It’s a bird, it’s a plane… No, it’s a bird.
There has been quite a lot of concerned talk about the idea of Clinton, as the establishment candidate, convincing enough superdelegates to vote for her to override Obama’s eventual margin of victory among pledged delegates. I’m not too worried. Aside from having quite a bit of establishment support himself, an overwhelming plurality of superdelegates in red or purple states feel Obama would have longer coattails in November. I think people vastly overestimate Clinton’s sway with superdelegates. Her edge there was mostly the result of early endorsements when she seemed to be the presumptive nominee. Recent endorsements tilt in Obama’s favor, and there’s just no way a huge chunk of supers are going to vote against the will of the people, against their own political survival (most of them are elected officials seeking reelection) and against a guy that a good deal of them would rather see in the White House, anyway.
No doubt the Clintons will arm twist and threaten retribution, but those threats don’t carry the same weight when they aren’t coming from the future president. The only threat to Obama now is if he clams up in the general election and loses to the ornery Senator from Arizona. Already, Hillaryland is asking reporters to call these delegates “automatic” delegates instead of superdelegates, because one wouldn’t want to imply that they have super human powers, or more influence than, you know, the fucking voters in each state. That would be patently false. This new strategy has all the logic of their claim that the February contests don’t count because Clinton is not going to win them. It’s like Republicans saying the surge is working because they’ve set the bar so low it’s easier to reach than the “You must be this tall to ride” signs at Disneyland.
There comes a point where putting all this spin on election results and events in general strays too far from any plausible reality and starts to enter Bushian territory.
1 comment February 13th, 2008