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Just Beat Her In Indiana!
Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. She wins the states she has to win.
Obama has one last chance to close the deal.
Beat her in Indiana. Beat her by one vote, but beat her.
He has all the money he needs. He has all the time he needs.
Beat her in Indiana, and she'll concede.
Think he can do it?
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Comments (57)
"Beat her in Indiana, and she'll concede."
Promise?
April 23, 2008 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
You have my word. If he beats her in Indiana, he will have proven that given enough time and money he can make inroads with blue collar workers and old folks. His campaign gets it. They're already showing how he's improved since Ohio. Indiana will give them a great argument. If he beats her there, she'll no longer have a leg to stand on.
April 23, 2008 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think that you might be laboring under a bit of a misimpression. IN blue collar workers are not that democratic. Neither candidate will be competing for many blue collar votes because those folks will not be voting in the democratic primary in IN, and the few blue collar votes for which they will be competing will be mostly the votes of blue collar African-Americans.
April 23, 2008 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
She won't make that argument, Greg.
April 23, 2008 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
He did make inroads with blue collar workers and voters over 60. He did it in Pennsylvania.
April 23, 2008 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. Compared to Ohio. They're smart to point that out. If they can make that case in Indiana, she won't have a leg left to stand on.
April 23, 2008 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
"You have my word."
BFD. What is YOUR word worth? Do you officially speak for HRC?
April 23, 2008 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. I have come back through time to protect Hillary Clinton and to defend the Democratic Party. I can speak for her.
April 23, 2008 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Billy, Why are you still pushing the "she won Texas" myth?
Obama - 99 pledged delegates
Clinton - 94 pledged delegates
Why is the truth such a foreign entity in Clinton World?
April 23, 2008 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why not "Beat her in North Carolina"? Is it because that's too obviously an Obama win?
April 23, 2008 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's a Jackson state.
April 23, 2008 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's also a possible swing state, unlike Indiana.
April 23, 2008 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sure. But she can't win the dem primary there when he's pulling 92% of the black vote. That base is a two-edged sword for Obama. Without it, he might not be in the race. But the super delegates are going to discount it. I don't remember when we last won NC in the general election. I don't think of it as a swing state, but maybe it is, particularly with the growth of the triangle.
April 23, 2008 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cuts both ways. 60% of voters in PA were women. So maybe 48% total voters in the state were white women. They go overwhelmingly for Hillary. Without voters over 60 and white women, Hillary would not be winning.
April 23, 2008 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
er, I mean: she would not be winning any states.
April 23, 2008 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Women make up 60% of Democratic voters, so yeah, without making inroads into the majority of voters, she would be losing. Should we discount those? Florida and Michigan are #4 and #8 most populous states, and we discounted them. And everyone wanted her to quit before #7 Ohio and #6 Pennsylvania. And we're discounting the primary vote in #3 Texas because Obama did better in the caucus there. It's the year of discounts and blue light specials. If only Obama could get these cut-rate deals in November, he'd be walking up the White House steps already.
April 23, 2008 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Somehow I am hard pressed to believe that the supers are going to discount black votes. A democrat cannot carry IL or even NY without black voters, let along OH or PA. The extent to which Sen Clinton has alienated this very important part of the base is part of the reason why I have a very hard time believing your claim that the supers are going to go for her now that she has won PA.
April 23, 2008 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
They aren't alienated. She and Bill still get high favorables from black voters. They are not bigoted and narrow minded like blue collar whites. Angry maybe, but not bitter and clinging to NASCAR, guns, religion, motorcycles and Notre Dame football.
April 23, 2008 3:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
You couldn't point me to a set of numbers on which you are basing this claim, could you? I would be interested to see these favorability data broken down by subset. I have only seen the broad overview data to date.
April 24, 2008 9:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Exit polls consistently show that. Try Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, Louisiana exit polls.
