OBAMA’S THIN PATH TO VICTORY

A Disclaimer
In my first blog I complained that the pundits spent too much time talking about the horse race and not enough time talking about issues. Well, now that I’m trying to be a pundit, I know why: it just takes a lot less work and a lot less thinking to make guesses about who’s going to win than to analyze difficult things like who has the better health care policy. So, while I may touch on actual issues moving forward, please know that I am embracing my lazy side and sticking with the ponies.

Obama’s Last Shot
Neither the Clintons' nasty tactics nor Obama’s commanding South Carolina win are the reason I now see a ray of hope for his campaign. True, his win was both deep and widespread. Hillary was left with nothing but her core demographic – white women. And the Clintons, in their effort to racialize this campaign, probably didn’t do themselves any favors in South Carolina (or in the general election for that matter). Nor have I been moved by the Kennedy Family passing on Camelot to the young Prince from Chicago. But there is hope . . .

Obama's thin path to victory springs from the seemingly odd fact that Edwards is staying in the race despite another 3rd place finish.

The Edwards Factor and a Brokered Convention
Clearly Edwards has no chance at winning the nomination. But because of the Byzantine way in which Democrats divide their delegates, especially in the biggest states like CA, there is now a very real chance that Edwards could play a truly decisive role in this campaign that likely would help Obama.

First, a tiny bit of background: To win the nomination, someone needs to get at least 50% of the delegates (including super delegates). Most of the big states divide their delegates in such a way, however, that unless one candidate gets a truly decisive victory (say over 60% in a given Congressional district), then the two candidates who get more than 30% of the vote EVENLY SPLIT the delegates from that district. If the district has an odd number of delegates, the winner gets that extra delegate. For more on this see the two articles I pasted at bottom of this entry.

Given how close the races are likely to be in the Feb 5 states between Obama and Hillary, even if one of them wins a majority of the votes in the biggest states, it is still likely that they will only be separated by a small number of delegates. This is why, in my last blog, I suggested that the Super Delegates (numbering nearly 800, or 40% of what you need to win) would be decisive.

So what role for King Edwards?
Edwards has a good chance of picking up 300+ delegates without ever winning a state. These delegates are meaningless if one of the other two candidates win 50% of the delegates before the convention. But, if no one hits this 50% threshold, then we head into the rarest of political horse trading events – the Brokered Convention. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brokered_convention While these kinds of brokered conventions were common in the past, it should be noted that this has not happened since the Primary process was reformed in the 70s.

So what happens if no one gets 50%? At that point, during the convention itself, Edwards would have the ability to “Pledge” all of his delegates to his favorite candidate. While those delegates don’t *have* to follow Edwards’ direction, word on the street is that he purposely chose delegates for their loyalty in specifically this situation.

The Net-Net
Most pundits right now are still saying that “someone” is going to lock up the race before the Convention. If they are right, then Obama will have to hold his horses for another day at the races. But if the nomination isn’t settled until the Convention, there is a very real chance that Edwards could use his delegates to “crown” Obama.

Is this more democratic than Hillary winning with Super Delegates? Not really. But after last week’s descent into the darker sides of politics, who cares? Clearly it is now all about winning at any cost for both sides, and if I was an Obama supporter I would be rooting for Edwards to pull as many white voters away from Hillary as possible and thereby rack up as many delegates as he can between now and the convention.

It looks pretty clear that BillAry looked at some polls and decided that the best way for them to get back in the White House was to drive white and Hispanic voters away from Obama by racializing the campaign. How ironic would it be if that cyncical tactic ended up helping Edwards win enough delegates to give Obama the nomination?

For a real time glimpse of how people think this is going to turn out, you should check out the Iowa Electronic Market, which allows people to bet on who they think will win. Currently these markets suggest that Hillary has a 62% of winning (and that's after the SC win) to Obama's 37%. Studies have shown that these predictive markets are nearly twice as reliable as traditional polling (though of course, they have been wrong). These are people betting real money (you can open an account and make up to a $500 bet).

A Quick Note on the Republicans
Lots of good news over here in my humble opinion. Guliani as President, my biggest fear, has imploded under what we always knew would be a terrible candidacy. Huckabee is through without a win in SC. And Romney is on the ropes big time. If he loses FL, he’s done. But even if he wins FL, it won’t be by much and he will have a hard time.

