I've seen this movie, and I know not to call Hillary Clinton's campaign dead until Roy Scheider blows up a tank of compressed air in its mouth.  Until then, it will keep coming back and devouring everything in its path.

Gee Noam, I missed you "pronouncing Hillary dead" on Tuesday night.  I seem to recall you wondering aloud whether "anything happened" and being exasperated that you hadn't noticed the end of Hillary's campaign.  

No, Hillary is not going to pick up 820,000 net votes in the remaining races  where about 3 million votes will be cast.  Plus no one gives a whatever about the vote in Puerto Rico because they don't vote in the general election.  It's barely more important than the vote in Canada.  Just imagine what the Clinton campaign would be saying if they had won the popular vote in the 50 states but lost it overall due to PR.

You had this much right.  She cannot win anything on his turf, or any important turf, so she has no opportunities left to make momentum or coalition arguments that might sway super-delegates.  She will come to the convention 140+ delegates behind.

It is over.

I don't see it either, Mr. Scheiber.  Hillary is not turning superdelegates, Obama is. Even if  she racks up big wins in West Virginia and Kentucky, she is going to lose Oregon.  Puerto Rico is hers. She could stagger forth to the convention, only there to languish behind in delegates. There is no mathematical way that she can catch up on the delegate count. Then she would have to persuade a highly dubious convention that she is the most electable candidate. This scenario just is not going to happen.

This will never end, we are in the groundhog day of Hillary Clinton. Everyday we are forced to wake up listening to her repeat the same thing over and over again.

If you have the stomach for it, go over to Taylormarsh and that den of nutjobs, they are going to scream that the nomination was stolen from her, in their minds Obama took his name off of Michigan, it was his choice and so he got no votes there and for him to claim he did was undemocratic. So it is possible with their ignoring caucus states and their creative numbers Hillary will "win" the popular vote and therefore the nomination. And Hillary will feed into this nonsense.

The Clintons are determined that if the Democrats don't pay sufficient respect to them by nominating her, they will make sure no other Democrat will be President. Expect the cycle to repeat in 12, and if they have not been confined to a mental hospital, in 16.

Thank you Noam, but we prefer to shoot blindly from the hip.  There's no fun in "after mature reflection."

"A lot of commenters" means roid, I guess, since libref agrees with you and I'm just here to make shark jokes.

Roid says, 'Plus no one gives a whatever about the vote in Puerto Rico because they don't vote in the general election.  It's barely more important than the vote in Canada.'

Try to explain that to the Puerto Rican mothers whose American citizen sons have died in Iraq.

Um, I think Noam completely misread the posts, if he read them all. I don't mind his criticizing you guys, especially ratnerstar, who deserves to be criticized for taking a great American icon like the shark and conflating it with the Clinton campaign. Newsflash ratty, Roy Scheider is dead, gone to that great monolith in the sky, so get with the program because the curtain has come down and they started the second act, and you are still out in the lobby smoking a bone with adaglas. Can you hear your cue? Well, exit stage left.

jeez Peter, it is Friday, you can come off your exalted position on Mount Olympus with your utterly false indignity on behalf of dead soldiers. You really think you are clever, especially since you know full well what roid meant. Hillary has been claiming since she wins the big states she can win the general, well Puerto Rico ain't a state, the citizens there have no vote in the national election (which I personally think is a travesty, and wish the constitution can be amended for citizens in PR, Virgin Islands, Guam, etc. can participate fully). But your posting, dude, that is just in bad taste. Don't use dead soldiers to win a picuyune political point.

"Plus no one gives a whatever about the vote in Puerto Rico because they don't vote in the general election.  It's barely more important than the vote in Canada."

Well, that would be the case, roid, if the Democrats didn't decide that Puerto Rico's votes mattered.  Well, as much as a field goal with ten seconds left with one team up by two touchdowns matters.

"Try to explain that to the Puerto Rican mothers whose American citizen sons have died in Iraq."

Non-sequitor and sentimentality aside, that's a pretty easy explaination.  "We honor your son's and your family's sacrifice to our nation.  On another note, you don't have a vote in the electoral college because if you add the number of Puerto Rican members of Congress together, it equals zero."  Of course, their vote will matter in the primary, just not in the GE.

Actually, peter, what you've said isn't a bad argument for giving DC residents the right to have representation in congress.

...and if Clinton goes on until Puerto Rico and happens to win it, can I take credit for calling it when she says that it demonstrates her ability to win Hispanics?  Because, you know, fifth-generation Puerto Ricans living on a Caribbean island are the same demographic as first-generation Mexican immigrants living in a desert of New Mexico.

