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Reality Has Well-Known Obama Bias

Email Print posted by Cenk 05/07/2008 02:51:25 AM EST

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You have to give Hillary Clinton's team credit for one thing - they have masterfully played the perception game. It might have been all smoke and mirrors, but they have done their job of keeping people confused and distracted them from what really matters.

The reality is that: 1. She has no chance of beating Barack Obama. 2. She has had no chance of beating Barack Obama for a long time now. 3. Most importantly, she has deluded people into thinking her chances of winning the nomination were improving as they were getting dramatically worse.

I can prove it with one simple set of numbers. Before the Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4th, Senator Clinton was trailing Barack Obama by 102 delegates overall. She had 1,267 and he had 1,369. Today Senator Obama has 1836 delegates to her 1,681. In total she trails Senator Obama by 155 delegates now. So, that means she has lost 53 delegates in that time.

Meanwhile the perception has been that she won Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania and has huge momentum in this race. Her argument to the superdelegates and to the media has been that she is better suited to win the general election because Senator Obama has been stumbling and is vulnerable in the general election - as all of her wins since March 4th show.

But as you can see from the numbers above that spin is completely unsupported by the numbers. The only reason we are continuing to have a conversation about Senator Clinton's chances is because perception has trumped reality.

She has lost over 50 delegates in the time that she has been claiming to have all this momentum. That's Joe Lieberman like math. Next thing you know she's going to tell us she has Joementum. After all she's been telling us that her second place status is actually better than first place for a long time now. And people are still humoring that absurd idea.

I hate to put it so harshly (though I don't hate it that much), but it's time to stop humoring Hillary Clinton. To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, in this case, reality has well-known Obama bias. This race is way past over.

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Reality Has Well-Known Obama Bias | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)
The first returns from MSM TV (none / 0)
At long last MSNBC, at least, has acknowledged this. Let's see if they stick to it tomorrow or revert back to the asinine Clinton camp arguments of electability and momentum. And once the Wolf is gone, maybe CNN will follow suit and we can have a domino effect from there.

At first, reality was reality. Then perception became reality. Finally, we've come full circle as reality has become perception, which in turn is reality so once again, reality is itself. And it has "drunk the kool-aid."

Reality is an Obama-bot.

by Weapon X on 05/07/2008 03:19:51 AM EST

My prediction (none / 0)
Now is when she starts making an ENORMOUS stink over MI and FL, nevermind that she signed off on the rules at the beginning of the race and agreed that they should be excluded from the primary election process.  She'll be completely shameless about it, too.  And the media will pick it up and trumpet it from the rooftops, and the shitstorm will turn into a Category 5 shit hurricane.

Mark my words, Cenk.  This SHOULD be over, by any rational measure it was over weeks and weeks ago, but it isn't because Hillary is turning "desperate scrabbling" into "toughness."

by jarett on 05/07/2008 03:55:38 AM EST

FL and MI (none / 0)

Like the woman said to the soldier on Black Diamond Bay, "That ain't enough." Then she ran upstairs to pack her bags.

FL and MI don't even matter anymore.  If they count as they stand with no revote she gets 2/3 of Florida and 55% of Michigan.  Plug that into your calculator and see what happens.  She still loses.

Of course your point is well taken.  The media apparently doesn't have access to a computer or calculator or abacus or whatever and can't do these simple calculations people like me (and millions others can).

They will try to sell the story that if they count MI and FL this is neck and neck again.

As McCain says, "Nonesense, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense." 

by ProfRich on 05/07/2008 09:33:09 AM EST

[ Parent ]
Obama campaign starts pressing the issue (none / 0)
This is a email sent by the Obama campaign to super delegates:

TO:   Superdelegates
FROM:   David Plouffe, Campaign Manager
RE:   An Update on the Race for Delegates
DA:   May 7, 2008

There are only six contests remaining in the Democratic primary calendar and only 217 pledged delegates left to be awarded. Only 7 percent of the pledged delegates remain on the table. There are 260 remaining undeclared superdelegates, for a total of 477 delegates left to be awarded.

With North Carolina and Indiana complete, Barack Obama only needs 172 total delegates to capture the Democratic nomination.  This is only 36% of the total remaining delegates.

Conversely, Senator Clinton needs 326 delegates to reach the Democratic nomination, which represents a startling 68% of the remaining delegates.

With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days. While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or its millions of supporters, volunteers, and donors.

We believe it is exceedingly unlikely Senator Clinton will overtake our lead in the popular vote and in fact lost ground on that measure last night. However, the popular vote is a deeply flawed and illegitimate metric for deciding the nominee – since each campaign based their strategy on the acquisition of delegates. More importantly, the rules of the nomination are predicated on delegates, not popular vote.

Just as the Presidential election in November will be decided by the electoral college, not popular vote, the Democratic nomination is decided by delegates.

If we believed the popular vote was  somehow the key measurement, we would have campaigned much more intensively in our home state of Illinois and in all the other populous states, in the pursuit of larger raw vote totals. But it is not the key measurement. We played by the rules, set by you, the DNC members, and campaigned as hard as we could, in as many places as we could, to acquire delegates. Essentially, the popular vote is not much better as a metric than basing the nominee on which candidate raised more money, has more volunteers, contacted more voters, or is taller.

The Clinton campaign was very clear about their own strategy until the numbers become too ominous for them. They were like a broken record , repeating ad nauseum that this nomination race is about delegates. Now, the word delegate has disappeared from their vocabulary, in an attempt to change the rules and create an alternative reality.

We want to be clear – we believe that the winner of a majority of pledged delegates will and should be the nominee of our party. And we estimate that after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries on May 20, we will have won a majority of the overall pledged delegates  According to a recent news report, by even their most optimistic estimates the Clinton Campaign expects to trail by more than 100 pledged delegates and will then ask the superdelegates to overturn the will of the voters.

But of course superdelegates are free to and have been utilizing their own criteria for deciding who our nominee should be. Many are deciding on the basis of electability, a favorite Clinton refrain. And if you look at the numbers, during a period where the Clinton campaign has been making an increasingly strident pitch on electability, it is clear their argument is failing miserably with superdelegates.

Since February 5, the Obama campaign has netted 107 superdelegates, and the Clinton campaign only 21. Since the Pennsylvania primary, much of it during the challenging Rev. Wright period, we have netted 24 and the Clinton campaign 17.

At some point – we would argue that time is now – this ceases to be a theoretical exercise about how superdelegates view electability. The reality of the preferences in the last several weeks offer a clear guide of how strongly superdelegates feel Senator Obama will perform in November, both in building a winning campaign for the presidency as well as providing the best electoral climate across the country for all Democratic candidates.

It is important to note that Senator Obama leads Senator Clinton in superdelegate endorsements among Governors, United States Senators and members of the House of Representatives. These elected officials all have a keen sense for who our strongest nominee will be in November.

It is only among DNC members where Senator Clinton holds a lead, which has been rapidly dwindling.

As we head into the final days of the campaign, we just wanted to be clear with you as a party leader, who will be instrumental in making the final decision of who our nominee will be, how we view the race at this point.

Senator Obama, our campaign and our supporters believe pledged delegates is the most legitimate metric for determining how this race has unfolded. It is simply the ratification of the DNC rules – your rules – which we built this campaign and our strategy around.

by MedfordTim on 05/07/2008 11:02:38 AM EST

Reality Has Well-Known Obama Bias | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)
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