With McCain is the front-runner, those of us on the other side are in a bit of a quandary. He is clearly the R candidate that has the best chance of beating either Hillary or Obama. At the same time, he is also the R candidate most likely make a break from the terrible policies of the Bush Administration. McCain was the only R Senator to vote against the Bush Tax Cuts. He has been a leading voice on making the US government take a positive role to address Climate Change. He stood up to the Bush Administration when they were bungling the Iraq war under Rumsfeld. All in all, he may not be my choice for President, but he’s certainly my choice for the R nominee.

Related Reading:

From NYT:

January 28, 2008
Races Entering Complex Phase Over Delegates
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
MIAMI -- The presidential campaign is entering a new phase as
Democratic and Republican candidates move beyond state-by-state
competition and into a potentially protracted scramble for delegates
Congressional district by Congressional district.
The shifting terrain is influencing the strategies of candidates from
both parties -- though decidedly more so for Democrats -- as they move
from early state contests to the coast-to-coast contests on Feb. 5,
when 41 percent of Republican delegates and 52 percent of Democratic
delegates will be chosen.
It is the first time in over 20 years in which the campaign has turned
into a possibly lengthy hunt for delegates, rather than an effort to
roll up a string of big-state victories.
This development reflects the competitive races in both parties, with
neither a Republican nor a Democrat yet able to claim front-runner
status. It has forced the campaigns to master complex delegate-
allocation rules as they make a series of critical decisions about how
best to allocate campaign resources to produce the greatest return of
delegates.
Many of these decisions involve as little as a single delegate.
"We are going to compete in all 22 states; you can't ignore states,"
said David Plouffe, the campaign manager for Senator Barack Obama,
Democrat of Illinois. "But you want to get as many delegates as you
can. At the end of the day, this is a delegate contest."
Carl Forti, the political director for Mitt Romney, a Massachusetts
Republican, said: "There's two things going forward at this point. One
is momentum; but two, it's about delegates."
For Republicans, this means, for example, turning to approximately 10
heavily Democratic Congressional districts in California where there
are relatively few registered Republicans, making it easier, and less
expensive, to win a district and its three delegates. Both Senator
John McCain of Arizona and Mr. Romney are heading there on Wednesday.
For Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Mr. Obama, it means
investing resources -- mailings, telephone banks and candidate visits --
in Congressional districts where there are an odd number of delegates
at stake, creating an opportunity to pick up an extra delegate.
Under Democratic rules, two candidates who do well in a Congressional
district are likely to end up evenly dividing the delegates; where
there is an odd number of delegates, the extra one goes to the
candidate who wins more votes.
"It's all about the delegates!" Mr. Obama said the other day, shouting
his words to a crowd of supporters. His itinerary this week includes a
visit to California but also to smaller states that his aides said
offered opportunities for picking up delegates, whether or not he can
win the state itself: Arizona, Kansas, Missouri and New Mexico.
This new dynamic is not only challenging the way the candidates are
approaching the contest, but is also throwing into confusion how the
results of these contests should be judged, by the campaigns and by
the news media that report on them.
Given Democratic rules, it is entirely possible for one candidate to
win a majority of Feb. 5 states, and enjoy the election night
ratification that comes with a TV network map displaying the
geographic sweep of that person's accomplishment, while his (or her)
opponent ends the night with the most delegates.
On the Republican side, it is possible for one of the candidates to
win the overall popular vote in California, but end up with fewer
delegates than a rival, since most of the delegates are awarded in
winner-take-all Congressional district races.
"This race requires everyone to sort of throw away their old
assumptions and start thinking anew," said David Axelrod, a senior
adviser to Mr. Obama. "The important thing to measure on Feb. 5 is
where we are in terms of delegates. My guess is one of us will be
ahead, but not decisively, and one of us will be behind, but not
decisively, and this will go on for some time."
Democrats had a preview of this in the Nevada caucuses when Mrs.
Clinton won the actual vote of people who attended the caucuses, but
Mr. Obama won 13 delegates to her 12, leaving the two sides squabbling
over who had prevailed.
The fight was renewed Sunday when aides to Mrs. Clinton argued that
the Florida primary on Tuesday -- in which no delegates are at stake,
because the state held its primary earlier than allowed by the
Democratic National Committee -- should nonetheless be viewed as a
measure of the strength of the candidates.
Mr. Obama's advisers ridiculed the argument, given that the primary is
purely a beauty contest.
The possibility of a long-term slog is real for Democrats, given that
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama appear evenly matched in resources and
political talent.
It is less certain on the Republican side, pending the outcome of the
party's primary here on Tuesday. Aides to Mr. Romney and to Mr. McCain
said they were putting off many crucial decisions, in particular where
to go and how to invest resources, based on who wins in Florida.
McCain campaign aides said that if Mr. Romney lost here on Tuesday, it
would clear the road for Mr. McCain to win the nomination by
traditional rules: sweep enough state contests on Feb. 5 to rally the
party around him as the presumptive nominee.
Still, McCain aides said they were making decisions about how to
approach Feb. 5 based on what would net them the most delegates,
looking first and foremost at a handful of states where the winner
gets all the delegates, either statewide or district by district.
"It's triage," said Rick Davis, campaign manager for Mr. McCain. "But
winner-take-all states have got to be the top priority. The cost per
delegate is so much lower."
For Democrats, 2,025 delegates are needed to win; for Republicans, the
number is 1,191.
The sheer number of states in play -- indeed, the sheer number of