It figures you'd be schilling for the pro-great white lobby, Blackton, but I'd like to see you make that speech to all the Puerto Rican mothers whose sons have died in shark attacks.  When will you learn that you're either with us or you're with the unstoppable killing machines that infest our coastal waters?!

bigfish, good point about Puerto Rico, it is far different than Mexican dominated places. Puerto Rico has a large black population, one that has been thoroughly integrated into society for generation, people have a lot more black ancestry than you would ever see in the Mexican community which is primarily spanish and native american. 26.4% as having African maternal mtDNA, Which means that most people will most likely have blood relatives with black ancestry. I think Obama has a genuine shot a winning there, in any event he can keep it close.

Blackton, I'm pretty sure if  you knew which members of my family have served in the armed forces and which of them gave their lives in that service you'd hesitate before accusing me of false indignity. But then again, maybe not.

The residents of Puerto Rico are citizens. The Democratic Party seats their delegation. It's on the schedule. Just check out the primary schedule at Realclear that also includes Obama wins in Guam and from Americans Abroad. Puerto Ricans serve bravely in the military at a higher rate than almost all American states. I was calling bullshit on a poster saying they were as unimportant as Canada. I can bet you Obama isn't going to make that argument.

I think it's crap that DC doesn't have congressional representation. So should PR, maybe some kind of compromise with one congressman.

I agree about DC and Guam and PR and all that.  And that a lot of Puerto Ricans serve and everything.  But all that is irrelevant.  Clinton isn't going to overtake Obama in votes or delegates.  Her whole strategy is convincing supers that she is more viable.  And PR is entirely irrelevant in that.  

And blackton always stands up for sharks, even the one that killed Natalee Holloway.

LOOK IT UP PEOPLE!

Uh, Noam

This is what you wrote Tuesday night:

"Still, I do think there was a bona fide momentum shift tonight--precisely because, as Josh says, "North Carolina was an Obama state in terms of demography and political culture ... [and] Indiana was a tossup." Given the Wright meltdown, the possibility of Obama's coalition collapsing--and North Carolina and Indiana not playing out according to form--seemed very real. That they proved resistant to Wright is a pretty important development."

Here's what I wrote back on Tuesday night:

"I realize that Scheiber did say that something happened, just not the thing that happened.  He reports it as though Obama manage to stall "momentum" for Hillary.  But she had no momentum.  She hasn't gained a thing since Super-Tuesday.  What Obama did is finish off not only the delegate race and the popular vote race but the opportunity for Hillary to produce momentum that she hasn't yet and so, in theory, change the perception of the super-delegates, blah, blah, blah.  As of tonight, he has gained net ground in every round of voting since the beginning in January and, also as of tonight, finished off her momentum spin -- she has not produced any, ever, and there are no longer enough unelected delegates with which to produce anything more than a sputter.

Accordingly, he just won.  He didn't merely prove that the Wright thing won't sink him, as Scheiber would have it.  He finished her off.  The zombie Hillary can keep running is her donors will continue to fund her, but it is meaningless from here on out.

I would say Scheiber sort of missed the story."

I don't think I failed to read your post or missed the point.  Unless you are talking about some other post of yours, I think you were reluctant, for some reason, simply to state that it was over.  It took the MSM, Russert, to announce that the empress was no longer wearing any clothes.  And then the stampede.

There is a strange bubble over at TNR in which many smart people seem to want to ruminate about ruminations without putting their heads up every once in a while actually to observe the landscape and think about what outcomes remain probable, unlikely, etc. and why.  

peter, as big mentioned, it was a non sequitor. I have more than my share of family members in the military, from a Commander Uncle to a PFC cousin. And I have no way of knowing if your indignity was false or true, if true I was wrong to say otherwise, but I am not wrong to point out that that indignity is wildly misplaced. I would never use the death of a soldier to make a political point, especially with regards to a political parties primary. I get tired of people taking offense at manufactured issues (like McCain with Obama's he has lost his bearings: a nautical term unrelated to age turned into a false age issue)

I have simply called you on your misplaced outrage, real or otherwise. And I said in the rest of the post I agree that there not having a vote is a travesty. You could have done far better if you stuck to that issue and I would have agreed with you, instead of using the idea of a dead soldier to beat roid with.

If you stuck to your point that you just made in the above post I would agree. So far be it from me to censure you but next time instead of the kick in the gut response, go with the reasoned reply.

