student who finished 33rd in the New York City marathon during his 1L year? Well, now he's a 2L, and on Sunday he won the Long Island Marathon, then flew back to South Bend in time for a Monday-morning Jurisprudence final. As a result of his exploits, he's featured on the sports mega-blog Deadspin, under the headline "Annoying Superhuman Lawyer-To-Be Makes Life More Difficult For The Rest Of Us." Heh. Congrats, Dan!

McCain supporters fueled Hillary's Indiana win

By Brendan Loy

The exit polls show that Hillary Clinton only won Indiana because of pro-McCain voters. In other words, she probably owes her victory to Rush Limbaugh and his army of chaos-loving Dittoheads.

P.S. In fairness, Ben Smith points out that "presumably many of these were voters sincerely picking a second choice." That's true, and it's a good point. It's impossible to know, of course, what percentage were doing that, and what percentage were "playing tactical games," a la Limbaugh. Nevertheless, whatever their motivations, it seems (if we believe the exit polls) that Hillary owes her margin of victory in Indiana to the support of people who have no intention of voting for her in November. Given the Clinton camp's penchant for using primary results to draw conclusions about electability, this seems a fair and pertinent point.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Sen. Hillary Clinton will narrowly win the Indiana Democratic primary, CNN projects.

Drudge, Russert say it's over

By Brendan Loy

I just got home after my drive from Nashville, and upon getting out my computer, I'm greeted by news of a shrinking Clinton lead in Indiana (1.4 percent, or 16,609 votes), a prediction by Gary's mayor of a "possible Indiana shocker," and a report by Matt Drudge that "Hillary plans to huddle with undecided super delegates tomorrow; gauging if she can go on." And then there's Drudge's bold headline:

The link goes to this video clip of Tim Russert -- the emperor of MSM conventional wisdom -- declaring the race over:

Will Hillary really drop out (or "suspend" her campaign, or whatever) immediately before two states -- West Virginia and Kentucky -- that she could potentially win by 30 or 40 percentage points? I'm still skeptical. But if Obama can pull out Indiana, the chorus calling for her exit could become overwhelming. And unless she gets a fundraising surge like she did after Super Tuesday and again after Pennsylvania, the money problem may decide the issue for her.

Key fact: Obama's whopping popular-vote margin in North Carolina -- more than 233,000 with 99% reporting -- makes it, I think, impossible for Hillary to "win" the national "popular vote" using any remotely, arguably legitimate metric. I'll run the numbers tomorrow, but I think she can probably still "win" if you count her votes in Michigan and don't give Uncommitted's votes to Obama, thus giving Hillary the benefit of a Saddam Hussein-style 328,000 to zero victory. But that's obviously, facially absurd; it has nothing whatsoever to do with the "will of the people," and absolutely no one outside of Hillary's most devoted circle of shameless sycophants will buy into it. And, even if you give her every other benefit of the mathematical doubt (counting Florida, excluding the four caucus states, counting her 90,000-vote victory over Uncommitted in Michigan, etc.), I think it's now impossible for Hillary to "win" the "popular vote." Thus, we can now say with confidence that, when all is said and done on June 4, Obama will have more delegates and more votes. Clinton will therefore be left trying to spin a loss into a win, and to convince a supermajority of superdelegates to overturn the clearly expressed will of the people. She'll fail. Drudge and Russert are right: it's over.

UPDATE: As noted above, CNN called Indiana for Clinton a couple of minutes after I published this post. The other networks have called it, too. It will be a very slim margin, however -- so slim that it seems entirely possible, if not likely, that Hillary owes her victory to Rush Limbaugh. In a race this close, "Operation Chaos" may well have made the difference.

P.S. Hillary's assertion that Indiana "broke the tie" in the PA-NC-IN trifecta is quite possibly the most pathetically unconvincing piece of election-night spin since Joe Lieberman's "three-way split decision for third place" in New Hampshire four years ago.

P.P.S. An astute post on Obsidian Wings, declaring the race over and explaining why.