Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Hillary's new inevitability---The Guardian

Dylan Loewe of The Guardian nails it---People have been saying all of this in bits here and pieces there, but this is the best summary, in plain words, of the Dem primary situation that I have read so far.....

Some excerpts (emphasis mine):

...........After tonight, despite an apparent 10-point victory in Pennsylvania, Clinton is no longer electable in a general election. According to NBC political director Chuck Todd, Obama cannot lose the pledged delegate count.......Clinton's net gain of the popular vote was also woefully insufficient for her to have a reasonable chance of reclaiming the popular vote lead.....

Without the ability to win any metric that measures the preferences of the electorate, she has left superdelegates with an impossibly narrow choice. There is now no longer a rationale from which the superdelegates could possibly hand her the nomination. She will, no doubt, spend the remainder of her campaign continuing to insist that she is more electable than Obama and that electability, more than democratic preferences, should be the standard on which decisions are made.

But Clinton's electability argument has also been completely upended. There is no argument, no matter how persuasive and cogent, that can be made to the superdelegates about Clinton's electability that won't be obliterated by Clinton winning the nomination unearned....

......Since Franklin Roosevelt, no Democrat has won the White House without the loyal support of the African-American community. But having watched the potential first black president denied his rightful chance to compete by party insiders may sever that loyalty permanently. The activist base of the Democratic party, which has been at the core of the remaking of the political landscape, will likely also be rocked by a Clinton coup. If the superdelegates nominate her, it will rip the base of the party in half and destroy the extraordinary progress that the Obama movement - and the Dean movement before it - has produced. Even if she is more electable before their decision, she will be unelectable after.

Anyway, absent of a >20 point win in PA for Hillary Clinton it has been fairly obvious that Loewe's aforementioned scenario was the only logical one remaining. Her ten-point win from last night will be spun into some serious yarn, but nothing has really changed. The margin, in delegates and in popular votes, was not nearly enough. Now, will someone high up in the party have the guts to sit her down and lay it out as it is? Will anyone be able to get her to see it from the perspective of the good of the party and indeed the country?

Or, well, it won't be the first time the Party has blown a slam-dunk election.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Saw that else where Yack, love the way you've framed it to suit purpose.

Well done.

GoBama!

Anonymous said...

Sorry AnonM, guess you KNOW I'm referrin to you when I say Yack.

Either way, I'm reading it. *G*

Anonymoustache said...

Thanks Larue.

Anonymous said...

You have been tagged with the Cult Fiction Meme!