what do you want her to pay for, rage?  Hillary offered to pay for revotes in Florida and Michigan, she put out the cash, now you want money from TD?  The truth, however hard to bear, is that both of them need supers and both will have to make a case that they're both more prepared, support our Democratic values the most, and can win against McCain. Barack is starting to tank, he's even losing some who voted for him in earlier primaries. i think his position on SS and capital gains lost him those pugs and indies who had had a hard time deciding between him and McCain first time round.  He could pull it off, even after his humiliating defeat in PA, if he could muster up a good debate performance, but seems he's scared, is afraid he'll have to debate her in the kitchen?  

How ya' doing, rage?  Keeping to the issues are you?  

well, that's the REAL reason. i think we'll get more of the decorative ones from obama supporters in this diary. the dog ate his teleprompter, stuff like that.

The PA debate was the first one of the one on one debates that she iddn't get destroyed in and now all of the sudden she's awesome? Its a bit laughable.

Check the scoreboard. She "cleaned his clock" all the way to second place.

This whole diary ignores the reality of the situation, which is this: HRC has to win NC in the same way that everyone said Obama HAD to win Penn to prove his electability or whatever. The same way he HAS to win Indiana, or Kentucky, or whatever the goalpost du jour is.

The simple fact is this, and you can't get away from it not matter the mental gymnastics some people try to pull: Obama wasn't supposed to win this thing. He came from nowhere to compete with and outraise not only the Dem frontrunner, but the entire Dem machine she and her husband had built over the last 16 years. That's why he's the nominee, short of a misplaced lightning strike or something to that effect. The better we deal with it now, the better our chance to beat McCain.

Oh, and there is no metric under which this is a tie. Just so y'all know. Obama has more delegates, the popular vote, and more states won. That ain't a tie.

Wait is this snark?  You don't actually call that logic, right?

Are those really the rules you want to believe in?  Where 100,000 vote losses are spun into victories (Texas) and where 2 of the most important states in the union are disenfranchised?

It's not yes we can but no he won't?  Catchy. but he still looks like a coward to the regular joe who thinks if you can't talk to a girl you must be some kind of wuss?  

Not trying to pile on here, but..

The Obama campaign did risk their brand in PA.  The script that every superdelegate reads when they endorse Obama is that their reason for believing he is most qualified to be President is something like: "Hillary is too negative."

This has become a core underpinning for them.

Obama supporters here on MyDD are too committed at this point to care how negative he goes.  Some may even cheer him on.

But his initial appeal to many folks who don't follow this closely is the notion that he is not just another politician (or, as Oprah put it, he is THE ONE - lines like this are what inspire the sig that offends you).  As I see it that entire imagery has been trashed, almost entirely by Barack and his campaign, at this point.

So, if I were his adviser, I would tell him that he had better find his old material, because the new attitude of "no she won't", the personal attacks, and constant harping on "Washington" without actually talking about the "issues" that are supposedly so important - this combination is not going to work for him.

If his campaign drinks too much of their own Koolaid, and starts believing their victory is inevitable, I guarantee they will lose.  If he can find is former self, figure out what he did with all that hope, and start preeching it again, he can retain his status as frontrunner.

Argue with Krugman; he coined the phrase.

And spare me your feigned religious outrage.

in spite of gender bating, no one had to call anyone a sexist. On the issues most poorer Americans, all genders, would be for him, but she's a favorite daughter, and it's great to have a woman in the race, and she'd of received those votes without having to play victim.  In the end playing victim makes her look wussy.  There are victims, real ones, but she hasn't had that experience.  

Is this the same way that on the issues anyone who cares in the least about Iraq could never vote for a person either too stupid or too lazy to read the NIE?

again with the sexist language (wussy).

Interesting...

Obama seems to have thought so, never thought it would turn on him too, only she had all those negatives. But tides do turn, after all. He'd put it to rest if he could credibly acquit himself in a debate with no moderators and no time limits.  Or couldn't he?  you tell me, could he clean her clock?  

Not true.  He did better in most groups in PA than he did in OH.  A lot of this is regional though.  He'll do much worse in KY than he did in either PA or OH.

