Down but Not Out

THE SHORT STORY
I was wrong in thinking that Obama’s last chance was to win CA on Feb 5th. He is now very much in it, and he appears to be leading on all objective measures: recent polls show him ahead by a few points and the Iowa Electronic Markets have him up 73-25 and he is winning both the delegate count and the popular vote.

The road ahead is not clear. My reading of the situation (detailed below) is that this is likely to go to the Convention undecided. Along the way, Super Delegates will be holding back until they think they know who is going to win. Their calculation has two competing interests that will slow them from jumping on one candidacy over the other: SDs want to pick the person who has the best chance of winning the election thereby helping the party the most down the ticket (Senate, House and even state legislature races) WHILE AT THE SAME TIME they want to avoid pledging to the loser and thereby alienating the winner (most of these are elected officials or folks who want favors). I suspect that overall the remaining SDs prefer Obama but really don’t want to piss off the Clintons unless they know Obama will be the winner.

TX, OH and PA are big milestones and if Hillary stumbles badly with any of them, it will be clearly Advantage Obama. But even if she loses there by a little, she is going to continue fighting. This is what the Clintons do and there is very little benefit for her to step down just to “save the party,” especially since a brokered convention would give her a shot at the nomination even if she was down by a fair amount of delegates but not enough to give Obama the victory. Furthermore, I think it is unfair of people to expect that she should step down. If I were her, I would take this to the end.

Over the last twenty years you could have made a career out of saying that the Clintons were finished. Counting them out now is a mistake. Having said that, my heart and mind are now both saying Obama has a better shot at actually getting this thing. Which of course annoys me, not because I don’t want him to win (I do) but because I promised myself I wouldn’t get invested in him just to see Hillary do what she does and win this one way or the other.

One other interesting thing to keep your eyes on: FL and MI. Hillary would love to just seat these delegates as is (which would put her in the lead). Obama would rather just forget about them entirely. I suspect that there is a real possibility that the DNC figures out a way to replay these elections with the hope that someone will be a clear winner and they can avoid the brokered convention and the appearance that SDs decided everything. While this might hurt Obama, it would be pretty lame to nominate a president without hearing from two very important battleground states.

I think Obama could still win the Presidency even if he got the nomination without winning NY, CA, FL, MI and NJ mainly because I think there are very few Hillary voters who wouldn’t easily support him in the General (the opposite, however is not true – many Obama supporters wouldn’t show up for Hillary). But it is surely a sign of some weakness if he can only win in red and purple states. He should welcome a replay of FL and MI and try to win there and win outright.

One final thought on the General – Obama currently appears to be the better candidate to take on McCain. 1) He will turn out Dem voters Hillary would not have; 2) He will NOT turn out Repub voters whereas a Hillary ticket is certain to mobilize the R base even with a moderate like McCain at the top; 3) Obama will get more independent voters than Hillary (though neither are likely to catch McCain here).

If I were Obama, I would spend the next 3 months running on exactly that message: I am the person who can win this election.

THE DETAILS

Down But Not Out
Ok, so, first off . . .I think I had a few things wrong in my last blog. For those of you who know me (which, of course, is all of you), you are assuredly aware how hard it is for me to admit being wrong . . .but here goes. In my last blog I said that Obama had to win CA to have any chance of staying in this thing. It turns out that exactly the opposite was true – It was Hillary who needed to win CA to stay competitive. She did, and she is, but at this moment in time I’d say the race is Advantage Obama (barely).

ANOTHER ERROR – The SuperDelegates would Cut for Clinton
Before I explain why I think it now Advantage Obama (barely)– I would like to point out another flaw in my prior reasoning. I had given Hillary the Advantage largely because it was clear that this thing wasn’t going to get decided by the popular vote but instead by the Super Delegates and I felt certain that Super Delegates would cut for her.

While I still believe (along with just about everyone else) that Super Delegates are obviously going to be a decisive factor (I mean, they do make up 40% of what you need to win the nomination, so how couldn’t they?) – I have now come to believe that these delegates may favor an Obama win over Clinton. Why? Three reasons

1) Her two-to-one lead in SDs was racked up when she was the “inevitable” candidate so it was easy for these political insiders to give her the nod. The Clintons also were able to pick the low hanging fruit from folks who owed them favors. She is no longer inevitable by any stretch of the imagination so it will be much harder to get more SDs.
2) Many of the SDs are Congressmen or Senators who care a great deal about increasing their majority in 2008. Barack is seen as a much better person at the top of the ticket for the state-by-state races. Therefore, all things being equal, the elected portion of the SDs probably would prefer to see Obama get the nod.
3) There is not a lot of love lost between the Clintons and the Dem establishment (DNC in particular). If she loses the popular vote, I suspect that the remaining SDs will jump on the Obama ticket and end the Clinton campaign.

My current assessment is that SDs are going to stay on the sidelines for a while to see how things go down in TX and OH and even later. In fact, I would be surprised (unless Barack really breaks out) if we see much more than half of the SDs pledge before June (currently 3/8 have committed). This means that the popular vote is going to be the thing to watch at least for the foreseeable future. For an updated list of SD pledges, see here:

http://demconwatch.blogspot.com/2008/01/superdelegate-list.html

THE ROAD TO COME: A state by state view (skip ahead to next section if you just want the conclusion)
It should be no surprise that Obama has swept every race in the last week. These were states that favored him demographically to begin with and his surging campaign didn’t hurt. At the same time, the Clinton folks had accepted losing all of this with the hope that they can win in TX and OH on March 4th. No news there- the NYT had it on their front page yesterday.

