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Clinton's Three Part Endgame Strategy
Part I. WIN OUT
She's COUNTING on victories in: Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico.
She's MAKING A SERIOUS PLAY FOR either squeaker surprise victories or narrow loss "moral victories" in: NC and Ore.
If she can pull PART I, that entitles her to move to PART II.
PART II SOW DOUBT!
If she wins out, then she uses that fact to raise serious doubts in the uncommitted superdelegates -- and maybe even a few persuadable already committed supers -- about Obama's electability. Her aim is to make Obama limp into the convention having lost or barely won all of the remaining major contests. She'll concede South Dakota and Wyoming, but that's about it.
If she succeeds in raising enough doubts, she needs to also offer the Supers a legitimate seeming way out.
That leads to PART III of the endgame.
PART III. FLORIDA AND MICHIGAN AS COVER
Obama supporters keep talking about how hard it will be for Clinton to overtake him in pledged delegates. But that misses a crucial point and a crucial element in her endgame strategy. As she sees it, through the remaining primaries, she really only needs to get the delegate count to a point that WITH Florida and MI included, she either overtakes him or reduces his margin to something morally insignificant. By "morally insignificant" I mean something under a hundred, but more likely in the 20-25 range. If Florida and Michigan would either bring her into the pledged delegate lead or bring her within 20-25 delegates, then whatever claim Obama has to "speak for the people" will be essentially eviscerated. In that case difference between them will be smaller than the predictable amount of "noise" introduced into the measurement by the electoral process.
Indeed, if the ONLY rationale that the Obama forces can offer for keeping FL and MI out is that seating them would tilt the nomination (unfairly) to Clinton, that will be a sure sign of collapse of the Obama narrative. It will mean that Obama will have become very damaged goods and that his other arguments for the nomination will have been undermined by Clinton's successful execution of Part I and Part II of the endgame strategy.
If it comes to that, the supers will be LOOKING for a way to dump Obama. If Clinton has undermined his candidacy, there is no way that FL and MI will be excluded. What would be the point? To hand the nomination to a demonstrably unelectable candidate -- out of fairness? Fairness to whom? The party he would take down with him?
On the other hand, if seating Florida and Michigan would indeed tilt the nomination to Clinton, then that gives the party apparatus "cover" for doing just that. It makes the selection of Clinton look not like a brokered, backroom deal sort of thing, but like a bow to the will of the democratic electorate at large. The narrative would be that once the party actually enfranchised the good voters of Florida and Michigan, Clinton emerged as the clear choice.
So to sum up. Clinton is counting on three things: (A) getting the delegate count close enough that with FL and MI she will either outright lead or reduce Obama's lead to moral insignificance; (b) on beating Obama down over the course of the remaining primaries; and, finally, (c) on Florida and Michigan providing cover under which the party apparatus can swing in her favor and against Obama without being charged of giving it to her in an illegitimate backroom deal.
If that all happens, she's the nominee (and it will be a spring and summer of very old-fashioned politics.)
Is it a stretch? Clearly yes. First, it's a strategy with lots of moving parts. If she fails to execute any step, it's hard to see what the back-up plan would be. Second, it's about as brass-knuckled a strategy as one can imagine. Some of the apparatchick may lose nerve and try to dissuade her.
On the other hand, if all goes as planned, I think she really does have a very strong chance of becoming the nominee. A very strong chance indeed. But it's clearly a big if. So call it a high-risk, high yield strategy.
Comments (7)
Another Hillary supporter who can't count? It would take a miracle for HRC to get the pledged delegate gap under 100. 20-25? That would take the proverbial grizzly bear attack.
April 27, 2008 9:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, if Florida alone is seated as voted, Clinton would net at least 38 delegates. Michigan is a little dicier, because of the uncommitted slate. Hillary apparently won some share of that in recent state conventions in Michigan.
The point, again, isn't to overtake Obama through the primaries. It's to get close enough that Florida and Michigan would make his lead morally insignificant.
At best, Obama is a head by something like 160 pledged delegates -- and less than at by some counts I've seen. If Hillary can get a + 70 delegates or so out of Michigan and Florida, and gain 15-20 delegates out of the next several primaries, then she gets his delate lead below 100 by adding MI and FL.
Plus I think the overwhelming majority of MI and FL supers will go to Hillary, since Barack has been trying to stiff arm them.
So It's easy to see how she reduces his pledged delegate lead to something morally insignificant.
April 27, 2008 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Giving Hillary the nod by including Michigan and Florida would be the equivalent of the democratic party handing John McCain the keys to the White House.
April 27, 2008 9:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Part IV
Independents lose interest in the Dem nominee, Obama's fundraising machine goes away, and the currently dormant Republican beast awakes to fight it's antichrist.