Congressional districts in play -- has presented an extraordinary
tactical challenge to these candidates at a time when they are running
low on resources. It is prohibitively expensive to poll in all these
states and districts to determine where to spend money. It is also
prohibitive to run voter identification operations or advertise
everywhere a candidate might be competitive.
Aides to Mrs. Clinton and to Mr. Obama said they had tried to
compensate for that by building models, based on past voting history
and even consumer data, to pinpoint Congressional districts where
voters would seem particularly open to their candidate.
Beyond that, the delegate rules for Democrats and for Republicans are
different and, within each party, often vary from state to state. For
example, the Republicans have some states where the statewide winner
gets all the delegates, providing an obvious target for a candidate
who might seem strong there. Among them are Missouri, New Jersey, New
York and Utah.
But there are other states where the delegates are allocated by
Congressional district, sometimes winner-take-all, and sometimes
proportionally.
By contrast, Democrats eliminated the so-called winner-take-all rules.
Instead, delegates are allocated depending on the percentage of vote
each candidate gets in a Congressional district, under very expansive
rules that, generally speaking, mean the candidates divide the trove
evenly assuming they get more than 30 percent of the vote. There are
also some delegates allocated statewide, again proportionately.
That rule, aides to both campaigns said, has the effect in a race that
seems so closely matched of making it extremely hard for anyone to
pull far ahead.
"It's going to be really hard -- I'm not saying it's impossible -- it's
going to be very difficult for someone to pull out way ahead in a
delegate count," said Tad Devine, a Democratic consultant and an
expert on his party's nominating rules. "If you have two candidates
who are getting 30 percent of the vote, and that is the scenario that
is developing now, they are going to pretty much split the delegates."
Republican rules reward bonus delegates to states with a Republican
voting history. This means that it might make more sense to invest
time in Missouri than the more populous larger state of New Jersey;
there are more delegates to be won in Missouri because it voted
Republican in the 2004 presidential race, and it is a much cheaper
place to campaign.
By contrast, someone like Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who has
long argued he would win by a slow accumulation of delegates, has
banked on winner-take-all rules helping him sweep up large number of
delegates in states like New York, New Jersey and Delaware. That said,
his viability in those states will to no small extent be determined by
how well he does here Tuesday.
Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting from Macon, Ga.
In Open Nomination, 'Superdelegates' May Hold Key to Victory
By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON -- Not all Democratic presidential convention delegates are
awarded like door prizes in the primaries and caucuses being so
fiercely contested around the country.
National party rules give special status to a select political group,
including members of Congress, governors, members of the Democratic
National Committee, past party officials, and former elected leaders
like Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and their vice
presidents, Al Gore and Walter F. Mondale.
Officially designated unpledged party leader and elected official
delegates, members of this high-powered group are usually known by a
catchier term: superdelegates.
If the primary season does not settle the nomination fight and it
turns into a hunt for individual delegates, it is conceivable that
this group of politicians and party insiders could hold the balance in
awarding the nomination.
"Then it gets interesting," said Senator Christopher J. Dodd of
Connecticut, who is no longer a presidential candidate but retains a
voice as a superdelegate.
At the Democratic National Convention in August, there would be 796
superdelegates, assuming the convention sustains the national party's
penalties against Florida and Michigan for moving their primaries
earlier in the year. In total, there are 4,049 Democratic delegates;
to win the nomination, a candidate must secure 2,025 of them.
The superdelegates are the target of something of an invisible primary
as the rival campaigns woo them for endorsements, for the political
connections such public backing can bring and for their actual support
at the convention, should it be needed. The superdelegates can also be
influenced by the primaries. An aide to Senator Barbara Boxer of
California said Ms. Boxer would cast her superdelegate vote for the
winner of the California primary on Feb. 5.
Superdelegates were created after the 1980 election and were intended
to restore some of the power over the nomination process to party
insiders, keeping a lid on the zeal of party activists. They
immediately came in handy for Mr. Mondale in his 1984 presidential
bid, when they gave him a cushion over the upstart campaign of Gary
Hart.
Since 1984, they have constituted 15 to 20 percent of the delegates at
Democratic conventions, where they have historically supported the
front-runner.
According to a recent telephone survey of superdelegates by The New
York Times and CBS News, about one-third have expressed no preference
in the 2008 race, about 25 percent support Senator Hillary Rodham
Clinton and about 10 percent favor Senator Barack Obama. The remainder
did not return calls or refused to comment.
But nothing in the rules binds any of the superdelegates, and they are
free to shift positions, unlike pledged delegates who are committed to
support a particular candidate at least through an initial convention
vote. That creates a situation that political aficionados dream about:
a deadlocked convention up for grabs until a bloc of superdelegates
comes together and anoints a nominee.
Cue the confetti.
As dramatic as that might be, it seems unlikely to happen. Recent
history shows that one candidate emerges from the primaries as the
clear choice for the nomination, with the delegates to prove it. Most
expect the same result this year.
But that does not stop some from imagining the possibilities. "It
would be fun," said Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, who is
supporting Mrs. Clinton. "Just like the old days. It would be a hoot
to see it, just the floor politics."
Megan Thee contributed reporting from New York.