On the all important delegate race Obama is currently leading Hillary 1272 to 1231. His popular margin (delegates pledged through caucuses or primaries) is even higher. He is turning out incredible crowds and he seems to be breaking into some of her core demographic. Meanwhile the Hillary campaign is, at least on the surface, melting down.

Looking forward, the next two races also favor Obama – He should win in WI and Hawaii (total delegates at stake 94). Going into the March 4th, then, he should be up (roughly) 1330 to her 1260. But then it’s big state time.

OH and TX
These two states have about 340 delegates. Hillary is expected to win both (polls today had her up by 17 points in OH, though she was up by 23 prior to Super Tuesday. Harder to find current TX polls – if anyone sees some, let me know). She is slipping though and she could lose both states. if she doesn’t win both these states, she won’t drop out of the race, but it will be much harder for her to win and SDs will start moving to Barack. But I think she will win here and bring the Delegate Count within 50-100 delegates (though he will still have the lead). Both of them will still be 500 delegates or more away from the prize.

PA/NC and Indiana
The other big states come in late April and Early May. She is leading in PA (but could easily lose there) and he’s trouncing her in NC. Indiana should go for her but who knows. In total there are 350 delegates, which will likely split closely and wash out. This would still leave both of them still nearly 300 shy of the nomination.

OR, KY, MT, SD
Late May and June another 160 delegates are up and while polling is sketchy, I suspect these states will skew toward Obama, but not by too much. This would leave them both at least 200 delegates shy of clinching. There are some other small states in there I didn’t count, but in total those are about 120 delegates that will split toward Obama but not enough to be decisive.

Puerto Rico
An odd fact this: PR is the only “state” that is winner take all for the Dems. And they have 63 delegates to offer on June 7th. That’s 50% more than Hillary’s delegate “win” in CA. The oddest thing about PR is that the popular vote doesn’t even determine who gets the delegates – it is just supposed to instruct the party bosses there how they may want to vote. But either way, I still don’t see this being decisive, though it could be and that would be very weird indeed.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
Who knows. There are so many assumptions in the above paragraphs it’s pretty meaningless. But I do think the math suggests that momentum aside, this thing isn’t likely to be decided until the Convention, when many unpledged SDs (or pledged SDs who might switch) actually go through the roll call and vote. And that will be exciting. The last time the primaries ended and we didn’t know our candidate was Walter Mondale’s fight against Gary Hart (which was nothing like this – Mondale went in with nearly twice the delegates, just not enough to clinch).

FL and MI . . the remaining Wild Cards
I think the dynamics are setting up so that all sides might find it sensible to agree to re-play the MI and FL nominations. It strikes me that Hillary would be willing to take this as a substitute for not just seating the delegates "as is." Obama can't really refuse. The DNC will get what it wants, which is to try and settle this thing without super delegates seeming decisive and without the credentialing committee.

Obviously Obama would rather have MI and FL just suffer for their impudence in moving up their primaries, but I suspect he couldn't really refuse to allow them to hold a new election. And in some ways, he is much more likely to win there now then he would have been if they went on Feb 5th, especially with his huge fund-raising advantage. Having said that, one has to imagine that Hillary is still favored to win in both states given demographics (lower income, white, old).

If they replay FL and MI and either one of the wins in both states, the delegate count would almost certainly be decided that person’s favor. More likely, though, it will still be undecided but very close OR Obama wins one and she wins the other – both of which still get us to the convention undecided.

SO WHY DO I NOW THINK IT’S ADVANTAGE OBAMA?
There are essentially 6 scenarios from here and my assessment is that more of them lead to an Obama win than a Hillary win and those that lead to an Obama win are slightly more likely than those that lead to a Hillary win.

1) Obama wins a few of the upcoming big states and nothing happens with MI and FL. Super Delegates jump on his ship and she gracefully bows out. I’d say this is low probability Obama Win scenario.
2) Hillary wins all of the big states by big margins, stops him in his tracks, wins PR and gets it at the last minute. Low probability Hillary Win Scenario.
3) They split states as they have been splitting states, no one clinches, they don’t hold FL or MI again and they go into the Convention undecided. I think this scenario probably favors Obama because the SDs want him over her and they can give it to him at the convention and know that she is done for. Medium probability Obama win scenario.
4) They split states as they have been splitting states, no one clinches, they REPLAY FL and MI and she wins and gets pop vote clinch. Low probability Clinton Win scenario.
5) They split states as they have been splitting states, no one clinches, they REPLAY FL and MI and he wins and gets pop vote clinch. Low probability Obama Win scenario
6) They split states as they have been splitting states, no one clinches, they REPLAY FL and MI and NO ONE GETS pop vote clinch. It goes to Brokered Convention and SDs give it to Obama. Low probability Obama Win scenario

God I love making stuff up! I wish I could do this professionally. Oh, wait – I do. But not on anything as fun as this.

Seriously, who knows. This is fun and this will be close. By all objective measures Obama should take this in a very close call and likely at the Convention itself. But it’s definitely WAY TOO EARLY to write off Hillary. She is in this to win this and she knows what needs to be done. As a betting man, I’d say putting $500 on Hillary to win is still a good bet since there is no way he should be favored 73-25.

Cheers