-
sponsorship
Hillary Clinton has finally announced that she will drop out—but not till Saturday. Thus Clinton departs as she campaigned, dragging it out to the last possible moment. After more than two months of daily odds-making, we sink Clinton to her final resting place of 0 percent. So it goes.
The last 36 hours felt like something out of the DSM-IV.
Faced with defeat Tuesday night, Clinton gave a defiant speech with no
recognition that Obama had locked up the nomination. Fans encouraged her to fight on.
Late Tuesday, Clinton staffers were still spinning against the wind.
Hillaryland went from professional campaign operation to alternate
reality in which conventions are contested, skeletons emerge from
closets, and superdelegates experience group epiphanies based on vague
electability arguments.
But after Clinton held a conference call with top supporters Wednesday
afternoon, things wrapped up quickly. That evening, Clinton announced
she would "express her support for Barack Obama and party unity" this
weekend. John McCain called Obama to congratulate him. The spin machine rested. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
Campaigning yesterday in Milbank, S.D., Bill Clinton effectively declared the race over,
saying, "[T]his may be the last day I'm ever involved in a campaign of
this kind." Clinton's advance team was told its work was done. Her
schedule remains empty after Tuesday night. Even if she doesn't bid
farewell tonight, Clinton and everyone around her know her chances are
a near-nothing of 0.1 percent. (It would be zero, but she still hasn't dropped out.) She is asymptotically dead.
So today is less about what than how. How Obama is going to roll out the necessary delegates to reach the "magic number" of 2,118. How (and when) Clinton is officially going to concede. How she is going to transition into the "healing" phase of the general election.
Still,
the day's news has been an ongoing game of "will she or won't she?"
This morning, the Associated Press reported that Clinton campaign
officials said she would concede Tuesday night that Obama has the
delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. The Clinton camp quickly
denied the report. (Disagreement in Hillaryland? Never!) So the AP took a different tack, declaring
the race over based on a tally of public commitments and "more than a
dozen private commitments." But seeing as the superdelegate metric has
always been about public commitments, it's unclear why that's news. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Hillary Clinton
scored a win and a loss this weekend. She claimed a 2-to-1 victory in
Puerto Rico on Sunday but netted only 24 delegates from Florida and
Michigan in the decision passed down by the DNC's Rules and Bylaws
Committee. Yet neither of these events changes the landscape of the
race. Obama remains fewer than 45 delegates away from the new magic
number of 2,118, which keeps Clinton's chances at a near-conclusive 0.4 percent.
Clinton won
the Puerto Rico primary in just about every possible way. Women and
men, young and old, rich and poor, educated and unschooled—all favored
Clinton. (The only demographic that favored Obama was people who
sympathized with indicted Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila,
who endorsed Obama.) An early estimate showed Clinton winning 35
delegates to Obama's 15, with five still unaccounted for. The Clinton
campaign is spinning the results to suggest Obama has a "problem" attracting Hispanics.
But on Saturday, Clinton had problems of her own. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
The high-stakes drama of Saturday's rules committee meeting appears
illusory. Meanwhile, Obama rakes in more superdelegates, putting him
40.5 away from the nomination. According to our formula, that sinks
Clinton to 0.4 percent.
T minus one day and counting to the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting. Can you feel the suspense? Clinton supporters are busing up from Florida. Obama fans are being encouraged to stay home. Tout le média
will hang on Howard Dean's every word, as well as those uttered by the
Obama and Clinton campaign surrogates sent to argue their cases.
But the drama is largely phony. DNC lawyers have said that seating any more than half of the Michigan and Florida delegations would violate party rules. The proposed solutions are well-known. And every likely compromise fails to put Clinton within range of catching Obama, who now leads by 200 delegates. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
As the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting looms, Hillary Clinton
cranks her electability argument up to 11. But Obama continues to woo
superdelegates. Odds of survival hover at 0.5 percent.
Clinton
is now fighting tooth and nail to see that the DNC's rules committee
seats the delegates from Florida and Michigan at the convention in
August. She continues to push for full seating, but that scenario
remains extremely unlikely.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe suggests they're willing to
compromise. The reason: They can afford to. Even the best-case
scenarios don't have Clinton closing Obama's 195-delegate lead. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
Hillary Clinton's ill-advised invoking of RFK's assassination might
have damaged her campaign if there were anything left to damage.
