Pennsylvania minus three weeks

Another week, another Pennsylvania countdown thread. I owe Andrew Bolt a link, so see here for a revealing view of the Gallup poll trend as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright affair fades from view.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,141 comments on “Pennsylvania minus three weeks”

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  1. Good point Ferny. Although another explanation for her unshakeable belief that she can win despite the inceasingly obvious undeniable fact that she can’t, could also be that she is psychotic. Or she smokes too much pot.

  3. Well Jen it’s getting to the point where everyone except the Clintons can see the writing on the wall. It seems like she just wont give up because she thinks it should be hers (and thought until this year that it would be hers).

  4. 101
    Jen, I’m told Bill likes her to smoke cigars, but that’s a story for the deviancy blog.

    To be serious, Hillary still thinks the SD’s will save her. She has already factored in losses in the PD count and the popular vote. So individual primary losses won’t stop her. She is calulating on the fact that neither can win without the SD’s and she still believes the Party faithful will carry her upon their shoulders to the nomination.

    Which is why Bill’s tantrum in front of a bunch of SD’s yesterday was so monumentally mental. He lost her a few more SD endorsements guaranteed.

    Someone pass him a cigar to play with.

  5. Ferny

    i actually think it’s all about the popular vote. Even the Clintons know that her only chance of getting those necessary SD’s is by winning the popular vote.

    if she wins Penn by 12-15, Indiana by 10 and NCar by 5-10 then she can still make the pop vote argument to the Supers.

    if one of those 3 things doesn’t happen(which is obvious to all but the Clintons) then she is toast…officially.

    who knows….even then she may go a nuclear option on Obama with who knows what. They really are a low pair.

  6. 105
    Harry, you may be right but it’s hard to believe that even Bill and Hill can’t see that the popular vote is realistically out of reach. They may think it’s still close enough to mount an argument re capacity to win big states, etc.

    But in the end all her cards really are in the SD basket….and they are slipping away…..one by one. It’s up to them to end the agony.

  8. To successfully manufacture the consent of the elctorate, it is necessary for a presidential candidate to be able to read an “idiot board” and speak coherently. McCain can do neither convincingly; under pressure he’s worse. Joey “The Rat” lieberman can’t be permanently on stand-behind ever ready to whisper into McAngry’s hearing-aid each time the bellicose old bastard screws up.
    No matter what damage is done to the Dems in their current internicene battles, when Obi gets the official nod he will make mince-meat of the decrepid warmonger, Angry McCuefluff.
    I do believe the Seps use the expression: “whup his butt”.
    One of Obi’s tasks from May to November will be to serially fillet The Imbecile Mk.2 in a manner that doesn’t arouse sympathy.
    In one-on-one live debate, Illinois Obi v Beltway Johnny Bomb-Bomb is a serious mis-match. This is one of the reasons that Obi has been a short priced favourite with the bookies since the field has narrowed from last year’s field.
    http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20080401_mccains_prompter_problem/

  9. Alan Kohler today:

    One big question remaining is whether the mortgage backed securities (MBSs) that were acquired at inflated prices by financiers during the US credit bubble of 2002-2007 can been be held and recapitalised or sold without a collapse of the financial system, or whether the US and European taxpayers will have to buy them.

    The Bear Stearns bail out was a “toe in the water” of the latter: the Fed bought $29 billion worth of that firm’s worst MBS assets, which allowed the successors of Mr Morgan to feel comfortable about buying the equity of the business.

    But the risks, as Mr Bernanke says, are to the downside, and might have more to do with other acronyms than MBSs: specifically CDSs – that is, the betting tickets called credit default swaps – of which there are about US$45 trillion in the system, six times the size of the mortgage market and more than twice the size of the New York Stock Exchange.

    There might be an appetite and capacity for more Government purchases of MBSs, but CDSs? Those babies are on their own.

    …so Chopper Ben’s got some nervous times ahead with his toe in the water, hoping there aren’t any crocodiles looming close by.

  10. Enemy Combatant
    Hillary conceded moments before the Michigan and Florida superdelegates are seated (i.e. somewhere between August 25 and August 28).

  12. Fair enough, js. Put an exact date and time on it, pledge your bottle of quality plonk, get acknowledgement fom co-ordinator, jv, and you’re in like Flynn.

