Looking back on 2008: how Democrats elected McCain

Rats don’t swim toward sinking ships, and pols don’t back no losers, and this is why Hillary Clinton is in such trouble.

In a relatively short amount of time, Clinton has gone from being the inevitable winner to being the underdog to being a dead woman walking.

She needs superdelegates to win the nomination, but what is her argument to superdelegates?

Can she promise them she will win a majority of the pledged delegates that voters have chosen in primaries and caucuses? No.

Can she promise them she can take the lead in the popular vote? No.

Can she promise them she can win a majority of the primary and caucus states? No.

But can she get the superdelegates to overturn the will of the voters, slap African-Americans and young voters in the face and shatter the party? Well, yeah, she can try for that Death Star option.

... “I didn’t get into this race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics,” [Obama] said, “but I am running for president because this is the time to end it.”  ... Roger Simon at Politico ...

***

After the Tuesday primaries, Hillary Rodham Clinton now has maybe a 2 percent chance of winning the Democratic nomination. But if she pursues her losing battle, she has perhaps a 20 percent chance of costing the Democrats the presidency in the fall.

So should she soldier on if continued campaigning is 10 times more likely to benefit John McCain than herself?

My percentages are, of course, wild estimates, but they suggest the orders of magnitude. With Mrs. Clinton trailing by 700,000 votes in the cumulative popular vote, and also behind in pledged delegates and number of states won, she just doesn’t have a plausible route to the nomination. Even if you include Florida, she’s more than 400,000 votes behind.

In contrast, Mrs. Clinton does have a plausible route to winning the election for Mr. McCain.

The most terrifying numbers for Democrats in Tuesday’s exit polls should be those showing how many of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are planning to vote for Mr. McCain in November. ... Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times ...

Comments

[JL]

Clinton supporters are just sore, that's all, and for good reason, too. A year ago today their expectation for victory was realistic. Even as much as I dreaded the prospect, I'd have put Clinton's chances at better than 50% last May, too.

It has yet to sink in with her supporters that she ran a deeply flawed campaign. It's been made all the worse by her hanging around till this late date. Even now, they exhibit a baseball fan's mentality at a football game. The clock has run out, and yet they're gab-smacked at the fact the final out has yet to be rung up in Denver.

So yesterday online they vented. Some alleged that Obama ran a racist, sexist campaign. More warned his Obama supporters to wag a civil tongue- or else. The candidate herself stoked their frustration just this morning, by stating white Americans ("hard working, really hard working" whites, I think she said) have rallied to her for months because... well because she's not a black elitist. And if she had a sense of humor, she'd have made that remark from the steps of an Alabama school house.

But they'll cool off, and 90% will vote democratic in November. And if they don't, so be it. To repeat myself, if it takes another 4 years of GOP rule to teach the American people who their mortal enemies are, then that's the way it'll have to be. But it won't come to that. Obama will crush McCain.

[PW]

We agree.

Another thought, JW: As Hillary's campaign went on, it also revealed stuff about Bill Clinton's presidency that aren't altogether palatable. For example, some bad Clinton policy decisions with respect to the Middle East that were subsequently embraced by Bush and which have led to our current mess.

Just before reading your comment, I'd been reading Laura Rozen's link to a very interesting piece by Gary Sick, one of Bill Clinton's NSC guys. It really is worth a read, and I agree with what Sick has to say. This kind of willingness to criticize either Clinton goes down hard with those who have to divide their world into Good (Clinton) vs. Evil (Bush). In fact at least some of Bush1 led to Clinton1 led to Bush2 and then to Clinton2.

Sick is an admirer of Hillary Clinton for the most part, but he is wary of policies which could be called "Bush-Clinton" policies, appears to have decided for Obama, and concludes his piece like this:

"Clinton's recent remarks, and the underlying policy from which they apparently sprang, are evidence that, at least on this issue, we might only look forward to more of the same under a Clinton presidency. In that sense, I think we would be losing one of the great chances of this generation to begin to fashion a more sensible policy in a region that I care about greatly."