Hillary's great Appalachian hope

Jay Cost says Hillary still has a chance. Why? West Virginia and Kentucky, of course. "I think it is too hasty to declare her finished just days before two of her three best states."

In support of this notion, he posts the latest version of Sean Oxendine's Appalachia map (original here):

The blue counties are Clinton's, the green are Obama's. As you can probably guess, the darker the color, the larger the margin. South Carolina isn't included because it was still a three-way race then. The black line represents the boundary of Appalachia, according to -- um -- the Census Bureau, or somebody. I forget.

Anyway... I think Cost is right. And while he couches his analysis in terms of uncertainties and unknowns, I don't think there's any doubt that Hillary will win huge, huge victories in WV and KY. The only question is the turnout. Will it be high enough to give her the "popular vote" margins she needs? (This is what Bill Clinton was talking about, of course.) And then, if she does get the numbers, will anyone buy her illegitimate line of argument? Will it at least sow enough doubt and uncertainty to buy her time until May 31 (Michigan and Florida) and June 1 (Puerto Rico)? On Wednesday, I asked the question; today, I'll go out on a limb and say I suspect the answer is yes.

I have a growing sense that, if there was going to be a moment before June 3 for the party to truly and fully coalesce around Obama, this week was it, and it hasn't happened. Oh, they've half-coalesced, they've whispered their allegiances, and there have been superendorsements. But there's been no mass superdelegate movement, no intervention by party graybeards, no coordinated push to get Hillary out of the race -- nothing like that. In fact, there's been a coordinated decision by the Obama campaign to not push Hillary out, probably for fear of triggering further divisions within the party (and perhaps a wave of mutnemom). I'm not saying this was a bad decision, or that a more muscular approach wouldn't have backfired. I'm just saying that, if the get-Hillary-out moment was going to happen this month, I think it needed to happen this week, and it didn't.

"But what about May 20?" you might ask. Well, I'm not at all sure Obama's "declare victory on May 20" gambit will work. In fact, I think it may be a bad idea to even try it. Hillary will win a much bigger victory, percentage-wise, in Kentucky that day than Obama will in Oregon, and the concept of declaring victory on the basis of a majority of pledged delegates is almost Hillaryesque in its spinnish hamhandedness. A "majority of pledged delegates" is only slightly more meaningful than a "plurality of the popular vote": it may have some psychic or moral significance, but it's not the metric that determines victory. A majority of all delegates is what determines victory, and Obama should not want to get into a contest with Clinton over who can more blatantly move the goalposts. While she vascillates between metrics and rationales -- big states, swing states, popular votes, 2,209 as the new "magic number," etc. -- he ought to stand firm in stating that he'll be the presumptive nominee when he hits 2,025 delegates, including supers. No sooner, no later. Using his pledged-delegate majority as an argument to the voters, the supers and the media is fine; using it to declare victory, to assert that the race is over, is problematic and Hillary-ish, IMHO.

Comments

[Youngblai]

Seriously, when people look back at this election, they're going to comment on all this craziness as a prime reason it either results in a Republican victory or isn't the soul-crushing mandate it would've probably been.

The party shouldn't be supreme, but it should have enough carrots / sticks to make one candidate take their ball and go home for its own good. Because where are we when you have WV and KY put things back in play? Or God forbid we actually let Michigan and Florida vote after we said they wouldn't and golly we're only letting them vote because well yes we know we said they wouldn't but the Screamer has no power and...<--sentence purposefully chaotic to reflect circumstances.

I mean, seriously, I thought the GOP was going to be the party that had the, "It has come to this..." splintering moment, but I really don't see _any_ way the Dems are getting out of this in good shape. It's the "Prison Shower"-rule: SOmeone's getting screwed, and they're probably not going to be happy about it.

[Andrew]

Great short article on the WSJ website today saying the Dems could quickly solve their problems by taking away the superdelegates' right to vote for the nominee so that effectively the decision comes down to the pledged delegates and thus the Democratic voters themselves.

[Brendan]

Okay, first of all, this is wrong:

"Connecticut stripped Sen. Joe Lieberman of his superdelegate status earlier this year, as punishment for endorsing John McCain's bid for the White House."

This rumor has been discussed and debunked repeatedly in the blogosphere. I reported it as well, but subsequently learned that it isn't correct. Lieberman lost his status automatically by virtue of being elected as an independent rather than on the Democratic line; his endorsement of McCain had nothing to do with it. Only Democratic congressmen get to be superdelegates. Bernie Sanders and Jim Jeffords aren't supers, either.

Secondly, the idea that the party should simply -- voila! -- "simply strip the superdelegates of their right to vote" is offensive to anyone who cares about process, rules, or fair play. There is a procedure for choosing the nominee, it was agreed upon in advance, and it involves superdelegates having the right to vote. Candidates therefore spend lots of time and energy recruiting superdelegates, because it's part of the damn process. Is it bad? Yes. And we should eliminate it... before 2012 rolls around. In the mean time, however, stripping the superdelegates of their authority would be even more blatantly inappropriate than Hillary's endless blathering about how caucuses are undemocratic, the proportional delegate allocation rules are unfairly weighted, Michigan and Florida should count, etc. The rules are the rules. If you can't win within the rules, you don't get to change them in midstream.

