Primaries

Remove all ads!

Well, Maryland, DC and Virginia have their primaries tomorrow - and I'll cast my lot for Obama. He's been steadily gaining on Hillary - including a clean sweep of the primaries this weekend. Granted, none of the states he won were big delegate states (Washington, Louisiana, Maine, Nebraska) but every little bit helps...

 

Barack kicked some butt last night - but someone explain this to me:

One of the commentators on CNN said that even if Barack or Hillary run the table with the remaining primaries (meaning one of them wins ALL the rest), they would still fall short of the delegate total to win the nomination unless they win by a sizeable 60-40 margin on average. Are there THAT many uncommitted superdelegates remaining? If this is a true, then a brokered convention is a near certainty, as I don't think either can win all the remaining primaries, and I certainly don't think they can win them by 60-40 margins.

 

I don't know, Aldeth. Obama just won DC by a 3-1 margin, took Maryland 60-37, and was 64-35 in Virginia. Given that Obama just won 8 - some by 60-40 margins - in a row and did even better than that in the last 3, I don't think he'll have to much trouble getting 60-40 or better in at least a substantial number of those primaries...especially if Clinton keeps surrendering the small states without a fight.

 

...and not to mention hemoraging support, money and high-level campaign staff. The next few weeks will be interesting indeed.

 

DR and Drew: Noted. And I hope you are both right.

I also don't doubt that Obama can in fact put up 60-40 wins in a lot of states. He probably will next week when Hawaii and Wisconsin vote.

However, keep in mind that the one place where Obama has NOT made many in-roads is getting support from Hispanics. Last I checked there were lots of Hispanics in Texas. Add to the fact that Texas (and likely Ohio and Pennsylvania) have become must-win states for Hillary, as there are still several south eastern states that have yet to vote, all of which are almost certian to go for Obama. Because of this Hillary is ALREADY compagining in Texas even though the primary is still 3 weeks away. Obama pulling off a 60-40 win in Texas seem very optimisitic to me.

Here's one other thing that I don't like: Obama is way ahead when you look at pledged delegates. He also is way ahead in total votes when you add up the Democratic votes from all the states. He's even ahead if you add in Michigan - and he wasn't on the ballot there!

Obama is likely going to win the popular vote for the Democratic Nomination.
Obama is likely going to win more states for the Democratic Nomination.
Obama is likely going to win more pledged delegates from the state primaries and caucuses.

If he wins all of those, but loses the nomination because 700-something "super delegates" defy the will of the people and support Hillary, that is total and utter bullsh!t. That's about as un-democratic as a process can get. If that happens I'll cease being a card-carrying Democrat and vote for McCain out of spite - the Democratic party will be dead to me.

 

I agree, and it appears most of the super-dels do as well. No one wants a 2000-style party-fracturing fiasco, and I don't think it'll come to that. I think most of the super-dels are pragmatic enough to go the way the popular vote does. They're primarily elected democratic officials, and won't likely risk defying the popular vote, especially after what happened in Florida. That's my thinking thus far, based on what I've read from both the analysts and several super-dels themselves.

 

When it comes down to brass tacks, the primary goal of a political party is survival of the party itself. I think DR is right about how the wind of the superdelegates will blow, should Obama become an inevitability. I have a feeling that all this talk of superdelegates was geared towards making the voters think that Hillary was already a foregone conclusion, so they'd throw their support behind her. If that was the strategy, it's backfired badly.

 

Obama has done very well, and has a good chance of winning the nomination. But it is "utter bull" to count Hill out of the game yet. Obama has done very well in the red states and in the South, where one would expect. For Hill it will depend on what happens in the large states in the Northeast, which typically vote Demcratic in the general election. Those large, blue states are the states where Hill will find the support that a typical Democrat would during the general election.

Obama's support is very much like a Republican's, which keeps me very suspicious of him. And I keep wondering why all these Republicans like him so much. But it may just be the anti-Clinton factor, which is still strong among many of them. All this of course, is playing out very well for the Republicans, because while Obama's people are threatening to vote for McCain if the Hill gets the nomination, many of her supporters are saying the same thing. If Obama wins, many of us may very will vote for McCain, which will mean another Republican president. But it will depend on how sharply defined McCain and Obama become from each other during the general election. If McCain comes across has too conservative, then he can forget about the support of all the more left-leaning independents who would otherwise consider him; the same goes for Obama. If he moves too far to the right, then McCain will gain the independent vote.

 

Actually, he beat out Hillary Clinton with Hispanics by double digits in Virginia. He beat her in Maryland, too, but by a smaller margin. If Virgina and Maryland is any indicator, this demographic will no longer be a problem for Senator Obama.

 

Chandos,

Read my conditions again. The only way I will be upset is if Obama wins the popular vote and wins more delegates, but the super delegates push Hillary over the top. If Hillary makes a strong comeback and wins Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, chances are she'll win more total delegates, and may even take back the total vote lead from Obama. If that happens, then she won fair and square and you won't hear a peep out of me. I agree that she isn't done yet, but things are definitely not looking good for her campaign.