Part V
For those of us who become insanely, frothingly angry when MI and FL non-events enter the equation, jihad against the nominee who wins that way. Hello, McSame, get me a phonebank list, baby....
April 27, 2008 9:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is an interesting analysis that hits all of the main points we should be thinking about. The FL and MI as cover point is well taken. I'd even say it's essential to her strategy. If she has the votes, the floor fight to seat FL, followed by Michigan, can serve as a straw vote on the nomination. By voting to seat FL and MI, the super delegates can signal their intention to give her the nomination, giving Obama a chance to make a unity deal.
April 27, 2008 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Indeed, if the ONLY rationale that the Obama forces can offer for keeping FL and MI out is that seating them would tilt the nomination (unfairly) to Clinton,
But of course that's not the only rationale that can be offered. For example, Terry McAuliffe gave one rationale rather forcefully in 2004 when he was the DNC chairman:
And that argument didn't stop making sense just because McAuliffe turned out to be a hypocrite about it later. The rules were clear, and the rules were broken. If MI and FL are seated as if no rules were broken, then what would happen in 2012 when lots of other states decide that it would be really nifty to have one of the earliest primaries, and call the DNC's bluff again. Will they enforce the rules in 2012 after showing no backbone about the same thing in 2008? McAuliffe was right, you'd get chaos.
Second, at the very least seating MI, where Obama wasn't on the ballot, is never going to look like anything but backroom manipulation.
But the MI and FL delegates will be seated. It will be decided in the Credentials Committee, and they'll just be seated in some fashion approved by the winner of the race without MI and FL considered, with Dean's nominees to the committee backing that solution. This way the MI and FL delegates do get seated in some fashion, but everyone is clear on the fact that Dean wasn't bluffing and they didn't really gain anything by breaking the rules to try to be one of the earliest primaries.
As part of your plan you have the superdelegates reaching the point that they are "LOOKING for a way to dump Obama". That's certainly what Hillary needs to win. But first of all, if that happened they wouldn't need to use MI and FL to try to accomplish that, a move that Dean (and anyone else looking further ahead than Hillary's desire to win the nomination) would have no choice but to oppose strongly. They can just change their votes, giving Hillary the total she needs to win.
And second, here's where parts 1 and 2 of your plan don't quite seem to work. By the same reasoning, Hillary's wins in the big states so far should have gotten the superdelegates worried. She won OH and PA, and lost TX on delegates but won the popular vote, etc. And this is Hillary's current argument in a nutshell. Shouldn't we be seeing some evidence that her argument has some traction with the uncommitted superdelegates?
Instead, we see superdelegates going to Obama and not going to Hillary. Since Super Tuesday, when her plan fell apart, she's had a net gain of one or two (they keep trying to pass off the add-ons in this count, which is clever but misleading). Obama has a net gain of more than 80 now. And a lot of those gains have been after the losses that, by Hillary's spin, should have caused superdelegates to lean toward here. Here's a graph:
Hillary's dwindling lead among superdelegates
This has gotten to the point that even in your optimistic scenarios of her winning the states you list and having narrow losses in the others, she needs something like 80% of the remaining superdelegates. (In calculating that, don't forget to count the add-ons, which will favor Obama because of the way they're chosen according to the number of pledged delegates won in each state.) It takes some projections even more optimistic than what you list in your "high risk" strategy for her to be able to win with a smaller percentage.
Hillary's plan is this: try to keep enough superdelegates uncommitted that she still has a mathematical possibility of winning, and HOPE for Obama to make some major, major mistake (worse than anything that's happened so far) or for some huge scandal to come out. That's her only realistic shot at it. Mathematically she's not been knocked out entirely. But practically speaking, if things continue as they are she's not going to get 80% of the uncommitted superdelegates to overrule the pledged delegates by convincing them that Obama is unelectable without something huge happening that causes Obama's campaign to collapse. If that happens the superdels go to her in large numbers and everybody is glad to see the pledged delegates overruled. If that doesn't happen, Obama wins.
April 27, 2008 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
BTW, thinkingman, I want to commend you for proposing an actual plan for how Hillary might win, even though I think it doesn't work. I see that this got pushed off the list before it could get enough recs to have any chance of making it to the recommended list, which is unfortunate. I hope you'll try again. You just got caught in a flurry of posts that pushed this off the list too quickly.
Of course, my reasons for wanting to see more Hillary supporters try to come up with explanations for how she might win (absent a major Obama scandal) is that the explanations don't really work. That's presumably why most Hillary supporters at this point make vague assertions and/or propose bizarre scenarios that can't really happen because of the way the process works.
April 27, 2008 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
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