Clinton hints at sharing ticket with Obama
It really does appear as if there is nothing that Hillary won't do to get back into the White House.
Is she on smack? Out of the last sixteen votes she's won three and suddenly the people of Ohio have such good taste that their opinion should matter more than anyone else's?After her sensational victories in Texas and Ohio overnight Hillary Clinton this morning hinted at the possibility of sharing the Democratic ticket with Barack Obama — with her as the presidential candidate.
Asked on CBS's The Early Show whether she and Obama should be on the same ticket, Clinton said: "That may be where this is headed, but of course we have to decide who is on the top of ticket. I think the people of Ohio very clearly said that it should be me."
Her logic here is slightly skewered.
"It's a state that knows how to pick a president," she said. "And no candidate in recent history, Democrat or Republican, has won the White House without winning the Ohio primary."
Her argument was not entirely fair – the main reason nominees have tended to win the Ohio primary is that, in the past, it has fallen too late in the electoral calendar to be significant – but her elated supporters lapped it up anyway.
And the notion that a shared ticket with her atop it "might be where this is headed" ignores the fact that Obama still leads her by a considerable margin.
There were 370 delegates at stake in the four primaries, 193 of them in Texas and 141 in Ohio. Obama took a net gain of 91 delegates and Clinton took 115 in the contests. 2,025 are needed to clinch the nomination.Obama has made it clear that she still has an awful long way to go if she's going to catch him. Remember, Obama went into last night with a 156 delegate advantage.
There are ten contests remaining, with more than 600 delegates at stake.On US morning television news shows, Obama was gracious toward his rival, but insisted, "it's going to be very hard for her to catch up on the pledged delegate count."
"We will be in a very strong position to claim the nomination," Obama told Diane Sawyer, the host of ABC's Good Morning America.
The numbers simply don't add up for Hillary as Jonathan Alter at TruthOut has worked out. Here's his scenario:
I've tried this myself - you can do it here - and even giving Hillary a 55-45 victory over Obama in every remaining state (including the four decided last night) the final result was Obama 1633 and Clinton 1576. That's Obama holding a 57 delegate advantage even if Hillary beats him by ten clear points in every election still to come and in the four that were decided yesterday. You don't need to be Einstein to work out that she simply can't do that.Then it's on to Wyoming on Saturday, where, let's say, the momentum of today helps her win 53-47. Next Tuesday in Mississippi - where African-Americans play a big role in the Democratic primary - she shocks the political world by winning 52-48.
Then on April 22, the big one, Pennsylvania - and it's a Hillary blowout, 60-40, with Clinton picking up a whopping 32 delegates. She wins both of Guam's two delegates on May 30, and Indiana's proximity to Illinois does Obama no good on May 6, with the Hoosiers going for Hillary 55-45. The same day brings another huge upset in a heavily African-American state: enough North Carolina blacks desert Obama to give the state to Hillary 52-48, netting her five more delegates.
Suppose May 13 in West Virginia is no kinder to Obama, and he loses by double digits, netting Clinton two delegates. The identical 55-45 result on May 20 in Kentucky nets her five more. The same day brings Oregon, a classic Obama state. Oops! He loses there 52-48. Hillary wins by 10 in Montana and South Dakota on June 3, and primary season ends on June 7 in Puerto Rico with another big Viva Clinton! Hillary pulls off a 60-40 landslide, giving her another 11 delegates. She has enjoyed a string of 16 victories in a row over three months.
So at the end of regulation, Hillary's the nominee, right? Actually, this much-too-generous scenario (which doesn't even account for Texas's weird "pri-caucus" system, which favors Obama in delegate selection) still leaves the pledged-delegate score at 1,634 for Obama to 1,576 for Clinton.
That's a 56-delegate lead.
It appears even the Clinton camp are accepting that they will not catch Obama which is why, once again, we find Hillary's camp eyeing the Super Delegates:
The Clinton case to superdelegates, as laid out in a memo this morning by campaign strategists Mark Penn and Harold Ickes, will be that Clinton's victories in big states suggest she will be the stronger candidate against McCain.
"Hillary has demonstrated that she is the best positioned candidate to carry the core battleground states essential to a general-election victory -- particularly the large industrial states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and the critical swing contests in Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, and New Jersey," Penn and Ickes wrote.
That a member of the party who watched as Bush was elected by the Supreme Court could possibly think it's acceptable for her to be elected against the wishes of the majority of people who voted is simply breathtaking. It really does stink of the most rank ambition and tastelessness.
I've tried hard to stay positive as other bloggers that I really admire appear to be losing their minds, but there's a cynicism about Hillary's plan that really sticks in my throat.
I would really love Hillary to be the next President and I would adore the irony of watching Bill Clinton walk back into the White House - especially to imagine the contorted look of horror on the face of William Kristol and his deranged buddies - but the simple fact of the matter is that the person who gets the most delegates has to get the nomination. Anything else is simply undemocratic.
Hillary's plan would split the Democratic Party down the middle. And from the kind of comments she made yesterday, and from the statements she's making today, I'm beginning to wonder if she would even care.
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