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13 May 2008
Watch HC victory speech now.→[More:]It's supposed to be history in the making. For speechwriting, that is.
Hmm. It reads like the usual stump speech - nothing historic there. (And I could be wrong, but I think she's being wildly optimistic when she says that Obama supports seating the Florida and Michigan delegations.)
Maybe it's historic because this is one of the first elections where an eligible candidate is being publicly hounded out of the race by the media before the other candidate has won enough delegates.
Really? Last I'd heard, she said she was staying in there until the last dog was hung.
Am I using "hounded" wrong? Probably.
Dean placed 3rd in Iowa, 2nd in New Hampshire, and 3rd in Wisconsin, dropping out shortly thereafter. Yes, the media twisted his campaign into something rather unbecoming, and were quite possibly responsible for his poor showing in Wisconsin, but I would not say he was in any way facing a similar situation to Sen. Clinton.
Slate's currently giving her a 2.9% to win. She's far behind in popular vote and delegates and out of money. Anyone who is telling her to get out is just doing it to give her a chance to save what's left of her dignity after the terrible campaign she's run.
I'm not sure if this election is already wearing me down or if it's charging me. I'm anxious to keep up on it and am genuinely interested in various views on what's going on. But on the other hand, I just want to vote already and go back to worrying about what the next record I'll buy is.
I read something interesting, saying that maybe it's best for Clinton to stay in the race awhile, because it would look bad for Obama to lose two states to a candidate who's dropped out. I don't know if there's any merit to the idea, but it was something to think about.
More important right now is the fact that our elected officials are looking to tap our strategic reserve. While this MAY reduce gas prices in the short term, by reducing our buffer against international incidents, it points towards long-term destabilization and pricing chaos.
This is one item upon which I agree with Bush.
But oh, don't let me distract you from the media circus over the next figurehead.
Maybe historic was the wrong adjective. The cable news was buzzing that this was supposed to be a great speech before she went to the podium. The Clinton people told the newspeople that it was going to be earth shattering. I agree, it was a regular stump speech. Nothing too special. I am impressed with Senator Clinton's speech giving skills. She doesn't miss a beat.
Clinton's only chance of winning is to convince the superdelegates to support her, and she is not convincing them: 42 superdelegates have endorsed Obama since the beginning of May, compared to 10 for Clinton, and he now leads her in superdelegate endorsements after she started the campaign with a 2-to-1 advantage.
She kicked Obama's ass in West Virginia (as she was expected to), but he still got more votes than McCain did. (As has often been the case this year, the second-place Democrat got more votes than the first-place Republican.)
Clinton won 20 delegates yesterday, but she still trails Obama by about 164 delegates. There are only 189 delegates left in the remaining primaries, they get split proportionally based on the vote, and Obama's favored to win at least Oregon.
She can't catch him in delegates, and all the superdelegate momentum is toward Obama.
Looking at Slate's delegate calculator, she can't catch him in delegates even if they split Oregon 50/50 and she gets 100% of the delegates for Kentucky, Puerto Rico, Montana, and South Dakota.
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