Meanwhile, Obama closes in on the current magic number of 2,026,
bringing Clinton's odds of winning the nomination to 0.5 percent.
On
the list of campaign no-nos, hinting at the possibility of your
opponent being shot is up there. Yet that's what some people thought
Hillary meant when she told the editorial board of the Sioux Falls,
S.D., Argus-Leader that Democratic nominations often extend
into June: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he
won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We
all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I
don't understand it."
The New York Post led the way, blaring, "Hillary Raises Assassination Issue." Drudge quickly followed. The Washington Post fronted the story, albeit less sensationally. But little consideration was given to what Clinton meant. (Watch the video and draw your own conclusions.) Never mind that she had said the same thing to Time back in March and no one noticed. Never mind that her calendar argument is misleading
in the first place: Her husband may not have mathematically secured the
nomination until June, but he was the presumptive nominee in March; RFK
was still campaigning in June because the primary calendar started so
late. The focus was on the "assassination" comparison. "We have seen an
X-ray of a very dark soul," opined the Daily News' Michael Goodwin. That or a very click-hungry media.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
Clinton steps up calls for Florida and Michigan to be seated. But
those delegations won't make up the difference. Her chances remain
stagnant at 0.7 percent.
On May 31, the DNC's
Rules and Bylaws Committee will convene in Washington, D.C., to decide
whether and how to seat the delegations from Florida and Michigan.
There is a number of possible outcomes, but the most likely one is that
both states get seated but have their delegations chopped in half.
(Figuratively, of course—the DNC is harsh, but not that harsh.)
Depending on how they treat superdelegates, this scenario would change the "magic number" from 2,026 to either 2,131 or 2,118.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
With Tuesday's contests in Kentucky and Oregon, Barack Obama seizes
a majority of pledged delegates. April fundraising numbers show Obama
still leads in the money race. And key figures ditch Hillary. Obama now
needs about 70 delegates to attain the "magic number" of 2025, so we're
dropping Clinton's chances drop to 0.9 points to 0.7 percent. For every 10 delegates Obama wins, Clinton will drop another 0.1 until … let's just say she'll need a snorkel.
Obama
did not declare victory Tuesday night, but he came about as close as
one can get. "You have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination
for president of the United States," he told a Des Moines, Iowa, crowd.
He needed only 17 pledged delegates to secure a majority. In Kentucky,
it looks like he won about 14; in Oregon, about 30. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
Obama won't declare victory after Tuesday, but only because the
media will do it for him. Clinton's chances sag another 0.1 point to 1.6 percent.
Despite
reports that Barack Obama would declare victory after May 20, when he's
expected to secure a majority of pledged delegates, he's now expected to keep mum.
The reason: Better to let Clinton exit with dignity than to appear to
be forcing her out of the race. This logic reflects the Obama camp's
supreme confidence that the nomination is in the bag.
Media outlets seem to agree. Just look at today's top New York Times headlines. "McCain To Rely on Party Money Against Obama" doesn't even pretend not to know who the nominee will be. Another piece examines
what a Clinton loss means for women: It's either "a historic if
incomplete triumph or a depressing reminder of why few pursue high
office in the first place." Look for more postmortems after Tuesday's
race, barring a Clinton sweep.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
The John Edwards endorsement spawns imitators, and Republicans set
their sights on Obama. Clinton's chances wane another 0.1 points to 1.7 percent.
Obama
nabbed a slew of endorsements yesterday on the heels of Edwards'
announcement, including California duo Reps. Henry Waxman and Howard
Berman. Waxman's backing doesn't carry the weight of a Pelosi or a
Reid, but as chair of the House oversight committee, he's considered
one of the most powerful congressmen around. (His may be the most feared mustache
in Washington.) Berman chairs the chamber's foreign-affairs committee,
lending Obama another bit of global-policy cred. Today, fellow
California Rep. Pete Stark followed suit.
