Political Bloggin'

I have a lot of respect for Paul Krugman. He may be caustic and shrill, but he also tends to be right. He is not a huge Obama fan and seems to prefer Hillary (his preferred candidate was Edwards). Likewise, John Edwards just can't seem to bring himself to endorse Obama and is actually considering expending his political image on endorsing Hillary.

But here's the thing. Hillary can't win. I keep hearing people say that she has a 20% chance of winning the nomination. No she doesn't. She can make it close, she can make it painful and she can drag out any sense of finality. But unless Obama completely implodes she cannot win enough pledged delegates to secure the nomination unless she wins all the remaining contests by something like 30% over Obama.

Now I understand that her strategy isn't to win on pledged delegates. It's to keep it close enough to give the Superdelegates political cover to vote for her even if Obama wins the "popular" delegate total. Again, in order for that to work, she would have to take something like 70% of the remaining unpledged superdelegates. And how is that going to happen exactly? She doesn't have that kind of lead now. And looking at it from the Superdelegates point of view, what are the incentives to vote for her? If they vote for her they will be percieved as "old-guard" and bucking the will of the people. If she loses the general they will be blamed for it. And from an even more selfish point of view most of the super-delegates need the 50-state program to continue. Clinton is an unabshed 50%+1. That means that if Obama gets the nod, Howard Dean will either continue as chair or someone similar will replace him and money and resources will continue to flow to them. If Hillary is nominated then Dean is out and money and resources will flow to states that she feels *she* needs. So were's the incentive?

And the campaign spin that she will win the popular vote is based on pretty cynical spinning of the situation in Florida & Michigan. The video below (with the bald guy and the woman being John Edwards and Obama) sums up Hillary's argument perfectly.



Now, this may work on low-information voters who don't know the details of how MI and FL's primaries went down. But that isn't the target audience here. It's the superdelegates. And they do.

All of which brings me too, what's the endgame? There is a logic behind issues candidates staying in a race. Guys like Gravel, Hukabee, Ron Paul... they have no chance of winning. Rather, their goal is to accumulate delegates that they hope they can trade to a candidate in exchange for promises of a position in the administration or policy promises.

But Hillary is a viable candidate. And she has every right to continue her campaign. But again, what's the endgame for her. Yes she can still win states, but Obama doesn't need her. All she does at this point is make enemies. With the exception of the 3am ad and the implications that McCain is more qualified than Obama, I don't buy the argument that he hurts him, even by pounding on race. The reality is McCain will do that anyway so he might as well take the hit now. Were is does hurt Obama is that it prevents him from taking advantage of his money to attack McCain (who is almost broke until after the convention due to campaign finance laws) and more importantly it prevent Team Democrat from going after McCain.

The best I can come up with is that Hillary has either convinced herself she can win and is therefore delusional or she is angling for 2012 and has decided her best alternative to being the nominee is for McCain to win in '08.