For the record, I think Puerto Rico should be a state and its citizens should vote in Federal elections.  I didn't say, and obviously didn't intend, that no one cares about Puerto Rico.  We are discussing politics here.  Since everyone knows Obama will have a decisive lead in pledged delegates, the only issue is whether the results in Puerto Rico could sway the opinions of super-delegates.  As a matter of empirical fact, I think the answer is a decisive no.  While it is speculative as I am quite sure Obama will end up winning the popular vote, including Puerto Rico, the notion that Obama may win the popular vote sans Puerto Rico, lose it by including Puerto Rico, and then see the super-delegates decide to give the nomination to Hillary because of the Puerto Rican vote is preposterous.  In that sense, nobody cares about the outcome of Puerto Rico except insofar as it has some modest, and ultimately unimportant, impact on the delegates.

Peter, all that stuff about how Puerto Ricans serve in the military is quite irrelevant.  So do a lot of non-citizens,  That has nothing whatsoever to do with the election.  And, by the way, the members of Americans Abroad are citizens who do vote typically by absentee ballot.  I know having temporarily been a member from France.  You cannot contribute to Americans Abroad unless you are a citizen.

Save your outrage for something meaningful.

Blackton, I hear your points and I won't regurgitate mine. All I was trying to say was in response to a glib post about PR being like Canada is that they are real live Americans and to discount that fact, particularly in a time of conflict, is unfair. I wasn't arguing pro or con the war, it's been a terrible mistake. I think there's a difference between waving a bloody shirt and pointing out  'hey, they've got guys in the field, let's not denigrate their political status more than we already have.  

"particularly in a time of conflict" is the new Hitler. The first person who uses it, or its more pernicious cousin "in a time of war," loses the argument.

Anyway, wasn't blackton comparing PR to Canada? Canada also has soldiers in the field taking heavy casualties against our enemies. Why did Canada ever do to earn your disrespect of the brave men and women who fight and die on our behalf with a maple leaf on their shoulders?

(And, yes, I'm kidding around here. Even in a time of war, we're allowed to make fun of states, non-state commonwealths, and even friendly foreign allies. The larger point that PR shouldn't matter to Hillary's particular effort to prove her general-election viability is in fact apt: No matter how many of PR's finest young men serve in Iraq, PR will cast no votes in the Electoral College. Her ability to win PR now won't affect her November viability either way.)

Just a minor point here but DC residents pay federal income taxes and Puerto Ricans do not.  Of course, they all fight and die for Americans' freedom.

By my count, in a worst case Obama now needs at the very most 78 super-delegates out of the pool of 258 in order to clinch.  It could certainly be as few as 60.  It seems as though today or tomorrow he will pass Hillary in super-delegates.  I wonder if that might not produce a surge of supers moving into his column.  I certainly hope so.  I want him over the top before the Dem Rules committee meets on May 31 so that they know that they had better not screw anything up with a misstep on the MI/FL question.  I want to know that by May 31 they are taking their marching orders from the nominee and next president, Barack Obama.

DC residents also vote for president under the 25th? Amendment.

Rhub: thanks for your "in a time of war" comment, and for standing up for us Canadians, even if in jest.

My office looks on to the Canadian Parliament, where the flag is flying at half-mast.  A Canadian soldier has just died in Afghanistan.  We are there because of Article 5 of NATO: an attack on an ally is an attack on all.  And we are there because US forces, which initiated the war, had to be withdrawn and deployed elsewhere.  

I'm sorry Peter, but the juxtaposition of Canada and dead soldiers, and your taking umbrage at the PR point, with my view and what it represents, is fairly bitter ...

No one is denigrating PR.  But to wave a bloody shirt in defence of a political point is undifnified and precisely the kind of thing one would expect W, McCain and - well, Hillary - to pull.

If you want to make a point about PR, make it.  No need for the patriotic crap.

Any popular vote argument that includes Florida and Michigan is pure hogwash - the candidates did not campaign in either state, and neither Obama nor Edwards even appeared on the ballot in Michigan.  Talk about your basic Third World farce!  

Given how many states hold caucuses rather than primaries, even if you exclude Florida and Michigan, the popular vote is far inferior to simply counting delegates.  

At the end of the day, Hillary has to convince the superdelegates to support her nomination - my question is why haven't these people made their choice yet?  How is their silence good for the party?  If Hillary is going down, why wait till the middle of June to close this out?