April 24, 2008 10:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hm, so in PA her favorables among African Americans were at 52% and her unfavorables were at 42%. That is far from a "high" favorability in my book. Deeply ambivalent would be nearer the mark. What more, they are dropping quickly. This survey was taken on Apr 21 and had been tracking for several weeks. In just eight days (between Apr 13 and 21) her favorables dropped 6 pts and her unfavorables grew 12. That seems rather at odds with your confident assertion that all would be well if she were to win the nomination.
April 24, 2008 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
You really do not want to look at where he pulls his number from.
April 24, 2008 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Base, schmase. Hillary's going to shift gears now in NC. She'll be strong and bake cookies. And they'll be the best damn cookies WWII vets ever ate. She'll channel Elizabeth Dole and Elizabeth Edwards. She'll send Bill to dispense Southern charm, Chelsea to rally students at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill. She'll drag her mother with her across the entire state. Bill will slip up, Hillary will say, "Honey, I'll handle this," and the crowd will go wild. They'll all visit pottery studios in Asheville, go deep-sea fishing off Hatteras. It'll be like a two-week vacation for them.
I think Carter barely won it in '76. I don't care what anybody says, Dems don't have a bloody chance of taking NC in the GE.
Hillary's going after the triangle. She mentioned science in her victory speech last night. Expect her to present new initiatives to jumpstart the economy, create green jobs, and inspire exactly the sort of American ingenuity that can be found in Raleigh-Durham. (Applause.)
Obama will go negative.
April 23, 2008 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Billy, sorry - as Opus pointed out, she did NOT win Texas.
She needs 85.2% of all remaining pledged and superdelegates - a near mathematical impossibility. Do you need an intervention to help accept the truth? It ain't gonna happen for her - and Obama picked up another superdelegate this morning, after her so-called "shellacking" last night. Did you read the NY Times, the paper who endorsed her? It's over. She can't win. Deal with it.
April 23, 2008 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Blue Dog TN Rep. John Tanner for Hillary today.
MT State Sen. Vicki Cocchiarella for Hillary yesterday.
Woot.
April 23, 2008 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
"She wins the states she has to win."
Billy has said a lot of funny stuff, but this one might be the best.
April 23, 2008 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wait a second, is this not a bit of hedging? Your thesis has already moved into gear - she won TX, OH and PA. According to you, that means that she will win in the end. IN is simply irrelevant to all of this. I am quite sure that he will win in IN, but that is beside the point. She won the popular vote in TX, OH and PA, so she has to win the nomination now or your thesis is demonstrably false.
April 23, 2008 10:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obviously, I think she is going to win. He only had one real chance, and that was Texas. But I think she will concede if he wins Indiana. If that makes me wrong, it won't be the first time. You going to Indiana to volunteer? I'm 30 miles from South Bend.
April 23, 2008 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dude, what part of "Hillary didn't win Texas" don't you understand?
Obama - 99 pledged delegates
Clinton - 94 pledged delegates
April 23, 2008 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
To be very fair, Mr Glad has been very careful to say that Sen Clinton won the popular vote in TX and this is what matters in his hypothesis. In other words your point, while true as far as it goes, is irrelevant to the present discussion.
April 23, 2008 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Iowa, Nevada, Washington & Maine did note report any popular vote, because they are caucus states.
Are we to ignore the good people of these four states, in order to support Billy's weak-beyond-belief argument that the popular vote of some states should count, but not others?
April 23, 2008 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
I do not disagree with you that Mr Glad's thesis is weak, but you clearly misunderstand it. His claim is that Obama was riding a wave of momentum as he came into TX and OH that should have carried him to victory in those states. The fact that he did not win the popular vote in those states or in PA two months later shows that the hype surrounding his victory is not winning the white, blue collar portion of the base to his candidacy. Because a democrat cannot win without the blue-collar white portion of the base, the supers (in Mr Glad's estimation) will look at these results and conclude that Obama cannot win in the GE and will thus flock to Sen Clinton.