That puts Obama 127.5 delegates away from the nomination (or 121.5 if
you count seven pledged delegates who previously supported Edwards).
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
Endorsements
from formerly coy John Edwards and the United Steelworkers for Obama
are two more nails in the Clinton coffin. Clinton's odds drop 1.1 to 1.8 percent.
Whatever momentum Clinton picked up from her 41-point West Virginia win
the Obama camp snuffed out with the Edwards coup de grâce. Edwards sat
on his endorsement until long after its game-changing power expired, so
the damage to Clinton's flicker of a campaign is more symbolic than
anything. The crux of his "everyone's doing it" speech last night in Michigan
was that he was mimicking the will of the voters. Because he waited,
Edwards' decision to finally choose a horse reinforces the "it's over"
story line. Watch this narrative get another boost next week when Obama
clinches the pledged delegate lead for good. (He'll hit a majority of
the 3,254 pledged delegates even if he narrowly loses Oregon.)
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
The past 24 hours have been a combination of sky highs and brutal
lows for Hillary Clinton. She won by double digits in West Virginia—one
of her biggest victories yet. But a superdelegate shutout (Obama won
four today to her zero) and a crippling campaign debt suggest the
victory will be short-lived. We'll bump her up 1.3 points to 2.9 percent, if only because tonight's victory all but guarantees she'll stick around a few more weeks.
First, the good news: Clinton's West Virginia victory gives her what she most desperately needs—arguments.
Her win, while expected, managed to suck away much of Obama's normal
coalition (minus blacks, who made up 4 percent of the electorate). She
can say Obama is weakening, that he's vulnerable in the general, and
that voters want her to stick it out. Not even a landslide victory
would earn Clinton enough pledged delegates to challenge Obama's tally,
and Obama's popular-vote lead
remains daunting. But she now has an excuse to stay in. In the words of
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Clinton is now an "understudy candidate,"
waiting in the wings to see if Obama catches the flu.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
Clinton is poised to sweep West Virginia, but Obama has finally
surged ahead in the most important contest of all: superdelegates. Dock
Clinton half a point to 1.6 percent.
We've
believed for some time that the day Obama overtakes Clinton in the
superdelegate count is the day Clinton throws in the towel. But
Friday was that day, and the towel is still there, mopping up the
Clinton campaign's blood, sweat, and tears by the bucketful. According
to the Associated Press' count,
Obama now has 277 supers to Clinton's 271. It was the last metric in
which Clinton was leading, and Obama's momentum isn't slowing any: Over
the weekend, he got seven supers to Clinton's one. Clinton campaign
Chairman Terry McAuliffe still claims
she's within "striking distance" of the popular vote. But that's only
if you count Florida, Michigan, and now Puerto Rico, which doesn't vote
in the general election. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
More Clinton supporters get antsy, Obama unveils a bold new strategy
to ignore Clinton, and her money woes could be deeper than expected.
All of which sinks Clinton's chances another 0.2 points to 2.3 percent.
California
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, an early and dogged supporter of Hillary
Clinton, voiced doubts that Clinton "can get the delegates that she
needs" to the Hill yesterday. Feinstein also cited "negative dividends" from the race dragging on much longer. Combined with yesterday's McGovern defection, dissent in the ranks seems to be spreading. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
Obama comes up big in North Carolina, and Clinton ekes out a win (as
of 11 p.m.) in Indiana, the combination of which all but ends Clinton's
shot at the nomination. Her chances drop 8.4 points to 4.2 percent.
For
the past few weeks, Hillary Clinton's candidacy has rested on two
possibilities: 1) Winning the popular vote and 2) convincing
superdelegates that Obama cannot win certain types of voters. (The
delegate count is out of reach; she would need at least 70 percent of
the remaining delegates to surpass Obama.) Today, Obama exploded both
arguments.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
Not much changes in the last 24 hours before polls open in Indiana
and North Carolina, keeping Clinton's chances of winning the nomination
at 12.6 percent.
So, a quick snapshot: Polls show tightening races in both Indiana and North Carolina.
Except for the occasional outlier, Clinton leads by a consistent five
to 10 points in the Hoosier state, while Obama stays ahead in the Tar
Heel state by a similar margin.