Neil      

She will win by a huge margin in WV, but turnout will be depressed because of all the news this week about how the campaign is finished.  Then she will limp along to Kentucky and Oregon (with no money for ads), and win solidly in one (albeit with depressed turn out again) and be wiped out in the other.  And that will be it -- nobody will be spinning her Puerto Rico victory at that point, because the race will effectively be over.

damn you bone, sharks are people too. And might I add the racist anti-white subtexts you are bringing up, stop denigrating the great white! Come to think of it ratty, maybe I am wrong, maybe Hillary is a great white too!

Yeah, mentioning we shouldn't discount Puerto Rico's right to participate in the primary system by citing that, uh, they serve and die in the American military industrial complex is patriotic crap! Yes, this simple point means I want to invade Iran and Ontario. Bomb the Tim Hortons!  

My apologies for wandering into an open audition for egghead clown college. I am heartened to know it's a hilarity that knows no borders.

purcellneil,

I too am a little surprised that so many supers are still sitting on the fence.  I can think of two reasons, sort of suggested by what Pelosi had to say about the ongoing race:

1. They want Hillary not to feel that she was dissed so that she doesn't start a lot of trouble in the course of the campaign.  They may be giving her space to announce her withdrawal so that she feels less aggrieved than if she is booted.

2. They don't want to rub raw the feelings of Hillary supporters whose votes are needed in the general.

It appears as though Obama is going to keep "releasing" secretly committed supers to ensure that even with WV he is always further ahead than he was after the previous round of voting.  All in all, I still find it curious, but given the likely number of undisclosed Obama suitors, I have to figure that Obama is orchestrating it this way.  His people are simply superb.

Peter1943,

Puerto Rico has every right to participate in the primary system, but that doesn't meant that the super delegates care about the outcome in Puerto Rico.  They don't.  

peter, there is nothing wrong with admitting you jumped the shark (to further the active metaphor here) no need to get defensive. As rhub pointed out, your argument was not helped by saying roid was a worse form of Hitler (OK, you didn't say that, it was on the Simpsons). It wasn't the rightness or wrongness of what you said (as I wrote above, I agreed with your underlying point) it was reduto ad Iraqarium. (see, now I am just making up words to prove I am a graduate of egghead clown college). My advice is, just drop it, everyone knows your real underlying point and as far as I see no one disagrees (that Puerto Rico in fact does matter, roids glibness notwithstanding)

"Yeah, mentioning we shouldn't discount Puerto Rico's right to participate in the primary."

1. If Hillary had blown Obama out of the water on Super Tuesday, we would not be talking about anyone's "right to participate in the primary".  In fact, if the Democrats had Republic rules, Hillary would have been crowned a long time ago and more than twenty states' votes would have been rendered useless.  Less sanctimony please.

2. At issue in Roid's funny if somewhat glib comment was not "Puerto Rico's right to participate in the primary", but PR's relevance to the GE (Electoral College - and if there is one thing every Democrat should pay attention to is the math of the Electoral College.  Remember, if Gore had won Tennessee, Florida would not have mattered).  PR has no relevance to the GE, and so it would not have an impact on the superdelegates.

"citing that, uh, they serve and die in the American military industrial complex is patriotic crap"

It is not the fact of their service that is crap, but the citation of that fact in support of a political point.  Please have enough respect for yourself, the servicemen and women, and the rest of us here, to acknowledge that there is a distinction between the two.  You were making a political point about PR; the use of the dead soldier to that end is undignified.

"this simple point means I want to invade Iran and Ontario. Bomb the Tim Hortons."

Mrs. Clinton is already on the record, twice - and both times in interviews and not in the heat of the moment - as advocating the total obliteration of Iran if Iran attacks Israel.  "Totally obliterate" are her words, in respect of a country of 75 million and the most pro-Western population in a Muslim country.  "Totaly obliterate" are her words about a fellow Member of the UN.  "Totally obliterate" is her response to a difficult and complex issue affecting the security of an entire region.  If I were you, I would not so readily jest about "bombing Iran" - reminds people about the true colours of Mrs. Clinton.

"I am heartened to know it's a hilarity that knows no borders."

I trust your choice of the word, "hilarity" was studied.  Funny.  Ha ha.

I really think that people are underestimating the suport of Obama in Puerto Rico.  It seems to me that the CW is just lumping in Puerto Rico as part of Hilary's "Hispanic base".  But like African Americans, all "Hispanics" are not monolithic.  In fact "Hispanics" in America are from more diverse backgrounds than American Blacks due to the fact that they are an "immigrant" population, unlike "American" born African-Americans, like myself, who can only trace their lineage to slaves who by no means can be classified as "immigrant".  There are many different nationalities that can be called "hispanic".  A mexican born hispanic citizen has different ethnic background than a Cuban born citizen, or a true Spaniard.  I think it is a mistake to assume that Puerto Ricans will vote like Mexicans, or like Cubans, because they are all called "Hispanic".