In other words, his argument is not about the popular vote, as such. His argument is concerned, instead, with the far more subtle conclusions about the democratic base which are suggested by the popular vote in these states. To my mind, however, the flaw in his argument is that this very premise cuts both ways. If OH/TX/PA prove that Obama cannot win blue collar whites, then these states (and others) prove, by the same token, that she cannot win black votes, and the black vote is every bit as indispensible a portion of the democratic base as the blue-collar white vote. In other words, if the supers really do think like Mr Glad supposes, then they will conclude that we are doomed either way, and this election will simply be about not dooming our chances in the future. Given that Clinton's base is old (and dying) while Obama's is young (and growing) it seems to me that if he were really consistant, Mr Glad would conlcude that the supers will go for Obama because at least that way they do not torpedo their hopes in 2012 even as they write off 2008 as a loss.
April 23, 2008 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Of course, Mr Glad is a big boy and can speak for himself, so if I have presumed too much by offering this recapitulation of his argument, and especially if I have misrepresented any part of it, I hope that he will correct me.
April 23, 2008 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary won the white 18-29 and 30-39 vote. So much for Obama's claim to the youth vote. Perhaps hope is what you smell dying. (And yes, this argument will be interesting for superdelegates to note as well. Seems kids get excited about a rock concert or two and then they come back to reality).
April 23, 2008 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are really reaching here, dear Desidero. White people are a shrinking demographic in this country, so the fact that you had to narrow your claim to the white youth in order to make your point rather gives the lie to your rebuttal. Somehow I doubt that the supers are going to approach the question with this laser-like focus on the white youth vote.
April 24, 2008 9:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
The part where she got 101,029 votes than Obama. That part.
April 23, 2008 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I will be going back to Indianapolis to volunteer. I am not likely to make it as far as South Bend as that is a good bit farther for me to go (and they have dogs at the borders of the city to sniff out Michigan grads like myself and turn us away). I tip my hat to you, however, if you are going to canvas for Clinton in that city. I would expect that a university town like that would be the belly of the beast for a Clinton supporter.
April 23, 2008 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not looking forward to it. I canvassed for Kerry in blue collar Sheboygan, WI. I'm hoping for a blue collar neighborhood. And, for some reason, the Catholics like Hillary, so maybe I'll get Notre Dame.
April 23, 2008 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Billy, we separate on this point. A republican state is going to decide who the Democratic Nominee is? Thats craziness. Makes almost as much sense as having Iowa and NH as the first primaries.
April 23, 2008 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Louis, when are we going to get you set up with a decent avatar?
April 23, 2008 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Told you. I've built a following based on the emptiness of the current avatar and my ability to be both snarky and trollish at the same time. Throw in the lack of an ability flesh out a full thought and I've got a resume that will obviously take me to the very top of the Online Posting World. Say, do they have an awards show yet for posters?
April 23, 2008 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Check this out. I'm officially a troll. I got this note from Josh after calling the way he computed Hillary's point spread "bush."
"Billy, stop being a troll. It’s a character flaw."
I'm going to have it framed.
April 23, 2008 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Josh made Desidero change her avatar because CVille Dem complained that it made her nauseated. The censorship police are frustrated as hell right now and want to kick the dog. Except if the dog is hrebendorf, who is totally allowed to say, You really are a piece of human crap. lol!
Just remember that Josh and the other Obama supporters are extremely irritable right now because their man can't close the deal. That's gotta suck.
Clinton supporters would be wise to be on our best behavior (whatever that is), at least until she wins Indiana and closes the gap on North Carolina.
Clinton/Glad '08!
April 23, 2008 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know something strange? As I recall, when I tried to get some support for rebuking Steve King over his Obama diatribe, CVille was one of the very few Obama supporters who recommended the post and actually wrote to King to rebuke him. I've never figured out why a post called Rebuke Steve King! that carried a request for recommendations couldn't get any from the Obama community. I thought a lot less of them after that experience.
