The Ultimate Irony: Hillary is Losing Superdelegates by How She's Winning Voters

I think something very interesting is happening in the race. As we know, it's mathematically impossible for Hillary to catch up to Obama in pledged delegates. He will have an insurmountable majority in that category by May 20th, even if he loses every contest including North Carolina. So the only way for Hillary Clinton to win the nomination is by swaying the superdelegates -- make herself appear to be the stronger GE candidate so they overturn the pledged delegate count.

Unfortunately for Hillary, no one was responding to her experience argument, so she decided to go negative. Robocalls, push-polls, right wing talking points, negative ads, etc. Knowing that Obama won't fight dirty, because his whole campaign is built on a pledge to avoid that sort of thing, she is free to punch him repeatedly below the belt without fear of reprisal. And of course, it's working, as negative usually does. For the first time in the primary cycle she has closed the gap on him in NC and IN, instead of vice-versa. She could very well win both states and will almost certainly win the majority of contests till the end, including the last one in Puerto Rico.

But here's the rub: even though these tactics are getting primary votes, they appear to be turning off the one group whose votes she ACTUALLY needs: the superdelegates. The superdelegates aren't "average joes" who are swayed by negative ads and robocalls, they are experienced politicians who know exactly how the game works. They know precisely how she is winning this. And they're sickened by it -- just look at today's defection and the fact that he has picked up more SD's than her since her win in PA. Even if Hillary has the momentum and wins most of the remaining contests, the remaining superdelegates still have the ultimate justification to back Obama: his majority in the pledged delegate count. And I suspect that while her behavior will win her enough votes to demand the VP slot, it will also cost her the superdelegates and thus the nomination.

seems rather self defeating, but perhaps she knows the supers have made up their minds and this is all she has left. :shrug:

is that in addition to the practical aspects of it, the SDs also see this as a chance to break the party away from the Clintonian narcisism ... And, the more she jeopardizes the chances of winning the white house with her scorched earth style of politicing, the more party oriented SDs are going to side with Obama to try to break the Clinton's hold on the party ...

Richardson, I have no doubt gave many SDs pause, thus making everyone look long and hard at the future of our party. While I can't blame them for waiting to see how this pans out, I think this process has become so destructive, and It's obvious that is all about Clinton entitlement now and not about the grassroots future of the party that Obama has been building. The SDs have to be weighing the future and not just the short term little gotcha victories the Clinton camp has won in the last week. Are they going to reward the "it's my turn" entitlement faction of the party and turn off the new youth vote that has enthusiastically embraced the Democratic message? That is counter intuitive to the way social security is set up and why human beings have offspring.

Joe Andrew's defection was quite brave, and while most do not know who he is, the SDs sure as well do, and thus sent the signal that our party is more than the sum total of the Clintons. Had the Clintons behaved honorably, I could see this as being an agonizing choice, but considering the Clintons have been mocking the Democratic base of activists, caucus goers, Dems in red states as being irrelevant, people who have gone to college as elitists, and those who have chosen to support Obama as "Judas" how on earth can the choice now be too difficult?

If the SDs desire to see a unified party come the time of the election, the choice is clear. But we Obama supporters will need to give an olive branch to Clinton supporters (Which despite the vitriolic online world it won't be difficult as I have Clinton supporter loved ones IRL, who I love and they love me).

She may have been "taking their temperature", measuring just how much support that she may have left in Congress.

Then again, it may be that the Clinton campaign is still in total denial of just how badly they have injured Hillary's political career.

she will start losing primaries big as well.


Actually I don't think she is losing and super delegates its just giving them an incentive to get going.

:puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke:

nominee or president. She will keep all the money for herself only concentrate on a handful of states and the hell with the party as long as she wins. That's one reason why SD don't want Clinton. They are disgusted by how she has run against a fellow democrat.

Be punished, because if any action was taken against her, she would have every right to fight back. The fact that she has won half of the vote shows that she has earned a spot at the table, whether that is a VP slot, guaranteed cabinet slot, or being handed the governorship of New York, she has earned it.


It would be a mistake to try and "discipline" her.

You guys sure love rounding up. She can have the same place at the table the loser has gotten in all of our other close elections. Rewarding her is out of the question after the way she's run her campaign.

I cannot capitalize enough or put enough exclamation points in that question.

He isn't. He can fight dirty, and he HAS been fighting dirty -- he has David Axelrod do his dirty work, while he preens as a saint.

People see it every time they go on-line and encounter the flood of hatred toward Hillary Clinton. They are getting a progressively worse picture of Obama, not Clinton. They hear Obama's surrogates saying, "Hillary is running a negative campaign!" and attacking her harshly on dozens of micro-issues that don't matter to them.

Who, then, will be perceived as the negative campaigners?

Many people have also thought that Obama does not take corporate money. They are finding out that he does not take lobbyist money -- he hires the lobbyists directly, like the afore-mentioned Mr. Axelrod, who was the high-ticket PR expert for Exelon Energy.

Team Obama will ignore all this to its peril. They will redouble their attacks on the Clintons, and people (i.e., many, perhaps most, of the Democrats) will respond the same way they did in the 1990s, by defending them. And Obama's air of virtue will begin to look like an act, poorly-rehearsed.

As to the superdelegates, they will think twice if Clinton starts racking up a lot of popular votes. Obama's caucus advantage is over; now Hillary gets the advantage with popular votes, will be able to press the cases of MI and FL, and Obama will be in danger of being perceived as gaming the system. If Hillary gets to the convention just a few delegates short of Obama but with a commanding popular vote edge without MI and FL, it will be a very unpleasant time for the delegates, super or otherwise. The only thing they are "sickened" by is the prospect that they will back the losing candidate. This is not a morality play to them -- it is their livelihood.

Obama has time to change course and pull it back together. But I don't think he will. He's too strongly invested in the idea that he is Good and Right and Inevitable. Hillary only went one-third as far and thought that she was Inevitable, and look what it cost her.

--p!