Clinton and Obama Split Primaries With Obama Coming Closer to Nomination

Tuesday’s primaries turned out as expected. Clinton won big in Kentucky and Obama won big in Oregon. Clinton won the working class white vote in Appalachia while Obama won the working class white vote in a liberal state. This is not how Clinton will spin it, but the Clinton spin won’t fool anyone. The exit polls which reveal that 20% of the voters in Kentucky admit to voting based upon race makes the meaning of Clinton’s win quite clear. While it didn’t work nationally, the use of race in the campaign did help Clinton in Appalachia. While many Obama supporters are looking for another John F. Kennedy, those voting for Clinton are really looking for the next closest candidate to George Wallace.

While Clinton keeps moving the goal posts, claiming different criteria for winning the nomination, Obama has remained focused on the delegate race. Tuesday’s primaries gave Obama a majority of the elected delegates available. Technically the superdelegates can vote contrary to the majority of primary and caucus voters, but they won’t.

Many superdelegates are holding off on making an endorsement until Obama reaches a majority, often because they come from areas which voted for Clinton but they don’t want to support her. This includes about sixteen superdelegates from California. Clinton’s new line is that she failed to win due to sexism. I hardly believe it is sexism which is keeping Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer from backing Clinton in California.

4 Comments

  1. 1
    yucca says:


    Tuesday’s primaries turned out as expected. Clinton won big in Kentucky and Obama won big in Oregon.

    That is bad reporting to say the least! Obama appears to have won by around 15%, and the margin might still be below that at the end since eastern rural oregon appears to be slower in coming in. Clinton has won by more than 35%, and those results are final. Do you think you could have opened your post in a way that acknowledged at least in passing a difference of more than 150,000 votes?!?1 😉
    with this margins, by the way, Hillary is on target to win on the most significant count of the popular vote, the one which does NOT include Michigan but DOES include Florida.

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    No Yucca, this is not “bad reporting” at all. Leave it to Clinton supporters to come up with such ridiculous whining. I’ve never seen a campaign (and supporters) which spend so much time claiming to be the victim.

    The post is commentary and is not a report on the vote totals (which weren’t even complete when this was written). People aren’t coming to this blog for reporting on the vote totals. I included links for those who want the details. What is important is that both won big in a state which typifies their constituencies.

    Besides, it is hardly worth bragging about winning by a landslide based upon the racist vote in Appalachia.

    The voters who gave Clinton the big victory certainly are not Democrats in terms of the national party.

    Hillary is not on target to win the popular vote. Her calculations (or I should say lies) on this are based upon selective counting of the vote. Even if Michigan is left out, counting Florida is not valid. Clinton’s count also leaves out several of the caucus states where Obama won big.

    The popular vote is not even very significant. The race is about winning delegates, not the popular vote. Obama would have conducted his campaign differently if it was decided based upon the popular vote. You can’t change the rules after the fact. Plus you cannot use a national popular vote when some states use primaries and some use caucuses, especially when some of the caucus states don’t even release a vote total.

    Fortunately this doesn’t matter much since Obama will win the popular vote regardless of Clinton’s false claims of leading. She might be fooling her supporters, but you see which the direction the superdelegates are moving.

  3. 3
    yucca says:


    Even if Michigan is left out, counting Florida is not valid. Clinton’s count also leaves out several of the caucus states where Obama won big.

    Clinton is on target to win the popular vote even including RCP estimates for the four caucuses. if you have time, just have a wee look here:
    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html
    so, there are only two ways in which Obama can claim the popular vote: by coming close in Puerto Rico, which is gonna be very hard; or by claiming, as you do, that Florida ain’t valid. But, apart from the obvious political reasons against that, i’d like to see Obama campaigning in Florida just now telling the almost 600,000 folk who voted for him back in January that their votes ought not to count, that they voted against the rules. the ‘legitimacy’ argument might work for delegates, but i have yet to see how it is supposed to also imply that those votes should not count.
    finally, the reason why the popular vote is important is that in any case the race will be decided by superdelegates. and it will very likely be a race in which one candidate is ahead in pledged delegates, the other in the popular vote (by june 4th, i mean), and then it should be open to superdelegates, given this draw, to choose a candidate – but it wont, im afraid. well go to november with obama and waste the best chance to go back to the white house since Bill Clinton…

  4. 4
    Ron Chusid says:

    Obama is not going to “claim the popular vote” as it is meaningless. There is no measurable popular vote because of the caucus states, and the nomination is not based upon the popular vote.

    Any count including Florida is also meaningless. The nomination is only based upon delegates, so the Florida vote does not mean anything. Nor should it as it does not meaningfully represent how a legitimate primary would have come out. Many Obama supporters did not turn out to vote because everyone, including Clinton  until the last minute, said it would not count. Clinton then got more of her people to turn out by campaigning for Florida at the last minute. Clinton also had an advantage in a primary where they did not campaign due to better name recognition at the time, making superdelegates even less likely to consider the results as meaningful.

    You are spinning this in a dishonest manner by portraying it as saying Obama would have to say the votes of people don’t count. The issue is that there was not a valid election which represents the desires of the voters. Pretty much everyone other than Clinton supporters understands this and Clinton is only harming her credibility further by pursuing this.

    The nomination will be settled by the superdelegates, which is why Clinton’s claims of leading in the popular vote do not matter. They realize that Clinton’s claims with regards to the popular vote are both meaningless and dishonest. If anything, she is losing more support by making such dishonest claims and showing an unwillingness to abide by the rules of an election–which is a very serious matter in a democracy. Note that other than the superdelegates who committed to her early on, the vast majority of superdelegates are moving towards Obama. The vast majority of those still officially uncommitted will also back Obama.

    The superdelegates are party insiders who care about the chances of winning in November, which is one reason why they are backing Obama over Clinton, Beyond that, many are backing Obama because of the dishonest tactics used by Clinton–including her actions with regards to Florida and Michigan.

     

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