April 24, 2008 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
This'll be fun. There are no "blue-collar" or "lunch-bucket" voters in Indiana. To win Indiana, Obama must connect with the NASCAR and biker crowd.
Good luck with that, Barack!!
April 23, 2008 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
If he wins Indiana, I'll be impressed. Why didn't you go to the echo chamber transubstantiation last night? Apparently, only a couple of people from the echo chamber turned up, byt 50 people from the Obama campaign of came over to drown their sorrows. I've suspected the Obama campaign reads TPM and the blogs.
April 23, 2008 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I couldn't go out to play last night. I'm on a deadline. Of course I watched CNN last night when I should have been working.
50 Obama supporters? Must have been a young crowd. ;-)
April 23, 2008 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Somehow there's logic missing here. The superdelegates will discount the black vote so as not to disfavor Clinton, but they won't discount the senior vote so as to not disfavor Obama? PA has the second oldest population -- least likely to want change -- in the country and Clinton won by only 9 points. The two states, NC and PA, are equivalent in bases. Let's see if the results are also equivalent.
Furthermore, who cares if NC is a swing state or not. What matters is that the Democrats have a huge advantage in PA and the state will likely go Democratic regardless of the candidate. The lunch pail group will have to decide between the elite Obama or the even more elite McCain, between the do it yourselves McCain or the we are the ones we've been waiting for Obama, between the indeterminate occupation of McCain or the troop pullouts of Obama.
Obama can play rope-a-dope all the way to the end of the primary season, draining Clinton of money, picking up a superdelegate a day, reducing her chances with each relatively close Clinton win, contradictory as that sounds. Indiana is another false hope
April 23, 2008 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
The last voters in the world who are going to get depressed or angry and stay home or vote for McCain are black women.
April 23, 2008 3:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I tend to agree with Billy on this one. This is perhaps Barack's last chance at a knock out blow. If he can win NC by double digits and win Indiana at all the super delegates will start to pour in for Obama and she will be under enormous pressure to concede. Barack has already said he views Indiana as the tie breaker. I have a feeling he will do everything possible to win it.
That being said if he doesn't win Indiana I think the race will very likely go to the convention where he should win anyway but McCain would have to be the favorite in the general if that happens.
Great McCain video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7PfSEtiXPw
April 23, 2008 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's a toss up in Indiana, but I agree that if he wins there it's over.
Clinton has not won "all the states she needs to win". If she had done that, she'd be the nominee. She's won just enough states to barely justify staying in the race.
Furthermore, Obama won Texas.
April 24, 2008 9:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Billy - You still haven't acknowledged the simple fact that Obama won Texas. Is it REALLY that hard to admit?
April 24, 2008 9:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not at all. I don't know if he won the Texas two-step or not. As Greg points out upstream, rightly or wrongly, I only consider the popular vote. Sorry I didn't make that clear.
April 24, 2008 10:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obama won Texas, yes, but it wasn't an electoral night victory with all the press and momentum that that brings. (Hell, you know how hard it was to find mention of the caucus victory; we all had to go to Burnt Orange b/c the MSM wasn't reporting it.)
Obama needs to win Indiana and North Carolina convincingly. He needs to deliver a big victory speech at 10:30 pm EDT that will launch the fall campaign.
This would send a strong message to the Democratic party and the rest of the nation that he, too, can be the comeback kid in the 2008 campaign.
April 24, 2008 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think she'll concede if he only wins Indiana by a few votes. She's all in on Indiana.
April 24, 2008 10:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
No she won't. Why would she? She doesn't care about whether Obama makes inroads into anything, she just cares about her chances. She's not conceding until enough superdelegates commit to put Obama to 2025. And possibly not even then.
April 24, 2008 10:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
If he can win Indiana, she'll be out of arguments.
April 24, 2008 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
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