Whether or not you like it, Hillary is going to win the nomination

Most paid pundits avoid making blanket predictions that can easily turn out to be wrong. Luckily, I'm not paid, so I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Hillary is now, and probably always has been, the inevitable Democratic candidate for the 2008 election. The important thing to keep in mind here is that all you need to get the Democratic nomination is 2,025 delegates and the system has been stacked in Hillary's favor from the beginning.

To begin with, let's look at what has happened with the early states and what is likely to happen between now and Feb 5th. For Obama to have had any chance of winning, he really needed to not just take IA but also two of these three: NH, NV, SC. Instead, it looks likely that he will have won IA and SC. This is impressive, but it is (sadly?) not enough.

Hillary is looking very solid in the next big state up - FL (even though these delegates *may* not get seated, it will have an impact on Feb 5 races and in all likelihood these delegates will get seated, just not until later). She also has very sizeable leads in CA and NY.

To have a realistic shot of winning from here, Obama would need to take 3 of those 4, and he's looking to lose all 4. Granted, polls can be wrong (see NH), but even without those polls there are clear signs of why Hillary is likely to win in these big states. She is turning out women in unbelievable numbers and they are voting overwhelmingly for her. Furthermore, Latinos, who make up large pieces of each of these electorates, are voting in even larger majorities for Hillary. So things are not looking good for Obama.

But the interesting part of this story is that the delegate counts for Hillary and Obama are likely to remain close, even after Feb 5, unless Hillary really just demolishes him. I suspect that after Feb 5th there will be no more than 200 delegates separating the two leaders (10% of the total needed to win). The really interesting part of this is that there are 800 Super Delegates who can decide to support any candidate they want. These delegates are not voted on, the primaries and caucuses do not determine who they will vote for, and in effect they make up 40% of what a candidate would need to clinch the nomination.