Really? I didn't see that. I saw that he had performed better than he had previously with women and seniors, but not with the Hispanics. That having been said, I'm not sure that Virginia and Maryland are good indicators of Hispanics everywhere. It's always tricky trying to make direct comparisons between areas of a country that vary greatly. I think that's what we have here. Virigina, DC, and Maryland are nothing like Texas, and Texas is nothing like the yet-to-vote Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.

MD, VA, and DC all have large black populations and small hispanic populations. To use MD as the state I'm most familiar with, only 6% of the state's population is hispanic, while 29.5% of the state's population is black. It's about the same in VA, and in DC the black population comprises nearly 2/3 of the population. So regardless of how well Hillary or Barack did with the hispanic population, it was going to have a minimal effect on the final vote tally because hispanics make up a small fraction of the electorate. With nearly 5 times as many blacks as hispanics, the hispanic vote was completely swamped out.

In Texas, the exact opposite is true. While the differences are not as pronounced as in MD, the hispanic population is much larger than the black population (35.7% hispanic vs. 11.9% black). With three times as many hispanics as blacks, it is the hispanics that will be the minority voice heard. If the hispanics in TX are different than the hispanics in MD - and given the social pressure I expect they are - you may see a very different vote tally.

Finally, let's look at a Rust Belt state like PA. There is neither a high hispanic or black population there. The state is just 8.9% black and 4.8% hispanic. While that is 2-1 in favor of blacks, neither group is big enough to have a major impact on the final vote tally, and here it is the white voters that will have the main say in the election.

You may be right and Obama might start doing well with hispanics. All I'm saying is he is yet to show he can win a state with a large hispanic population - he lost CA and AZ, and essentially battled to a tie in NM. (Quite to the contrary he has shown he does NOT need a large black population to win a state. Many of his wins in the plains states and mid-west were areas where the black population was relatively small.)

 

I was watching an Obama rally on TV and there was a breathless 20-something young woman being interviewed in the audience. She looked like one of the girls who used to wet themselves at Beatles' concerts as she gasped "I love this man... and I'm a Republican!" It's all heart and mania that's driving it. It's gut feelings over intellect. That scares me cuz that's what put Bush in the White House.

 

Both states are typically red states. And, although I'm not 100 percent postitive, went for GWB in the last two elections.

Good points, Sir Fink. And that's what scares me as well....

Sorry, Aldeth. I thought you were saying that the Hill was in the Pit.

 

@ CtR: Virginia is typically red, although they currently have a Democratic governor. Maryland has been blue for at least the last two presidential elections (I didn't live here before that, so I don't remember and I'm disinclined to look it up right now). We currently are very blue - Democratic governor, two Democratic senators, and 7 out of 8 members of the house are Democrats.

@ Sir Fink: I think most presidents are elected that way, and not just recently but historically. I think charisma almost always trumps ability. You correctly point out that if we had selected the best man for the job, GWB wouldn't have won in 2000.

EDIT:

Here we go again: Hillary is once again trying to get the delegates from Michigan and Florida seated. She is announcing some changes to her campaign in this article on MSNBC. Those changes include getting those delegates seated.

This is because when you do the math, things don't look very good for Clinton. The next two states to vote - Hawaii and Wisconsin this Tuesday - are expected to break heavily in favor of Obama, meaning that Obama's lead of won delegates could easily be around 150 by the time Ohio and Texas vote on March 4th. All of the Democratic primaries and caucuses give proportional delegates to canidates. While many think Clinton can win in both Texas and Ohio, they don't think she can win by enough votes to make up over 100 delegates.

Looking into the crystal ball, when the last state votes on June 3rd, it is nearly certain that Obama is going to finish with more won delegates. Obama will then make his case to the superdelegates that he won the popular vote, won more delegates, and won more states; therefore he should receive the nomination, which will be a hard case to argue against. Hillary appears to be grasping at straws at this point - she needs those delegates just to make it close.

To be fair, I'd have less of a problem awarding Florida than Michigan. Both canidates were on the ballot in Florida, and even though neither campaigned there, with Florida's large hispanic and senior population, Barack wasn't winning that state no matter what he did. Michigan is a whole different story. Obama wasn't even on the ballot there (so he would get NO delegates) even though Detroit's extremely large black population could very well have been enough for him to win the state. Even if Hillary managed to win Mchigan, it would have been a squeaker. As it states now, she'd get just about all of those delegates (she won about 50% of the vote there) and Obama would get none as he wasn't on the ballot.

 

I keep wondering what's going on with the Republicans. While I realize that this was obvious sarcasim. It would not surprise me to see Rush, and others like him, turn on the Republican party if McCain really is their guy. Why? The Repubicans, even on this board can only complain about candidates they don't like, or that "scare them." That does not say much for the positive side of the equation regarding their own candidates. I find comments like, "I voted for Bush because Kerry scared me," quite bizzare.

I realize that many Democrats voted for Kerry because they were really voting against GWB, but that really wasn't the norm for most of them. Unless, it might be that GWB is just such a political abrasion that he has had an adverse effect on us all.

