If Clinton Steals Election: Hello President McCain

weekly standard:

Now Democrats are boosting McCain's chances of winning the presidency by prolonging the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination. "They are eating their own," says Dick Morris, the onetime adviser to the Clintons. The result, for the moment anyway, is that McCain is inching ahead in polls matching him against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

So long as Clinton stays in the race, the bitter divide among Democrats will widen--to McCain's advantage. And since Clinton still has a chance of winning the nomination, she's bound to continue her campaign at least through the Pennsylvania primary on April 22 and the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on May 6--and probably until the verdict of Democratic super-delegates becomes clear sometime this summer.
.......
Three scenarios are possible in the Democratic race. The most likely--and the one that helps McCain the least--is that the primaries end with Obama leading in both delegates and popular voters, prompting the super-delegates to tilt his way. Thus he wins the nomination, and the party unites behind him.

The second scenario is Clinton's favorite. Her best chance of defeating Obama is to surpass him in the popular vote, then declare herself the true choice of Democratic voters despite trailing Obama in delegates. She has practically no prospect of overtaking him in delegates in the closing primaries. He currently leads by roughly 130 delegates.

For Clinton, winning the popular vote won't be easy. Obama picked up 100,000 more votes than Clinton in the most recent contest, the Mississippi primary, and his lead is now 700,000. But there are enough big primaries left that it's achievable, all the more so if Michigan and Florida schedule do-over primaries.

Obama's response is preordained: The primary campaign is about winning delegates, and I won the most. Those are the rules. Should the super-delegates side with Clinton, the entire Obama movement--and especially blacks--would feel cheated. Indeed, they would have been cheated. The likelihood of a party split would be significant.

Scenario number three is similar to the first in that Obama wins the most delegates and votes. But rather than concede, Clinton contends that, since she's won most of the final 10 or 12 primaries (assuming this is the case), she's the real favorite of Democratic voters. Besides, she'll say, Obama can't win the big states and who knows what will emerge once he's been fully frisked by the media, and (assuming no do-overs) that she won in Michigan and Florida. In other words, all the bad things you've heard before from Clinton central. And then there's the Reverend Wright business.

Calling this a desperate and party-shattering tactic by the Clinton forces would be putting it mildly. Are they really capable of it? Maybe not. But if they pulled it off, and Clinton swiped the nomination from Obama, the consequence is not hard to figure out. It's President McCain.

McCain shouldn't count on that big a gift from Democrats. Luck can only take you so far. There's a saying in baseball that it's better to be lucky than good. Presidential campaigns operate a bit differently. To win, a candidate has to be lucky and good.

Obama’s Pennsylvania Strategy
Clinton Must Win Pennsylvania
It’s Still Over for Clinton

Obama Boosts Iowa Delegates

update: obama gains another 3 delegates in iowa.
obama adds 10 more iowa delegates. more are to come from texas, where obama is expected to win. obama also gained a few more in california and more in texas.
i'm upping my delegate counter in the sidebar as well as the barackobama.com delegate counter.
from obama's campaign adviser david pflouffe:

Dear Team Iowa,

Another contest in Iowa just showed the hard work and dedication you put into the state. For those of you that worked the caucuses, you gave momentum to put us in the great position we are in. For those of you that came back for the county conventions, you worked your magic again, along with the precinct captains and supporters to squeeze 7 more delegates out of Iowa for Barack (there may still be one up for grabs).

Thanks for all of your hard work. I know you are all tired, but dig deep, remember the way you felt after the Iowa Caucuses, and the way staff there feels again tonight.

-David

the complexities:

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Democrat Barack Obama expanded his fragile lead in delegates over rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday, picking up at least seven delegates as Iowa activists took the next step in picking delegates to the national convention.

Half the 14 delegates allocated to John Edwards on the basis of caucus night projections switched Saturday and Obama got most, if not all, of them.

Iowa Democratic Party officials said that with more than 86 percent of the delegates picked, Obama claimed 52 percent of the delegates elected at county conventions on Saturday, compared to 32 percent for Clinton. About 16 percent of the delegates picked at Saturday's conventions were sticking with Edwards, even though he's dropped from the race since Iowa held its caucuses in January.