    Bludgers, if Obi doesn’t get whacked before E-day, is anybody in S.E. Qld ( or anywhere really) interested in a get-together and some “live-blogging” in a Bris-Vegas pub or suchlike to view the results on the first Sep Tuesday of November, which will be Wednesday A.M. Oz time? Expressions of interest only at this stage to see if we’ve got critical mass. Went to something similar with some of the LP folk (not election related) about a year ago in The Valley and it was a lot of fun. William is in Perth which is tyrannically distant (maybe he could deduct his expenses by attending a “Psephology Conference” [nudge, wink], but who knows maybe we can lure that cheeky furry critter away from his Brissy abode in the daylight hours.
    Please note, this would be a social occasion, network marketers will be executed on the spot.

    We’re a weird mob but we Bludgers have definitely got something going on here, so fwiw, any possibles at this juncture?

  13. 111
    Diogenes

    Gotta say it Dio, I love Hitch’s moral indignation when it’s in full voice, and the way he punctures the mock respect and decorum that accrues to these old players. (He fully loathes Kissinger, and would loudly say so on any TV show that would let him).

    It’s one side of him I find immensely appealing: Take physic pomp…

  16. jv,
    Put me down for Hillary to concede on 24 April, 1400 hours (New York time which I assume is what we all mean by “US time”).
    Haven’t yet got around to perusing the Dyno “cellar” but there’ll be a half-decent red heading for the PB Wine Club (and thence to the winner) from me.

  19. There’s just something about her campaign now, the smell of death if you want to put it that way. Even the NYT is (intermittently) showing signs of ambivalence about her.

  20. Well Dyno…any win by less than double digits will be interpreted by many as a loss for Hillary.

    But I think she’ll keep going….and going….till the SDs kill her.

    Then they’ll make a movie about it – “Kill Hill”

  21. FG,
    I thought the same till Richardson. But not now – the SDs are not going to save her.
    I reckon there’ll be a good offer awaiting her (NY Governor, Ambassador to London, Head of World Bank, whatever) and that will be enough to get her out of the race.
    But if I’m wrong, it would hardly be the first time …

  24. I wonder if the party organisations will be able to overcome the usual American inertia about anything to do with the States and actually come up with a half-decent primary system by 2012?

  25. Dyno, as GeeGee said last night, no second place. Even the shamrock sista is trying to contextualise her support for Clinton into an Obama Boot Camp.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/opinion/02dowd.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

    A very funny piece from Maureen Dowd where she reckons that Hill is popping Barack’s cherry. Not sure how that fits with the other Clinton meme about Obama being an old-fashioned bare knuckle pollie from Chicago but there you go, Clintonaut logic has always puzzled me.

  26. Dowd is pretty cynical about everything. And always funny.
    The 2-3 minutes it takes to read her column is always time well spent.

  27. Another freaking lie or fantasy!! You decide.
    I’ve said it before “This woman is a dangerous fantasist who cannot distinguish reality from fantasy in her sick twisted mind!”

    “During a junior high school soccer game” on a cold day, Hillary claimed “a goalee told her ‘I wish people like you would freeze.’” Stunned, the future first lady asked how she could feel that way when she did not even know her. “I don’t have to know you,” the goalee shot back, “to know I hate you.”

    Hillary’s high school didn’t even have a girl’s soccer team!!

    Hillary’s Soccer Fantasy
    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,342889,00.html

  28. We’re a weird mob but we Bludgers have definitely got something going on here, so fwiw, any possibles at this juncture?

    Deal…but I think we should use a boat

    btw… I have a boat 😉

  31. Actually, I think the imaginary goalee (!) was right on the money.
    “I don’t have to know you,” the goalee shot back, “to know I hate you.”

  32. Diogenes @ 127 – Hillary seems to have lived someone else’s life until very recently. 😉

    I’ve come to the view that most American politicians are certifiably insane. But then so are a majority of those that vote for them. How else could Bush have been reelected!

  34. We’ll see about the boat, Classified. Possum’s in. So far we have 3 possibles for E-day in Brissy. What about ye Ferny G?

  36. #119, Dyno said:

    There’s just something about her campaign now, the smell of death if you want to put it that way.

    A measurable sign of this is the blog topic frequency and comment count of the respective candidates. Here is a quick comparison between midnight last night (East Coast) and now.

    Clinton: 7 topics 590 comments.
    Obama: 14 topics 6,678 comments.