Who are these people? They are insiders to the Party . .folks like Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, et al. And, while many remain unpledged, those who have pledged have gone overwhelmingly for Hillary. 463 of the SDs have pledged their support to a candidate, with Hillary getting 200 to Obama's 110 (Edwards only has 32). That break is likely to get even more pronounced as Hillary's momentum picks up and these insiders who have been sitting on the sidelines decide to jump on what they perceive to be the winning horse. At this point I would say it's likely that Hillary maintains this 2-to-1 advantage over Obama, leaving her with 600 Super Delegates to Obama's 200.

How important is that advantage? Consider this: CA, NY and IL have a total delegate count of 900. Hillary and Obama are likely to split these pretty closely, so say one of them gets 400 and the other gets 500. That difference of 100, the result of millions of voters going to the polls, is overwhelmed by the Super Delegate advantage that Hillary has and will likely continue to have. The total delegates resulting from the Feb 5 Super Tuesday is 1688, so even if Obama miraculously won 60% of these delegates through voting, he would have won (on Feb 5th) 1012 delegates to her 676 - a difference of 336 . . .which is *still* 65 delegates less than her likely Super Delegate advantage.

There are some wild cards here of course. If Obama wins SC, IL and CA and comes close in NY (or even wins there), it's conceivable that the 400 unpledged Super Delegates might split their votes more in his favor. But even then she will likely squeak by with a delegate win. Edwards is also a wild card. He is likely to fold camp after he loses in SC and it's possible that he would endorse Obama. But even that wouldn't help Obama that much. Many Edwards supporters are the same demographic that like Hillary - generally poorer white people who think the economy is headed in the wrong direction. Further, I'm not sure Edwards would take the risk of openly angering the likely Dem nominee by supporting her rival. Another important wild card out there is Al Gore. He actually has a lot of influence (unlike someone like Kerry), and so far Gore has sat on the sidelines. I suspect he has done this because he's done the same calculations I just did above and realized long ago that Hillary was playing on a field slanted dramatically in her favor. There is no love lost between the Cintons and the Gores, but he isn't stupid and he isn't interested in needlessly alienating the likely nominee. He also probably learned his lesson after endorsing Howard Dean in 2004.

OK, now to the important part: Hillary still loses in head-to -head polls against McCain. She currently loses to McCain by 4 points (McCain is beating Obama by only 2 points), But she beats Guliani and Romney (by 6% and 12% respectively). Again, polls are far from accurate or reliable this early on, and they can't accurately predict things like differential turn-out (all the angry Rs that will vote just because they hate Hillary, or all the women voters who will vote just because they want a woman President), but in terms of trends, Hillary is moving in the right direction (several weeks ago she lost to all R candidates). And this has been true of all of her elections - the more the voters got to know her (in NY, NH, etc) the more her "unfavorables" went down.

So if you are someone who is only going to be happy with an Obama nomination, I'd say now is the time to start doing everything you can to make him win in CA and to start shaming leading Dems not to pledge their Super Delegate votes until after all the Primaries are finished. But truly, you may find your time better spent thinking of ways to encourage Hillary to commit to the policies and priorities you care about. And one thing that will hurt all of us is if Obama supporters, as they see the writing on the wall, begin to carp about how unfair and undemocratic the process is. We need to go into the General Election with a candidate that has a mandate to win. As one of my favorite philosophers said, "Don't hate the Player, hate the game." And if you don't like the way the nomination game is played, start working on fixing it in January of 2009.

The worst case scenario I see is that the nomination fight gets uglier (think more Bill and Obama fights) and Hillary comes out of the process even more wounded than she went in. McCain (or worse, Romney) gets the nomination for the Rs and then our favorite moderate billionaire Bloomberg decides to jump in the race and self fund a massive campaign whose likely outcome will be to siphon votes away from Hillary and give the Presidency to whoever wins the R nomination. While this is not a likely scenario, it is certainly very possible. And even if a Bloomberg type candidate doesn't jump in, to the extent that the Dem nominating process is ugly and contentious, that can only help the R candidate for the General.

