Saturday, February 16, 2008
Can We Get That In Writing?
The forces aligned against Hillary Clinton -- and they are considerable: the Republican Party, the media, proponents of Social Security "reform," opponents of a national health care plan, and the Obama campaign -- must by now realize that, all propaganda to the contrary, they have only two options for beating her at this point.
With California, New York, New Jersey, and Florida in her column -- all of which show her advantage not only over Barack Obama but also over John McCain: 2,290,660 votes to 1,878,746 to 1,080,774 in California, 1,003,623 to 697,914 to 310,814 in New York, 602,576 to 492,186 to 310,427 in New Jersey, and 857,208 to 569,041 to 693,508 in Florida, (where both McCain and Romney drew more votes than Obama) -- Hillary's opponents must either bully her offstage before March 4, when Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania go to the polls, or somehow convince Hispanic voters to switch allegiance to Obama, which no evidence yet suggests is possible.
The effort to bully the notoriously difficult-to-bully Hillary Clinton has been underway since Super Tuesday, when voices first began to rise in new-found outrage over the Democratic superdelegates, most of whom were thought to favor Clinton. Interestingly, no one objected to the Republican superdelegates, but that's another story.
The "we can't let these party oligarchs decide this race over the voters" argument -- put forth with a straight face by faces with surprisingly little interest in re-enfranchising the disqualified voters of Florida and Michigan, who chose Clinton -- spent two weeks pounding their refrain into the public consciousness before moving it to the next level: suggesting that Clinton -- the winner of all of the big swing states -- should "step aside" for the good of the party.
This puzzling proposal has been buttressed on the one side with the fallacious argument that Obama has a better chance than Clinton of beating McCain -- a line of reasoning possible only by referring to meaningless, not to mention vague, national polls, and not the state-by-state numbers that actually decide presidential elections -- and on the other by the equally unsupported urban myth that "everyone hates Hillary Clinton," an argument easily dismissed with one glance her superior numbers (to McCain as well as Obama) in all the above-mentioned states, as well as Tennessee and Oklahoma, two states supposedly smack in the middle of Anti-Hillaryland.
Indeed, Hillary Clinton came amazingly close to getting as many votes as John McCain in his home state of Arizona.
Had Obama done that the media would have crowned him King of Earth -- which they may yet do anyway.
But the inescapable math leaves the anti-Hillary forces with two options: a) launch desperate and destined-to-fail efforts to sully her reputation with Hispanic-Americans, in the hope of taking Texas, and b) pursuade as many superdelegates as possible to endorse Obama.
Here's their problem: if Clinton can't be bullied offstage before March 4, and if she takes Texas and Ohio, not only will she narrow the gap in delegates, not only will she be able to make the overwhelming argument that the winner of Texas, California, Ohio, Florida, New York and New Jersey must of course be the party's nominee, but her opponents will find themselves having to reverse their anti-superdelegate argument -- as those votes will start to look increasingly like Obama's only possible road to the nomination.
In other words, those currently pounding the table in righteous outrage over the superdelegate system may be its most ardent fans on March 5th.
So to those anti-superdelegate voices we say: Can we get that in writing?
With California, New York, New Jersey, and Florida in her column -- all of which show her advantage not only over Barack Obama but also over John McCain: 2,290,660 votes to 1,878,746 to 1,080,774 in California, 1,003,623 to 697,914 to 310,814 in New York, 602,576 to 492,186 to 310,427 in New Jersey, and 857,208 to 569,041 to 693,508 in Florida, (where both McCain and Romney drew more votes than Obama) -- Hillary's opponents must either bully her offstage before March 4, when Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania go to the polls, or somehow convince Hispanic voters to switch allegiance to Obama, which no evidence yet suggests is possible.
The effort to bully the notoriously difficult-to-bully Hillary Clinton has been underway since Super Tuesday, when voices first began to rise in new-found outrage over the Democratic superdelegates, most of whom were thought to favor Clinton. Interestingly, no one objected to the Republican superdelegates, but that's another story.
The "we can't let these party oligarchs decide this race over the voters" argument -- put forth with a straight face by faces with surprisingly little interest in re-enfranchising the disqualified voters of Florida and Michigan, who chose Clinton -- spent two weeks pounding their refrain into the public consciousness before moving it to the next level: suggesting that Clinton -- the winner of all of the big swing states -- should "step aside" for the good of the party.
This puzzling proposal has been buttressed on the one side with the fallacious argument that Obama has a better chance than Clinton of beating McCain -- a line of reasoning possible only by referring to meaningless, not to mention vague, national polls, and not the state-by-state numbers that actually decide presidential elections -- and on the other by the equally unsupported urban myth that "everyone hates Hillary Clinton," an argument easily dismissed with one glance her superior numbers (to McCain as well as Obama) in all the above-mentioned states, as well as Tennessee and Oklahoma, two states supposedly smack in the middle of Anti-Hillaryland.
Indeed, Hillary Clinton came amazingly close to getting as many votes as John McCain in his home state of Arizona.
Had Obama done that the media would have crowned him King of Earth -- which they may yet do anyway.
But the inescapable math leaves the anti-Hillary forces with two options: a) launch desperate and destined-to-fail efforts to sully her reputation with Hispanic-Americans, in the hope of taking Texas, and b) pursuade as many superdelegates as possible to endorse Obama.
Here's their problem: if Clinton can't be bullied offstage before March 4, and if she takes Texas and Ohio, not only will she narrow the gap in delegates, not only will she be able to make the overwhelming argument that the winner of Texas, California, Ohio, Florida, New York and New Jersey must of course be the party's nominee, but her opponents will find themselves having to reverse their anti-superdelegate argument -- as those votes will start to look increasingly like Obama's only possible road to the nomination.
In other words, those currently pounding the table in righteous outrage over the superdelegate system may be its most ardent fans on March 5th.
So to those anti-superdelegate voices we say: Can we get that in writing?