    In terms of demonstrated enthusiasm, the Obama Campaign seems to be running ahead of the Clinton Campaign by more than an order of magnitude.

  37. “IS John McCain really the best candidate the Republicans can come up with?”
    Kina, ‘fraid so. The cupboard is bare. And Johnny Bomb-Bomb is a Beltway Boy to his jack-boot straps. One on one Obi will have him for breakfast.

    Dio, pretty soon she’ll be campaigning with her new bestest special friend. A sock-puppet she’s named Mr. 3 A.M. who’s going to handle all her late night calls.

    js at 136: That’s sigificant when you’re flogging a product, sorry, candidate. Is the NYT your source?

    Jimmy Carter goes to Nigeria. Releases big cat from bag.
    http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=107611&printer_friendly=1

  39. This will play well in Pennsylvania:

    “The campaign says they will release the documents sometime before April 15. Without them, many questions remain about how the Clintons made tens of millions of dollars — and whether they used arcane tax loopholes available to the super-rich, an expert says. A Clinton campaign spokesman says the couple has paid all U.S. taxes at ordinary income tax rates.

    An independent review by ABC News has found that since leaving the White House seven years ago, the senator and her former president husband have made well over $50 million, much of it from paid speeches made by Bill Clinton.”

    http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4581608&page=1

  40. Pelosi’s clarification:

    ‘Speaking at a press conference Thursday morning to preview the Democratic message ahead of the visit from Gen. David Petraeus, the House Speaker reiterated her belief that “it would do great harm to the Democratic Party if it was perceived that the superdelegates overturn the will of the people.”

    “That is consistent with a delegate voting his or her conscience,” Pelosi added.’

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/03/pelosi-sticks-to-her-guns_n_94902.html

  44. It’s well argued asanque but is based on an optimistic set of outcomes that would require a reversal of recent trends.

    I think your earlier ‘superdelgate maths’ article is more compelling.

  46. asanque – those county maps are great, and his appalacian map really interesting. How people make those sort of connections I’ll never know, but it seems to work.

    Where this scenario runs into problems in my mind is with its assumption of a big Pennsylvania win to basically carry the popular vote argument being made. The says:

    ‘As for the predicted results, I will go ahead and use the estimate from this excellent blog at MyDD. I think it is an excellent analysis. I happen to think that it is a little bit generous to Obama in its classifications. Consider that in the RCP average, he has been flatlined at around 36% for almost a month now. Indeed, he has never been above 43% of the vote here in any poll. Hillary’s numbers have bounced around significantly.’

    The assumption made is that Obama is not, or will not be campaigning here. As we have seen in the past few days, his aggressive campaigning, both in a retail sense and through a flooding of the ad market, has closed the polling gaps to under 5 points on average. The writer’s conclusion, that ‘Regardless, let’s assume 80% turnout, with a 16-point Hillary win, and let’s move on’ is far too optimistic, given that today Hillary’s people have begun killing expectations of a sizable win, putting out press basically claiming that a win’s a a win. Without a huge win here it’s all over (assuming that it isn’t already).

  47. Since Richardson, the SD count to Obama has been 8 to 0. What SD in their right mind would come out and endorse Billary before PA? None. Its only going to get worse for her over the next 3 weeks.

  48. Looks like Jimmy Carter is going to back Obama – so notch up another SD:

    http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/carter-supports-obama-or-so-it-seems/

    But wait there’s more….

    “On the face of it, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine’s statement this morning on CNBC that he reserves the right to defect if Clinton loses the popular vote sounds more inside baseball than headline news. But consider these factors: Corzine endorsed Clinton more than a year ago as part of Clinton’s initial sweep of superdelegates. (Yesterday was the anniversary of that announcement.) A defection by Corzine would mean the foundation is crumbling. Also, Clinton won the New Jersey primary by 11 points on Feb. 5. Jersey is in her backyard, and the fact that the governor would consider siding with the popular vote over the overwhelming opinion of his constituents won’t go overlooked by other superdelegates from states she won.” (from today’s Hillary Deathwatch)

  49. 145
    “Latest electoral-vote has Obama making some inroads, even though he is so much less electable than Hillary.”

    So much less electable – that would explain why he’s thumping her.

    It just wasn’t in the script was it.

  50. Ah Kevin, you’ve shown the hand! I was saving it to whump Finns with when he showed up. It would seem the last straw has slipped through the Clintonite grasp…

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