Housekeeping Note–If Blog Not Available

Liberal Values has grown tremendously since it was first started about a year and a half ago, and we are now stressing the resources of our web host. I’m looking into moving the blog, but there might be some disruption during the process.

If Liberal Values is unavailable I will set up a temporary replacement. At present I suggest regular readers bookmark this site:

http://liberalvaluesblog.blogspot.com/

I will either place new posts there if this site is not available or post any updated announcements there. In the future I might also post there should we have any extended down time for other reasons.

(The site was actually set up last year for commenting on blogspot blogs which only allowed links back to other blogspot blogs.)

Setting Expectations For Tuesday

Tuesday’s primaries may or may not settle the race. Mark Ambinder reports on a conference call which does not make it sound likely Clinton will leave the race if there is any way she can argue it is a win. He says the bottom line:

Is that if Clinton wins the popular vote in Ohio and Texas, she’s staying in the race.

Even if she loses the delegate race in Texas.

He also demonstrates how difficult it will be for Clinton to win the nomination. In theory she can win:

But lots of things have to break her way. If, say, voting ends and the press discovers that Obama has a secret second family in Idaho and all his superdelegates abandon him; if, for some reason, she wins 75% of the popular vote in the states after Ohio and Texas and half the remaining superdelegates; if, by slow attrition, he closes the delegate gap to about 70 and picks off two thirds of the remaining superdelegates; if the pledged (Obama) delegates concur with the credentials committee and seat the (Clintonian) Florida and Michigan delegations) — then, yes, it’s possible.

It looks like the reality of the race is that it will be very difficult for Clinton to win the nomination, but she might remain in the race as long as there she sees any chance at all.

Obama’s campaign Manager David Plouffe argues that the math does not work out well for Clinton:

It is clear that narrow popular vote wins in Texas and Ohio will do very little to improve their nearly impossible path to the nomination. If they do not win Texas and Ohio by healthy double digit margins – and they led by healthy double digit margins as recently as two weeks ago – they will be facing almost impossible odds to reverse the delegate math.

So if we have narrow wins in the popular vote for Clinton in both Texas and Ohio, both camps will be declaring victory Tuesday night.