Whenever I peruse the political blogs, I find various pundits and bloggers offering numerous theories why Hillary Clinton persists in her quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. Some say she’s setting the stage for a campaign in ’12, believing her current rival will lose this fall to the presumptive Republican nominee, others see her as positioning herself as a Senate leader for the balance of her career. Others just think she’s a delusional megalomaniac.
While I don’t disagree with that last description, but still think the former First Lady really believes she can still win this thing. Her campaign is once again claiming she has won more popular votes than her Illinois colleague (which is true of you count Michigan (where he wasn’t even on the ballot)). Given that she leads in Kentucky by larger margins than he leads in Oregon — and that Kentucky is a larger state, she should win the combined popular vote of today’s primaries by a comfortable margin.
Yesterday in Maysville, Kentucky, she said she has a better chance than Obama to win 270 electoral votes this fall, then added she is going to make her case “until we have a nominee, but we’re not going to have one today and we’re not going to have one tomorrow and we’re not going to have one the next day. And if Kentucky turns out tomorrow, we’re going to be closer to that nomination.”
She’s going to give up after today’s contests. She may well end the day just a hundred thousand votes shy of leading Obama in the popular vote with Florida, but without Michigan. And that may give her ground to continue her campaign even past the last primary.
UPDATE: In a post with a theme somewhat similar to this one, Jim Geraghty writes, “Hillary’s gameplan from here on out has to be to narrow the margin of the popular vote, under any count, as much as possible when all the primaries are completed.” Read the whole thing.
Holy crap, Hillary wins by over 40% in West Virginia now in Kentucky she is whalloping him by 36%. That can’t be right. How do Democrats wish this away?
35% that is a big win. There is no reason for her to drop out, sure a lot of superdelegates have pledged Obama, but they can change their mind. With all his crazy pronouncements, they actually may hold their noses and vote for her.
More Hillary supporters should go on TV and ask the drive by media MALE talking heads why they are so anxious to have the female canididate drop out.
I think Hillary’s motive are more ego driven than anything else, and it would take a near miracle for her to win the nomination. What interests me more is how she loses it and how she acts about it. If she pushes the Michigan and Florida issue too hard, she will anger her supporters when those votes aren’t counted, and they will not be as likely to rally around Obama, feeling that the nomination was somehow stolen. If she pushes the popular vote argument too far, she hurts the legitimacy of Obama’s nomination.
It’s 2008, and we still have to listen whining about how the 2000 election was “stolen” from Gore and how Bush didn’t win the popular vote. I expect a similar reaction to the Democratic nomination if things keep going in the current direction. It may end up getting Hillary supporters to stay home or vote for McCain, making the Democrats once again their own worst enemy. Hillary’s ego may end up being the Democrats undoing this election.
#4 – Funny isn’t it that the political party that brought us MoveOn.org, can’t.
Regards,
Peter H.
From CNN’s Political Ticker on Clinton’s latest Michigan and Florida push:
“We believe the popular vote is the truest expression of your will,” she said. “We believe it today just as we believed it back in 2000, when right here in Florida, you learned the hard way what happened when the votes aren’t counted and a candidate with fewer votes is declared the winner.”
The New York senator made repeated allusions to the 2000 recount and proclaimed that the Democratic party, the party of civil rights, has a duty to count every vote to determine the true intent of the electorate. Moreover, she argued, counting the votes is a simple matter of American democracy.
So she’s a politician grubbing for votes, how about that? Seriously, can you imagine a better candidate for Senator McCain to beat? She’d be a greater liability to her own party than Al Gore and John Kerry put together!