One small PS - While this Super Delegate thing may seem undemocratic, and of course it is . . .just remember that it wasn't so long ago that a bunch of white men sat in a cigar filled room and chose the candidate by a show of hands. Today's system may not be perfect, but it's a lot better than the way it used to get played (although one could make an interesting argument that really there is just a veneer of democracy intended to obscure what is truly an elite decision-making proces).

A final PS - I know in my last blog I complained that pundits spent too much time on the horse race and not enough time on the issues. And here i go doing the same thing. But the fact is that there just isn't a lot of daylight between Hillary and Obama on the issues. You can debate who has better judgement, who will surround themselves with better people, who will likely govern better, etc . . .but the real debate on issues is likely to begin once we are in the General election.

Thanks for reading this and sharing your thoughts. And Happy Martin Luther King Day.

-Jesse

the real hillary/johnson story

i have just finished reading the final book in the taylor branch triology about the civil rights movement (At Canaan's edge), which I highly reccomend. these thoughts largely stem from reflections on that book.

despite the misleading subject line of this message, i am not about to write some defense of hillary's comments about johnson and the success of the civil rights movement. while i do think her meta point was valid - that johnson's skill as an insider in washington helped achieve some key goals of the civil right's movement, i think there is actually a more important comparison between hillary and johnson that i suspect she would not as readily point to proudly.

johnson is a complex political figure who accomplished great things domestically but ultimately was undone by a war he didn't really start but unquestionably chose to escalate. besides landmark leadership on civil rights, johnson passed huge and positive reforms on health care (medicare), immigration (changed the laws so that northern europeans didn't get 90% of all allotted spaces), education for the poor (headstart, etc) to name just a few. But all of these reforms foundered on his misguided war policy in vietnam. why? finances for one. he had huge plans for anti-poverty efforts to really bolster civil rights legislation, but ended up having to seriously underfund that to pay for large escalations in vietnam. he was also undone by the political dynamics of an escalating war policy. king, for instace, was a solid supporter for johnson's landslide victory in '64, but as the war effort grew larger, king increasingly had to stand up for nonviolence in all things, which put him at odds with Johson which ultimately contributed greatly to their joint agenda on poverty and race falling apart.

so what is the "real" hillary/johnson parallel? to me, it's that i see hillary following the johnson path of a strong domestic agenda and a hawkish foriegn policy. i don't have a lot of strong evidence on this, but there's something in hillary's character, in her past statements and votes on iraq/iran, and in the way she is such a political creature that leads me to believe that she is more likely to fall into the same trap LBJ did than either of her main rivals for the nomination.
Johson and all his advisors knew very early on - before any real escalation took place - that at best they were looking at a protracted stalemate . We know this because johnson recorded all his phone calls and you can hear him committing troops and simultaneously admitting that it won't do anything. So why did he do it? And what leads me to believe that hillary has the capacity to do the same? We know something about why he did it - he was despearately concerned about looking weak in confronting the threat of his era. and while he knew it would not go well in vietnam, he calculated that this was better than backing down. he probably assumed that he wouldn't be able to win in '68 if he was weak on communism, and that the negative political impacts of an escalation could be safely dealt with in his next term. In retrospect, it seems clear this was a bad choice both politically and progrmatically. Vietnam hurt him so badly he didn't even run for president in 68. and the war itself turned into one of the bigger foreign policy disasters of the late 20th century.

The more relevant question today is whether there is a parrell for hillary and iraq and whether we could expect her to take the hard choices that might make her look weak in the short run but prove wise in the long run. while impossible to predict, i'd say the facts point to her following johnson's misguided path. i would love feedback on this either way, since it is a critical question and i know many of you on my list here are hillary supporters and more keen observers of history than I.

Anyway, i think hillary made a valid point about the civil rights movement needing a powerful and effective leader in DC and i think the press and obama's camp are taking it out of contex to punish her. And in some ways I believe that she is right in believing that she would be a better political insider when it comes to accomplishing the hard fight ahead on domestic policy. but the lesson of johnson is instructive in that it illustrates how all things are connected for a president and that bad choices on foreign policy can bankrupt (both morally and financially) the most agressive and well laid domestic agenda. too bad the press is so focused on the horse race elements of who said what about whom and not enough on the tough analysis about who would actually lead this country more effectively in the very challenging times ahead.