(Now: I'm all for arguing that, except in extraordinary circumstances, the superdelegates should simply anoint the people's choice. I think their role is to rubber-stamp the popularly elected nominee unless there is some extremely compelling reason to do otherwise. But that's an argument over what their proper role should be, which is something that reasonable people can disagree over. What no one can dispute is that they clearly have voting rights under the rules, and those rights can't be taken away in midstream without doing violence to the very concept that we have a system and we follow the system.)

So, in sum, I don't find that article particularly "great." In fact, I find it rather short-sighted, dumb, and inaccurate.

[Andrew]

Process purists like you are precisely why the Democratic nomination process is and will continue to be in chaos. Howard Dean et al can't make decisions, they're paralyzed by the chance of offending somebody. When you figure out the rules are a hassle and are throwing doubt into a process that clearly should have annointed Obama by now, change the rules. If they both spent time wooing superdelegates, too bad -- not to mention, just about everybody believes the superdelegates should follow the will of the voters and go along with whichever candidate wins the majority of the pledged delegates lest they anger the masses. Throw a bone to HRC's camp by agreeing to some solution with Michigan and Florida so she can get her delegates and the voters feel like their voice counted, then eliminate the superdelegates' role. Except the party leadership has no balls, so it'll never happen.

In the mean time, I'm sitting back and enjoying "Operation Chaos".

[Joe Loy]

Q: Which technical PoliSci term applies when a serially-deceased campaign is cyclically born again in the hills & hollows of Appalachia?

A: Reintarnation.

[JD]

Too bad WV and KY didn't have their primaries the week before or after Pennsylvania.

[Youngblai]

Um, Andrew, if you can just magically change the rules, what's to stop the party "elders" from just choosing someone?

Sorry, your theory doesn't work for three reasons:

1.) If the party does this and screws Obama, there will be blood.

2.) If the party does this and screws Hillary, there will be party leadership blood. No one's crossing the Clintons until they've got a young priest, old priest, garlic, sharp blades, crucifixes, and wooden stakes handy.

3.) More important than the blood, some bloc is going to feel that not so fresh feeling. People who feel like they've been screwed get angry. That's how we have someone from whichever demographic got the short end of the stick join the illustrious list that includes Sirhan Sirhan, Lee Harvey, John Wilkes Booth, James Earl Ray...well, you get the point.

Just because you think the rules are sh*tty and it was a really dumb idea to have them doesn't mean you can just magically change them midstream. I'm not saying _procedurally_ it can't be done. I'm just saying that doing so right now just means that _everyone_ is just going to make things worse.

Bottom line: Letting the puppy play near the bandsaw was a dumb idea--doesn't mean you should now lose an arm trying to get Rover out of harm's way. As Brendan said, this is definitely a clear indication to the Dems that 2012 should not involve train whistles and crashing metal. While the schadenfreude part of me is cackling maniacally, this is not some abstract experiment we're talking about--it's deciding who gets to compete for President of the United States. I would think that people would realize that maybe this process should be as seamless as possible, but apparently that was a bridge too far.

[JD]

No one's crossing the Clintons until they've got a young priest, old priest, garlic, sharp blades, crucifixes, and wooden stakes handy.

And now, Hillary will do her Linda Blair impression.

[Alasdair]

I still say that it's gonna be the FBI Files that get Hillary the nomination ...

[aeromusek]

I'm glad Obama is apparently taking Brendan's advice for the next few weeks' campaigning.

[Youngblai]

Unless Hillary has something really explosive in those files, I say no.

Pols crave power. Most of the superdelegates are elected. August is too close to November to be p*ssing off your electorate.

We won't even get into the fallout if even one superdelegate says, "F you, I was planning to retire anyway..." and then reports the attempted blackmail. That just might be enough to make the Dems get off their a** and shove the Double Wide Duo out of the party.

Besides, the FBI files are from the 90s. I think we've come a bit far with what can shock and amaze us as a public. When you can shag a prostitute...oh, I'm sorry, high end fantasy escort...and still survive as a REPUBLICAN, what level of dirt do you need for the Democrat party right now? Sorry, but if Hillary had that many pictures of superdelegates on their illicit vacations to Thailand, there'd have been endorsements of her after Pennsylvania.

She's got jack and she knows it. Which is why she's all but putting out the, "Hey, racists, you don't want darkie to get it, do you? Here's his schedule and pictures of his Secret Service..."-call.

<--Yes, I think making the points she's making is like saying "states rights" anytime between 1960-1984--it's speaking to a certain segment of the population in code. Unfortunately for her and thankfully for the nation, Bubba and she ruined just about any collateral they had with the lunatic fringe during their 8 years in office--and no one's going to jail just so the Haridan from Hope can win the White House.

Now, as for Obama--yeah, claiming victory on 20 May would be stupid. Especially as there's probably even more rocks that will come out around 19 May. Or William Ayers will stomp on a flag again. Something stupid is going to happen.