 

Hey, I voted for Bush because I didn't like Kerry -- that election WAS a case of choosing the 'lesser of two evils.' Whether or not it was the lesser is moot.

I have been for McCain for over eight years. I wanted him instead of Bush. I do not like Clinton (either of them, but then again it's a package deal -- always has been) and I openly support Obama.

You are using absolutes in your argument, that's not a very good thing.

The republicans will get in step behind their candidate just as they always have. The democrats have run a nasty campaign (especially Hillary) -- you could certainly say the democrats are quite polarized right now as well. A long, hard, negative battle favors the republicans and I can't understand why the democrats haven't figured that out yet.

 

I agree the whole idea of conservatives like Rush Limbaugh saying the "true conservatives" will stay home on election day if McCain is the canidate is ludicrous. While many conservatives may agree that McCain is not the best choice, and not their first choice, they will certainly view him much more favorably than the Democratic canidate - regardless of whether that turns out to be Barack or Hillary.

I think the Democrats HAVE figured that out. But the issue of the nomination will remain at least until it becomes clear which canidate will win the greatest number of delegates from the state primaries and caucuses. The only way this will turn out really badly for the Democrats is if the nomination process drags out all the way to the Convention at the end of the summer.

That's the doomsday scenario for the Democrats, and they know it. Even though the last Democratic primary does not happen until June 3rd, we will likely know which canidate will have the most delegates by the time Texas and Ohio go on March 4th, or at worse by the time Pennsylvania votes on April 22nd. I think there will be a great deal of political pressure at that point for the Democratic party to get behind the canidate with the most support. While I would have doubted this a month ago, it would not surprise me in the least if we actually had a joint ticket, as that would be part of the deal for conceding the nomination to other canidate.

I've got to give a shout out to the ever-wise rabbit, because he called this already, but it appears to be happening. In the past 10 days or so, Hillary has actually lost a couple of super delegates who are defecting to Obama. And they are saying pretty much what DR said. In the story I linked to, the Congressman says that his Congressional District voted overwhelmingly for Obama, and that it is his duty as their Congressman to reflect the will of those who elect him. He had initially endorsed Hillary, but since the elections he has decided to cast his vote for Obama at the DNC.

 

I think either candidate wil need to have someone like Edwards on the ticket to beat McCain. An Obama/Clinton ticket will alienate a lot of voters -- it's just like in chemistry, sometimes when you blend two resins the blend is less desirable than either of the ingredients.

 

I'm sure that this question has been addressed but perhaps someone could enlighten me a bit more -- when these primaries are held, can a citizen vote for both parties? In other words, could I (were I an American citizen, that is, I don't need any wise guy telling me Canucks can't participate in American elections) go to the Democratic poll and vote for Obama and then go to the Republican poll and vote for McCain? Or am I only allowed to vote for one party? It would seem to me to be the height of democracy if I could weigh in on both parties -- the more choice the better, right? But from some things I've read, it looks like you have to be a card-carrying member of a particular party to vote in the primary. But it wasn't clear, so could someone explain this slowly and carefully using one syllable words so LKD can understand it?

 

@LKD: The rules for primaries vary according to the state you live in, but one thing is common - ONE person gets ONE vote.

Some states require you to be a registered member of the party to vote in the primary - Democrats vote for Democrats, Republicans vote for Republicans, and those with any other party affiliation (or no party at all) pretty much don't get a say, unless that party is putting up a slate - not that they'll have any chance in the general, but I digress. Some states expand on this by allowing non-affiliated voters to vote for either main party's candidate (but still, only ONE vote), and some states go even further by allowing anyone to vote for any candidate, just like in the general election.

Clear as mud now, isn't it...

 

Rally gave a very detailed response and she's right - what rules apply to you entirely depends on what state you're from. The only thing that I will add is that the most common method for primary elections is that you only get to vote for the party you are registered for, so to use myself as an example, I only get to vote for the Democratic nominee. The rules in Maryland prohibit anyone who is not affiliated with a political party from participating in the primary.

Other states like New Hampshire require Democrats to vote for Democrats and Republicans to vote for Republicans, but allow people who aren't affiliated with either party to chose which primary they participate in.

The most unusual option is a state like Michigan, in which you do not register by party, and you get to decide on election day which party to vote for.

Finally - and this is the main reason I responded - I disagree with your idea that you should be able to vote for both parties. That would open up the election to all types of shenanigans. To use myself as an example, I voted for Barack Obama. If I had been allowed to vote on the Republican ticket as well, I would have voted for Mike Huckabee. I wouldn't have voted for Huckabee because I think he's the best Republican canidate. In fact, he would earn my vote for the exact opposite reason, because I think that he would have no chance to win the popular election in the fall. And that's why your system wouldn't work. So far this year, the Democrats are turning out to vote in far greater numbers than the Republicans. The current count if you add all the states that have held primaries thus far is there have been about 15 million votes cast for Democrats, and 10 million votes for Republicans. If you allowed everyone to vote in both elections, the Democrats would not only determine their own canidate, but also get to pick who that canidate ran against in the fall...