The Queen Bee is not amusedFollow

OMG Asylum Politics!

Per CNNMaine's already been called by CNN & MSNBC for Obama at 70%. So Nexa is spared her Chicago-style beat down for missing the caucus. Obama is expected to sweep Maryland, DC & Virginia on Tuesday and stand a better than even chance in Wisconsin coming up. Clinton's campaign has all but admitted that its just circling the wagons and waiting for Ohio and Texas on March 4th.

The big news from the weekend sweep isn't just that Obama won, but the margins he won by. The gained delegates from his 30 point leads in Washington & Nebraska and 17 point lead in Louisiana largely erased the delegate gains Clinton took from much tighter wins in New York, New Jersey and California. Although Clinton leads when you include superdelegates, Obama has a substantial lead in pledged delegates (those won via election), 971 to 915. Tuesday's elections are worth enough delegates that a sweeping win could place Obama in front no matter if superdelegates are counted or not.

This would not be a good week to spend around the Senator from New York.

She'll hold on until Texas & Ohio at least. I think she may be pressured to drop if she loses one of those two.

Edit: To expand, I think that after this month, the only way Clinton will be able to catch up in pledged delegates will be to decisively win in Texas and Ohio. She can't tie or win by 5% because that won't get her a delegate lead. She needs a real victory. If she can't close up the pledged delegate lead, the only way she'll win is via superdelegates. I think there's a concern that a lot of the independents and young voters rallying around Obama will say "fuck it" if Clinton wins not because of cast votes but because of the decision of DNP movers & shakers and those voters will drop out of the general election. If the Democratic Party wants to win in November, they probably can't do it with a candidate who looks as if she was placed there by the party machinery instead of the will of the people.

That's my guess, anyway.

Edited, Feb 10th 2008 6:33pm by Jophiel

She won't withdraw gracefully, that's for sure. I think that if she withdraws, it will have to be after an obvious thrashing by Obama before March. Right now there is at least the pretense of more than one candidate on the Republican side, but she can only rally for so long before she faces some party pressure to step back. I think that it will take a private plea from the Dem side to get her to step aside, and she may not let on publically that she was asked to step down, but I think that if it were up to her, she would let it go to August.

I think she can hold out till the first week of March. I think that if Obama takes those primaries, the expectation would be that she would step down. If she doesn't, then Dean will likely step in.

It's too bad though. If Clinton were to get the nod at the Dem convention, McCain would be a mortal lock for the White House in November. Obama? Much tougher race.

Totem

I would agree that this is definitely Hillary's only real shot. While it's looking more and more likely that Obama will get the nomination, if he doesn't he's young enough to try a few more times like most career politicians hoping for a shot at the presidency. Sure, it is possible he could end up like Edwards but it's just as likely he could do what Al Gore did and keep at it over the years before he landed on Bill Clinton's ticket. As well, I'd imagine Edwards will try again, depending on how things go with his wife's health down the road.

Honestly, my only fear for Obama is someone pulling another James Earl Ray or Sirhan Sirhan. Obama's aware of that risk. Having lived through those tragedies in my lifetime, I'd be lying if I didn't have this concern in the back of my mind.

Funny enough, I've spoken to some truly racist mofos who not only would vote Obama, but rarely mention his race. I'm disappointed to say that the largest hue and cry about the whole race issue I've heard when it comes to him is from Hispanics, hands-down.

And why do you suppose that is, that Hispanics don't cotton to Obama?

Totem

They're classists and closet racists who base their regard on skin shade and eye color. They feel that if he gets elected, he'll pull for his own because that's what they would do.

Edited, Feb 10th 2008 11:44pm by Atomicflea

So they think that a privileged white woman would look out for them more than a brotha? I seriously doubt that.

Actually, Flea's statement is totally correct. I can't speak for the Central American or South American Latinos, but in both Cuban and Puerto Rican cultures there is quite a bit of racism- I even have family members that are blatantly racist (namely my father's Puerto Rican side), and it's always bothered me. I always found it a bit ironic, but much of it essentially stems from the days that the islands were mainly populated with the white Spanish and the African-American slaves. Now they are very mixed in both Puerto Rico and Cuba, but the racism is still around, sadly. I've heard my own grandmother speak badly about black people, for no reason other than they are black, and hang onto the fact that the family has maintained "purely Spanish" bloodlines and many of them are light-skinned and light-haired(actually that side of the family is Basque, not Spanish, which makes it even highly more amusing to me.)

In short, I can assure you many from my father's side of the family would vote for a white woman long before a black man. My mom's side of the family is very anti-discrimination and has always been fine with blacks, but that certainly isn't true for all Cubans, either; not in the slightest. Spend enough time in Miami, and you'll see there still is a class/race divide amongst the Cubans. I've spent enough time in Puerto Rico since I was a baby that I can confirm that racism is still pretty prevalant there, and the divide between classes is huge.

Once again, not sure what causes Mexican-Americans etc. to vote for Hillary instead of Obama, but I can definitely speak for why most Cubans/Puerto Ricans wouldn't (and this most likely extends to Dominicans, as well.)

Edited, Feb 11th 2008 5:57pm by Alixana

So they think that a privileged white woman would look out for them more than a brotha? I seriously doubt that.

You're dead wrong.

I guess what I find amusing is the way the article is written. How many times have I pointed out the "X after Y" fallacy (yeah. Correlation/Causation. You can keep your fancy-pancy words...)? Just because something happened "after" something else doesn't mean anything at all...

Not only do I doubt it had anything to do with the results of those primaries/caucuses, it's also not really a surprise (the results, not the switch in personnel). Every single analysts has been saying for the last week and a half that Clinton's strategy for this phase is to basically let Obama have the smaller states and therefore small number of delegates and focus on the larger ones instead. While I'm sure she would have liked smaller margins, absolutely nothing about the results from this last weekend, nor the likely results this week are surprising or cause for alarm/celebration on either side.


It's certainly not likely to be the cause in anyway of a shift in managers.