Democratic Party projections said the results mean Obama increased by seven the number of delegates he collects from the state, getting a total of 23 compared to 14 for Clinton and seven for Edwards, with one to be decided.

Twelve automatic delegates bring the state's total to 57. Obama has been endorsed by four of those and Clinton three, with the remainder uncommitted.

Counting Iowa's results Saturday, an Associated Press delegate tally showed Obama with 1,610 delegates and Clinton with 1,496.

Obama won the state's precinct caucuses in January with 39 percent of the vote, with Edwards narrowly edging Clinton to finish second. Projections on caucus night showed Obama getting 16 delegates, compared to 15 for Clinton and 14 for Edwards.

"It means the Obama people are very organized," said Iowa Democratic Chairman Scott Brennan. "They have been working very hard for these conventions."

Brennan said turnout was heavy, with more than 13,000 activists showing up at conventions in the state's 99 counties.

"Today, Iowa Democrats again turned out in large numbers to reject the failed Bush-McCain campaign and its policies," said Brennan.

Edwards finished second in the state's leadoff precinct caucuses on Jan. 3, but those caucuses are only the first step in a complicated process of picking the state's 45 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August.

The next step in that process was Saturday with selection of delegates to congressional district and state conventions. Party officials said the results Saturday marked the election of 2,173 of the 2,500 delegates who will go to those convention.

The epic presidential race between Clinton and Obama has been reshaped since Iowa's caucuses, but is no less intense with every delegate carrying weight.

Obama’s Pennsylvania Strategy
Clinton Must Win Pennsylvania
It’s Still Over for Clinton
Obama’s Superdelegate Momentum

Who Can Beat McCain?

It's Still Over For Clinton

it's over for clinton and this is a race where all the small states matter (it's the delegates, something the obama camp is so well aware of), so says dick morris, former adviser to sen. trent lott and president bill clinton. obama just needs to keep on keepin' on:

The real message of Tuesday’s primaries is not that Hillary won. It’s that she didn’t win by enough.

The race is over.

The results are already clear. Obama will go to the Democratic Convention with a lead of between 100 and 200 elected delegates. The remaining question is: What will the superdelegates do then? But is that really a question? Will the leaders of the Democratic Party be complicit in its destruction? Will they really kindle a civil war by denying the nomination to the man who won the most elected delegates? No way. They well understand that to do so would be to throw away the party’s chances of victory and to stigmatize it among African-Americans and young people for the rest of their lives. The Democratic Party took 20 years to recover from the traumas of 1968 and it is not about to trigger a similar bloodletting this year.

John McCain’s nomination guarantees that the superdelegates wouldn’t dare. A perfectly acceptable alternative for most Democrats, McCain would harvest so large a proportion of Obama’s votes if Hillary steals the nomination that he would probably win. Even putting Obama on the ticket would not allay the anger of his supporters; it would just make him complicit in the robbery.

Will Hillary win Pennsylvania? Who cares? Even if she were to sweep the remaining primaries and caucuses by 10 points, she would move just 60 votes closer to Obama’s total of elected delegates. And she won’t sweep them all. Even if Hillary wins Pennsylvania, the largest prize up for grabs, Obama will probably win North Carolina, which is almost as large. He’s likely to win Mississippi and Wyoming and has a good shot in Oregon and Indiana. The most likely result of these coming contests is that Obama will be roughly where he is now, about 140 elected delegates ahead of Hillary.

Suppose that Hillary will carry those states by enough to offset Obama’s delegate lead. The proportional representation system makes a knockout impossible and so mutes relatively narrow victories as to make them almost inconsequential. Little Vermont, with 600,000 people, gave Obama a net gain of four delegates, half of what Hillary won from the Texas primary, a state with 20 million residents. Even after Hillary won big-state victories in Ohio and Texas, she drew only 20 closer to Obama’s total of elected delegates.

Hillary won’t withdraw. That much is for sure. The tantalizing notion that 800 insiders can offset a season of primaries and caucuses will drive both Clintons to ever-escalating rhetoric. Will their attacks hurt Obama? Likely all they will achieve is to give him needed experience in the cut and thrust of media politics. read more.

