Clinton announces her latest plan: "Forget the delegate count!"
The Clinton camp are now laying out the three conditions which need to materialise for her to grab the Democratic nomination.
I think we can probably take Pennsylvania as a given, but it is a long shot that she will lead in the total popular vote once the campaign is over. And the very fact that is looking to shake super delegates confidence in Obama means that we can look forward to even more vicious attacks on the probable Democratic candidate.She has to defeat Mr. Obama soundly in Pennsylvania next month to buttress her argument that she holds an advantage in big general election states.
She needs to lead in the total popular vote after the primaries end in June.
And Mrs. Clinton is looking for some development to shake confidence in Mr. Obama so that superdelegates, Democratic Party leaders and elected officials who are free to decide which candidate to support overturn his lead among the pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses.
I also note that even the Clinton camp are no longer claiming that she will lead in the delegate count, which is actually the way one is supposed to elect the candidate.
Of course, like she has done so many times throughout this campaign, I expect that she will decide that the popular vote is of no consequence should she fail to secure it by the end of the campaign, just as states which she failed to win are always dismissed as irrelevant.
And it's very hard to see how she is ever going to secure the popular vote, especially as Florida and Michigan are both signalling their unwillingness to have fresh elections.
To fulfill her third objective, to damage Obama to such an extent that the super delegates would desert him, Clinton was hoping that the fallout caused by Revered Wright's statements might do that job for her, but Obama made a speech on race which some are comparing to Martin Luther King at his finest and - whilst it's impossible at this stage to gauge it's effectiveness - Obama certainly didn't run from the confrontation, nor did he desert his pastor as Clinton and other critics had insisted that he must.Despite Mrs. Clinton’s last-minute trip to Michigan on Wednesday, Democrats there signaled that they are unlikely to hold a new primary. That apparently dashed Mrs. Clinton’s hopes of a new showdown in a state she feels she could win, and it left the state’s delegates in limbo.
The inaction in Michigan followed a similar collapse of her effort to seek another matchup with Mr. Obama in Florida, where, as in Michigan, she won an earlier primary held in violation of party rules.
Without new votes in Florida and Michigan, it will be that much more difficult for Mrs. Clinton to achieve a majority in the total popular vote in the primary season, narrow Mr. Obama’s lead among pledged delegates or build a new wave of momentum.
He's showing real balls and he's refusing to allow the Clinton camp to define the terms of the debate. Also, by making the speech he did, he is making one aware that this is a speech that only he could credibly make, it would be impossible to imagine Clinton or McCain addressing the subject of race in such honest and forthright terms.
Obama, once again, turned the tables on her.Mrs. Clinton’s aides hope that disclosures about Mr. Obama’s past like the one involving Mr. Wright could give superdelegates’ pause. Mr. Devine said he thought that at least in terms of Democratic primary voters Mr. Obama had turned the furor to his advantage with his speech on race.
“Obama, confronted by an issue that was boiling, seemed to wade into it with a speech that was in many ways profound,” Mr. Devine said. “As a result, now these people who were so interested and awakened by his candidacy are back with him again. Instead of this being a setback, it becomes an opportunity.”
However, the road for Clinton to the nomination remains as far away as it did prior to Texas and Ohio. She still trails Obama by around 150 delegates and her recent game plan is simply another way to circumnavigate that reality.
What's really scandalous about Clinton's plan is that it is built around a lie, the lie that both candidates are neck are neck. Obama is actually way out in front, but Clinton's camp clings to the lie that the candidates are tied in the hope that she can undermine Obama's campaign by other means than the democratic process. ANY other means.
It's disgusting to watch a Democrat attempt to do the Republican's dirty work for them. And it's also disgusting to watch a Democrat put forward the argument that the delegate count doesn't matter, whilst simultaneously shouting about voters being disenfranchised in Florida and Michigan. I have always said that there is no consistency to any of Hillary's arguments, and here her advisors are making it perfectly clear that they intend to ignore the delegate count as they have finally accepted what has been clear to all of us for quite some time now; Hillary can't win the delegate count.
So, according to the rules as defined all along by Hillary and her supporters, if she can't win it, it can't really count.
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