Had a certain orange liberal blog posted gracious and well-thought posts such as this and this and this, instead of resorting to mean personal attacks against Clinton, then I might have stayed there. Alas they didn’t, and they showed what they apparently ultimately are.
Of course, the blogs hating Clinton isn’t anything new, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
When the Michigan Democratic Party first came out with it’s 69-59 proposal, I first thought it wasn’t that bad of idea. It seemed to somewhat equitably split up the delegates between Clinton and Obama and would be a valid solution.
However, while I think both Michigan and Florida delegations getting 1/2 votes was the right move, the more I thought about, and the more I looked into the 69/59 compromise, the less I came to see it as a good solution.
The first reason for this change of mind was probably the fact that Obama had built a large enough lead in the delegate count that, frankly, a 77-55 split, with 55 uncommitted delegates – almost all going to Obama – was virtually no different than the 69-59 split, and it wouldn’t provoke the Clinton campaign as much.
The second reason for this change was the fact that I found the reasoning behind giving 59 delegates to Obama rather dubious. First off, it assumed that all uncommitted delegates went for Obama, despite the fact that several other candidates – including Edwards – pulled his name as well. Are they saying that Edwards wouldn’t have won any delegates, or are they just assuming that all of Edward’s delegates would have gone to Obama (not that it isn’t a bad assumption, but you still shouldn’t assume it).
Also, where did they decide to give Obama an extra 4 delegates? Coincidentally enough, 59 is almost exactly between 55 and 64 – 55 being the original uncommitted count and 64 being the number of delegates Obama would have gotten if the delegation was split 50/50. It seems to me that the Michigan Democratic Party split the difference, then came up with a reason to peg the number there other than just saying they split the difference. The reasons they came up with included counting write-in votes for Obama – votes which weren’t supposed to count by Michigan law – as well as using polling, including exit polling which has long been shown to not necessarily be a reliable predictor of the margin, at least within about 5% or so.
So by using 4 pretty dubious standards, the DNC gave Obama all of the uncommitted votes, and then-some – even when most of the original 55 uncommitted delegates had already declared for Obama. So in the name of gaining 4 delegates which Obama didn’t even need, his supporters on the DNC rules committee took an action which provoked the Clinton campaign to the maximum possible extent short of not seating the delegation at all, and causing doubt that the DNC was somehow trying to throw the election in Obama’s favor.
Of course, those 4 delegates did little to help Obama as he would have gotten the delegates anyway, but on the other side, because of that fact, the provocation of Clinton and her supporters was completely unnecessary and will just make it that much harder for Clinton’s core supporters to fall in line behind Obama.
Looking over at Electoral-Vote, perhaps as warning to people that this election is anything but a given, I’m going to occasionally compare Obama’s current electoral vote status vs. McCain and compare it to Kerry’s status on the same date in 2004.
So here we go:
Obama 287, McCain 227, Ties 24
States Kerry was leading in and would eventually lose:
Florida
Iowa
Missouri
Nevada
New Mexico
West Virginia
For a total of 60 Electoral Votes
States Kerry was trailing in but eventually would win:
None
Which states Kerry lead but lost which Obama currently leads in:
Iowa
Missouri
New Mexico
For 23 Electoral Votes
Further states Obama leads in which Kerry lost
Colorado
Indiana (tied with McCain)
Ohio
Virginia (tied with McCain)
For 29 Electoral Votes (53 including tied states)
States Which Obama trails in which Kerry won:
Michigan
For 17 electoral votes
Number of “Strong” Electoral Votes (lead of over 10%)
Kerry: 151
Obama: 190
Number of “Strong” or “Weak” Electoral Votes (lead of over 5%)
Kerry: 216
Obama: 244
Number of “Strong” States for GOP
Bush: 139
McCain: 124
Number of “Strong” or “Weak” States for GOP
Bush: 181
McCain: 202
Thoughts
So, at this time in 2004, the base map was Kerry 216, Bush 181 for a lead of 35 Electoral Votes with effectively 141 in play. Bush would end up losing none of these base states while Kerry would go on to lose West Virginia and New Mexico, for a total of 10 Electoral Votes. Kerry would only go on to win a mere 1/3 of those battle ground electoral votes – and that’s not including New Mexico and West Virginia in that group.
2008 starts off with a base map of Obama 244, McCain 202 for a lead of 42 Electoral votes with effectively only 92 in play. That means that, even more so than in 2004, the nation seems split. Obama would need to win 28% of those Electoral Votes to win the presidency, which is at least the good news for him.
That bad news is that, out of those 92 in play, Both Kerry and Gore only won 24 of those – Connecticut and Michigan, which would put Obama two shy of the Presidency. On top of that, a further 20 Electoral votes which are currently in Obama’s base were lost by either Kerry or Gore or both.
Perhaps the silver lining to this is that Obama has 39 more “strong” electoral votes than Kerry did at this time, while McCain has 15 fewer “strong” electoral votes than Bush did.
In any case, both Obama and McCain are more vulnerable than Kerry and Bush, and in a stronger position than Kerry and Bush, depending on which metric you look at. Obama has more states with stronger support on his side than Kerry, but has fewer total states on this side than Kerry, as well as several states which haven’t necessarily gone Democratic recently. Also, if Obama were to go the same route as Kerry and picks up no more states than he currently has, his margin of error is very slim. McCain has fewer strong states than Bush, but more total states than Bush and is doing considerably better in Florida than Bush was at this time, but also holds a state that the GOP hasn’t won in much recently: Michigan, as well as being threatened in some states that Bush wasn’t threated in.
Since I quit a certain orange blog since their excessive kool-aid drinking for Obama and against Clinton became too much even for me (and I voted for Obama!), I needed a place to put my occasional political thoughts. As a result, I’ll see if I can jump start this blog once again. Here’s to hoping I can actually keep it up this time.