I actually have a co-worker from Puerto Rico, and she and her family is an avid Obama supporter, and she tells me that there is a lot of support for Obama in PR.

In my view not only Puerto Rico, but West Virginia and Kentucky don't matter. This thing is all over but the shouting. In the GE, we may need to come back to who gets the shark vote.

If Puerto Ricans care about dead soldiers, they'll know who voted for the war and who spoke out against it. And I have no family members in the military.

How including two of the most important general election states constitutes "funky math" is beyond me.  If we lose these states in the fall -- and don't make up for them with our grand expanded map --  we're going to look back at this as the fatal mistake of the campaign.

There is an  irony here.  Obama could have ended this long ago by agreeing to a revote, which would have been the fairest solution to all parties -- We'd have clear results from these key states, the voters would get their say, Obama would appear the above-politics guy he pretends to be, and Clinton would be royally unscrewed.  (Just imagine if Obama's best states -- Illinois and North Carolina, say -- had been disqualified from contention.)

Most importantly, Obama would have had a clear victory.  Sure, Hillary would have won those states probably by similar margins to the original uncontested elections.   But, in the end,  Obama probably still would have won the nomination, even if he had just given her the delegates from the original vote.  But the results would be indisputable, because he would have crossed the finish line on his own, rather than being pushed over it by the superdelegates.   There wouldn't have been any fuzzy, funky math because, with all states counted, the math really would have been the math.  The number -- 2209? -- would be finite; whoever reached it, won. Over.  The only reason it's nebulous now is because both candidates need the superDs to win.  Being ahead in all "metrics" as the Obamakins like to say is persuasive, but not ultimately conclusive, because of the little asterisk that gives superDs the right to do whatever the hell they want  for whatever reason they want (which they are currently in the process of doing, and, since they like him better,  would do anyway, math be damned.)  With superDs out of the equation,  a win would be a win would be a win. Period.

Sure, the superdelegates still had the power to overturn the winner, but they would truly be overturning the winner rather than just blessing the guy who was ahead.

Of course, the ever-cautious  -- and ever fair to himself -- Obama wasn't about to take that chance.  In some ways, it really was risky.  If Clinton had Florida and Michigan firmly in her column, it would have changed the narrative of "can she win?" and "when will she drop out?" to, perhaps, "can HE win?"  Done early enough, this could have changed the outcome of future contests.  Done in June, then the race would truly be a near-tie.  A risk, sure, but, given Clinton's unforgiving February and the SDs preference for Obama, he still probably would have won.

But this is all moot.  We have a nominee, as Tim Russert, always an unbiased observer, said at such a zeitgeist-forming moment.

And as for the two biggest states that played absolutely no part in Obama's win -- except for their exclusion?  Well, to paraphrase that famous NY Daily News headline:  Obama to FL/MI:  Drop Dead!

IT SHOULD BE OVER for a reason that I've never seen posted on this blog!  Super delegates are not meant to override the will of the pledged delegates!

Backstory:

The other day I had to travel from Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison and then back to Chicago.  With all that time in the car I had no choice but to listen to the radio.  On one of the public radio stations in Milwaukee and Madison (from what I could tell there were at least 4 in the area, so I'm not sure which one) I heard a discussion of the super delegates.  Some old politico from Wisconsin or Illinois said that the pledged delegate/ super delegate model was created only to assure that elected officials and other party regulars were allowed to go to the National Convention!  That was a shock.  I didn't believe it.  After all, I'd been hearing the same old claptrap for months:  Super delegates were an extra-anti-democratic device (on top of delegates themselves) that would assure that the party put forward the best General Election candidate.   The commentator blew off the caller too.

Well, because of my travels, later I heard Eugene McCarthy on the radio.  He said the SAME THING!  Super delegates are just people who deserve to go to the Convention because of party loyalty; but they were all getting beaten at the State level and having to stay home.

Super delegates should be meaningless.   The great scam of this election and what should be supreme embarrassment of the Press is that Clinton's campaign has pulled the wool over everyones' eyes.

One more thing:  I checked with 3 informed Democrats, i.e., people who read newspapers, watch the news, listen to news on the radio.  None of them knew the real reason that the pledged/super delegate system was created.  All believed the Clinton propoganda regarding electability.  

What a farce.

Now that Obama leads in superdelegates, suddenly it's good to have superdels. How principled are Obama hacks like Scheiber!