Remember how Obama started his "countdown to the nomination" yesterday? Clinton counters, as usual, with her own math.
According to her calculations, the magic number to seal the nomination
isn't 2025, as the DNC has said. It's 2208—the number you get if you
include Florida and Michigan. It fits her argument that those states
should be seated at the convention—which Howard Dean says will happen.
The problem is, superdelegates are still running from Hillary. Politico puts her ever-waning lead
at 12 supers. Unless Clinton can make a big impression today—either
with a blowout victory in Indiana or with an exceptionally strong
showing among particular demographics—it's hard to see her stemming the
flow.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
We’ve gotten complaints about the Hillary Deathwatch before,
but this is a new one.
Dear Application Developer,
A Facebook user requested that we forward an anonymous
report that your application The Hillary Clinton Deathwatch (application ID
#30705275390) is violating Facebook Terms of Use. The user selected "Attacks individual or
group" as the violation category.
Any text entered into the additional comments box appears here: …
I find this
application offensive. If you continue to approve of applications like this, I
will discontinue my account on Facebook and encourage all my readers to do so. [E.A.]
To protect the privacy of our users, we cannot disclose any
further information. Facebook is not
taking any action against your application based on this particular report, but
we are passing this along so you are made aware of potential problems and
respond accordingly to ensure you are in compliance. Please note that failure to comply with the
Terms may result in an enforcement action. …
Thanks,
Facebook
And here we were thinking the Facebook team was on Obama's side.
-
sponsorship
The home stretch to Indiana and North Carolina is pocked by negative
ads, indecisive polls, and last-minute revelations about Barack Obama
and the Teamsters. With an Indiana win within reach, Clinton's chances
inch up 0.3 points to 12.6 percent.
Clinton gets a Monday-morning gift in today's Wall Street Journal:
Barack Obama reportedly told the Teamsters that he would reduce federal
oversight of the union. An Obama spokesman confirmed to the WSJ that Obama believes the current oversight system has "run its course." On Good Morning America, Obama denied having made a "blanket commitment" to scrap federal oversight, which was instituted
in 1989 to settle a racketeering lawsuit by the Justice Department.
Rather, he said, "the union has done a terrific job cleaning house,"
and he'll "examine" the issue as president. The Clinton camp today
cried hypocrisy—will he or won't he? But Politico points to a similar statement made by Clinton that she would be "very open" to re-examining the decree. The issue won't decide the primary, but John McCain's ad team can probably squeeze a few spots out of it.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
Clinton's prospects for surviving Indiana and North Carolina
continue to look favorable. Howard Dean still wants to seat Florida and
Michigan delegates—which would probably benefit Clinton—while another
former DNC chair endorses Obama. Jimmy Carter indicates he'll follow
the pledged delegates, which is good news for Obama. Plug all that into
the equation and Clinton pops up 0.2 points to 12.3 percent.
Last Friday, we compared the Clinton campaign to a shark that must continuously move forward in order to stay alive. Here's another muddled maritime metaphor that applies: that of a killer whale toying with a baby seal before inevitably eating it. Unfortunately for Clinton, she's the seal.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
-
sponsorship
Barack Obama slams the Rev. Wright, Clinton's gas-tax plan receives
jeers, and Indiana is still a tossup, all of which brings Clinton down
0.3 points to 12.6 percent.
Obama's decision to
cut Wright loose Tuesday was an investment in the future: Let the story
dominate news for one more day, then hope it tapers off. In a press
conference, Obama said he's "outraged" at Wright's recent remarks about
Louis Farrakhan, the government inventing AIDS, and U.S. military
efforts being equivalent to terrorism. These comments "should be
denounced," Obama said, adding, "I do not see the relationship being
the same after this."
It's too early to say whether this move
defuses the Wright issue. Now that Wright got a taste of the
spotlight, he probably doesn't want to go away. (Obama had better hope
Wright's book tour happens after
Nov. 5.) But at least Obama can dissociate himself fully from his
pastor, as opposed to upholding the earlier wishy-washy (some would say
nuanced) disown-the-words-but-not-the-man stance he articulated in his
Philadelphia speech last month.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.