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The Obama Countdown, should be over Tuesday
Some folks are still over-excited by the possibility that Hilary continues on to the convention. Unless you are the McCain campaign I would not worry about it.
At this point the outcome of the contest is all but assured. The superdelegates are politicians and they want to back a winner. So why are they waiting?
Well the first reason is that some of them are pledged not to make a decision until after the primaries are over. In some cases this is a formal obligation (not always observed). In other cases the superdelegates are leaning Clinton supporters but want to make sure that they back a winner. In some cases there may be an agreement not to pledge for Obama until he is over.
Then there is the block of superdelegates who want to see if they can be the person to put Obama over the top. I expect that group to pledge support en-mass Tuesday night and put him over. Then the waverers will come on board giving a majority of about a hundred.
In theory everything could change between now and the convention but I would not get all steamed up about it. The fact things can change are only to the benefit of the Democrats at this point. Re-raising the half votes issue is a card the party can play if they decide they want to kill a media cycle if they are losing it.
This trick has already been played twice. Once to get out of the whole wright embroligo the first time round, the second time to cut off the media cycle when McCain was losing it badly.
The bigger problem for the GOP however is that their swiftboating strategy does not work if there is any doubt left in the nomination race. Even if they do pull out the most abominable dirt you can imagine on Obama, their reward is to fight Hilary.
One final thought, the GOP gameplan at this point is to run on 'experience'. Which is somewhat of a dangerous game if you consider McCain's options for veep.
At this point Obama has two priorities: first to unite the party round him, second to put up a veep who can call McCain out as the incompetent boob he is. He could do much worse than to pick Hilary as veep.
Comments (3)
I think the remaining Super-Delegates don't want to piss off half their base by backing one candidate over the other. Maybe they are up for re-election themselves in the near future when emotions could still be raw.
Others probably have enough respect for Hillary that they are letting the process play out before endorsing Obama. She has been asking them to wait until the primaries were over, and though she'll probably now ask them to wait until another arbitrary date, I don't even think these remaining SD's could wait any longer even if they wanted to.
June 2, 2008 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, 130 out of the 201 remaining SDs are of the non-elected variety (at least on a national scale). (Well, OK, there are actually more than 201 remaining SDs. 201 refers to the number of unawarded delegates, but you get the idea, and I'm too lazy to get the actual people numbers.)
June 2, 2008 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Even the 'non-elected' delegates are subject to intra-party election. But I suspect its the fact that they are not directly elected that makes less willing to commit before the race is over.
Given the idiocies of the system I don't think that anyone could really criticize the Senators, Congressmen, Governors etc for tipping the election one way or the other if the pledged delegate count is close. Some folk would huff and puff about it being a travesty but it really is no worse than the process in the caucus states.
Its the unelected DNC membership who are under real pressure here. They can tick off either side by moving ahead of the base.
June 2, 2008 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
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