It May Be Over

Voters unimpressed with Rush, “tax holidays” or McCain

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Election2008/Ind-NC.html
5/6/08

At Hillary Clinton’s victory speech in Indiana, Bill Clinton looked decidedly downcast. Chelsea Clinton was off camera, but BBS presenter Katty Kaye reported that she looked on the verge of tears. There was a telling moment in her “victory speech” when she said, “I win, he wins, he wins, I win. No matter what happens, I will work for the nominee of the Democratic party because we must win in November. And I know that Senator Obama feels the same way.” That sounds more like a concession speech, and it may well be one.

I suspect a lot of people will go to bed tonight convinced that Hillary did win Indiana, and perhaps she did. But normally, when there is a 4 point margin between candidates with 87% of precincts in, it’s time to release the balloons, give the speech, and congratulate the loser on a fine effort.

But it’s not quite over in Indiana. Two counties have no returns at all. One of them is Lake County, which adjoins the small hamlet of Chicago, in Obama’s “home state” of Illinois. It features the medium-sized city of Gary, Indiana. It’s expected to go heavily for Obama. The other is Union County, just up the road from Cincinnati.

Correction: Lake County just reported well after midnight their time, and with 28% of precincts counted, Obama is leading 75%-25%.

No, Indiana isn’t settled yet.

The BBC is also reporting that their sources are telling them that some 50 superdelegates are expected to announce their intention of supporting Obama at the convention.

On the web, I’ve been amusing myself reading the whines from right wingers who are bemoaning the fact that Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos,” the effort to stuff Democratic ballot boxes by Republican voters in order to keep the race going, had failed so miserably this time. CNN reported, “Roughly one in ten of the state’s Democratic primary voters were Republican — and that group did vote for Hillary Clinton, 53 to 47 percent over Barack Obama. But hold on: registered Democrats, who made up two-thirds of Tuesday’s primary voters, gave roughly the same edge to Clinton, 53 to 45 percent. Only Independents — who made up about a quarter of the electorate — voted for Obama, 53 to 47 percent.”

One turd from North Carolina, clearly bitter and distraught, sniveled that he was apologizing for his state, and all the racists in it that supported Obama. That presumably would be African-American racists, who mostly supported Obama. They proved they would never vote for a white candidate in 2000 and 2004, when they supported Gore and Kerry, respectively, by even bigger margins.

Damn, I love listening to right wingers whine.

As I’m typing all this, I see that only two points separate the two candidates in Indiana now. If Hillary manages to lose Indiana, or ends up in what would be an effective tie, it would be a death knell for her campaign.

The other day, I predicted that Obama would win North Carolina by 9% and Hillary would win Indiana by 5%. But then some polls came out, and they showed a couple of interesting results. The first was that with the exception of the GOP-friendly Rasmussen, they all showed that a majority of voters didn’t think the Reverend Wright issue had done Obama any harm and even those that did were openly disgusted with the media for blowing it up into such an issue.

The second was when I noticed that three out of four voters were totally unimpressed with the “gas tax holiday” that both Hillary and McCain had been promoting. The public figured out that it would do them far more harm than good, and if the oil companies didn’t simply raise their prices and turn the “tax holiday” into their own little windfall, the best they could hope to save was about ten dollars a month. Some even realized that when they tanked up at the station, the tax portion was the only money spent that might actually come back and benefit them some way. The polls also showed Obama making inroads with women voters and with blue-collar Caucasian voters.

It didn’t help Hillary when McCain made another of his profoundly stupid remarks. When told that three out of four economists thought the “tax holiday” was a very bad idea, he said, “Oh, I don’t pay any attention to economists.” This probably isn’t the brightest response to make in reply to a question about an economic matter, especially when the public is paying close attention, and even though it wasn’t HER stupid gaffe, McCain’s idiocy rubbed off on her anyway.

Political pandering consists of sounding like a fool in order to convince the public that you are one of them. BAD political pandering consists of sending the message that you think the only way to be one with the public is by sounding like a fool, and that’s what McCain did. Hillary just had the misfortune to be in the immediate vicinity when McCain laid that egg.

It’s fun watching the results trickle in from Indiana. If Obama DOES get 50%+1 of the vote (what in GOP circles is called “acclamation” and is how they wound up with McCain as their standard-bearer), it would only make a difference of one or two delegates. But the psychological impact would be magnified, both by the fact that Hillary had regarded Indiana as a safe state just two months ago, and the whole hothouse atmosphere of media panting and gasping that has surrounded the state.

In the long run, and even in the short run, it’s of far more import if the BBC report is accurate and Obama does pick up fifty super delegates in the next day or so. That would give him about 1,870 (he has 1,819 now) delegates, and he only needs 2,025 to win. Hillary presently has 1,668.

Of course, Michigan and Florida WILL be sending delegates to the convention, and we won’t know until next month what kinds of terms will be used to select them. Now, that’s an even bigger chunk than the unpledged superdelegates.

However, by June, there will only be a couple of minor primaries left, and there will be strong pressure, both on the superdelegates and the party selectors in those two states, to reflect the will of the voters over all. Presently, that would work to Obama’s advantage.

I would imagine that Hillary Clinton will sit down with her family and her top advisors tomorrow and discuss where they go from here. She doesn’t want to disappoint her supporters, but she has to know that if she waits too long, she’ll be seen as a spoiler, and possibly as another Ralph Nader.