Obama: the Un-Beholden President
Bogus Big States Argument
Obama’s Pennsylvania Strategy

Clinton Wins Obama Still Leads

after 12 wins in a row for obama, clinton wins the popular vote in ohio and rhode island and maybe texas.

she's like a thorn. i kid. i suppose she deserves to carry on. her supporters have as much sweat and equity in her campaign. let's not turn into "hillary haters." then we'll be behaving just like those unmentionables.

and let's not blame race or karl rove. we knew these could be factors. the obama camp has to rise above. may the best person win (and we know who that is) wink, wink.

back to texas for a moment. even if she wins the popular vote in texas, obama is likely to win the most delegates in texas. it's all about the delegates.

i'm not looking forward to the plumbing that goes along with the kitchen sink and all the rest of the political shenanigans. what's next? obama's name, his race and his authenticity have been attacked. let's hope we can hash out some more of the issues. who is john mccain going to go after? the democrats in general?

in the meantime, let's have some fun with delegate math at slate.com's delegate counter.

if we plug in the percents for obama and clinton and add them to current delegate counts, obama still has a lead. it's uncertain how much of a lead until texas numbers are in.

this story from newsweek says clinton could win 16 straight and still lose.

up next: mississippi caucus on March 8 and wyoming primary on march 11

Up to date delegate tracker

here is the arcade fire video. the band performed at an obama rally.

Obama May Get More New York Delegates

obama may pick up a couple of delegates in NY than originally thought because of mistakes made counting.
from the NYT:

City election officials this week said that their formal review of the results, which will not be completed for weeks, had confirmed some major discrepancies between the vote totals reported publicly — and unofficially — on primary night and the actual tally on hundreds of voting machines across the city.

In the Harlem district, for instance, where the primary night returns suggested a 141 to 0 sweep by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the vote now stands at 261 to 136. In an even more heavily black district in Brooklyn — where the vote on primary night was recorded as 118 to 0 for Mrs. Clinton — she now barely leads, 118 to 116.

The history of New York elections has been punctuated by episodes of confusion, incompetence and even occasional corruption. And election officials and lawyers for both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton agree that it is not uncommon for mistakes to be made by weary inspectors rushing on election night to transcribe columns of numbers that are delivered first to the police and then to the news media.

That said, in a presidential campaign in which every vote at the Democratic

Obama Delegates Clinton Delegates

Today: Louisiana, Washington, Nebraska, US Virgin Islands
Tomorrow: Maine
primary and caucus schedule
real clear politics polls on where the candidates stand. it's apparent that if the race is between mccain and clinton, then mccain has the edge and if it's between obama and mccain, then obama has the edge. some people just don't like clinton. here is a quote from a bangor newspaper:

As a Republican-leaning independent, I will vote for Barack Obama if he is the Democratic nominee but I will not vote for Hillary Clinton if she is the nominee."

not a good reason to vote for obama, especially because there are so many reasons to vote for him. but if that's what it takes. mccain is too war-minded. it's his thing. i like some of his policies but i think he will continue bush's stance on calling countries "axis of evil" and nurturing terrorists by pushing people into a corner. it's basic psychology. if you call your kid lazy, he's probably going to be lazy.
people in other countries are different than us. they have different views on "freedom." freedom is not having freedom pushed on you. freedom comes about when people choose to be free. it has to be their choice. surely, the US can diplomatically deal with other countries and help them along their way but we can't force anyone to do anything. bush's idea of forced freedom is a lousy one. he keeps saying history will prove otherwise, well he's got to be pretty embarrassed at how many people are actually interested in politics this year because he's going to be gone! i mean, what an idiot. i can't wait to have a president that i respect. i think this "freedom" thing may have just been a guise anyway to shore up oil. how many people know that there is an oil leasing spree going on in the arctic. bush is letting companies buy up territory in the chukchi sea before a new president steps in. oh, the damage that will be done in this last year, i hate to think of it. end of rant.

just the democrats.
delegate tracker.

Obama Won More Delegates: What Does this Mean?

Super Tuesday Delegates
well, the democratic candidate is chosen by how many delegates he or she has won. this year, in august, it will take 2,025 delegates to be the winner. so, sen. obama winning one more delegate is a good thing. however, sen. clinton has more overall at this point:

Clinton has locked in more than twice as many delegates as Obama, with 183 to
his 78, according to a tracking tally kept by CNN.

a primer

What happened in Nevada?