Capital gains and Social Security? What are you talking about? These are not being discussed to any extent.

Capital gains?

So you think that's a big issue for most Americans?

I wish, the media has controlled the narrative and they've been for Obama. they had him already elected and she's been asked when she's going to drop out starting right after she won Texas.  They're tying to make the narrative that she's the cause of his lowered support. The other one they're trying to sell (still) is that she thinks she's a queen and how dare she. the Hilary Hate has been the narrative.  It's getting a little better, but if anyone writes something newly critical of Barack, they have to add nasty stuff about her. If she wins it'll be because of the voters and because she's worked so hard, is so knowledgeable, and has such a great team in place that she's over the top clearly the better one. And amazing that it is, she had a real shot at that, with no little help from Barack.  She would have won much earlier if he hadn't run such a smart campaign against her and if he hadn't so much media help. but, I'm not complaining, she's doing great and she's set the bar very high and she has a great chance of being the winner.  

I think the reason for this is because what we are looking at is what Obama must do so that Clinton must drop out of the race, not what he must do to eventually win the nomination. If Clinton had lost both OH and TX, it would have been absolutely clear that it was impossible for her to win anywhere, and that her campaign was done. She won OH, and lost by the delegate count in TX, so she could argue there was still a reason to stay in the race. If she had lost PA, she would have had to admit that she was done, but she managed to eke out the magic double digits (if you squint at the numbers just right), and that she should continue.

These states are the states that Clinton must win to stay in the race, not the states that Obama must win to stay in the race. At this point, there aren't any states that Obama must win to stay in the race. He would need to lose everything else by wide margins to not have a reason to stay in the race (if he lost everything else by wide margins, he'd be in something closer to the position where Clinton is now, needing the SDs to not stampede to Clinton, but he'd still have a hope of winning if he could convince the SDs that this inexplicable collapse was just a blip and not a fundamental problem).

The reason it looks biased is because we are looking at what the candidate who is behind needs to do to stick around and have a chance of a come from behind win later on, not what she needs to do to actually start coming from behind, and certainly not what she needs to do to put her competition out of the race.

We certainly will, but I'm a little taken aback that, this far down the thread, no one has corrected the diarist's misapprehension that this race is tied.  It's far from tied.  Clinton would have to win approximately 70% of the remaining pledged delegates to tie Obama.  She needs about 56% of the remaining popular vote to tie him in that metric -- among primaries and caucuses that currently count.  (I recognize that some folks here like to count the popular votes from MI and FL, and often like to leave out the popular votes from various caucus states.  The fact is, we can all talk about the actual contest being conducted in the current rules or about a shadow contest that a small subset of people think is the only fair one.  Take it as a sour persimmon if you wish, but I have news for you: The superdelegates are not going to base their decision on a metric that includes a margin of 328K votes for Clinton versus 0 for Obama coming out of Michigan.)

Can Clinton make up the pledged delegates or popular vote deficit?  Theoretically, yes.  Realistically, almost certainly not.  Take PA as an example: Another poster called Obama's loss "humiliating."  An odd characterization, I think, given that he managed to cut Clinton's poll leads  roughly in half, but whatever.  The fact is that, for all that large victory, Clinton's actual gain in pledged delegates was modest.  What was it? 10 to 12?  If you're playing the percentages, what PA really did was raise from about 65% to 70% the percentage of the remaining pledged delegates she needs to win.  We're not talking about 10% victories; we're talking about 40% wins -- 70% to 30%.  And when Obama wins NC handily and wins or narrowly loses IN, that percentage will go steeply up again.  Remember that NC is one of the most populous states in the country.

There are of course other metrics the SDs care about.  Fundraising is one, and there's no way Clinton will overtake Obama in that metric.  Also, grassroots organizing and how well or poorly a campaign is conducted.  Again, it's virtually impossible to find someone who thinks the Clinton campaign has been run better than Obama's.

If you found yourself saying, "Amen, brother!" when the diarist called this race a tie, you need to face facts.  It's not even close to a tie, and this isn't like a baseball game where one team can score a dozen runs in the bottom of the ninth.

he's losing cross over pugs and indies.

If you look at Gallup, for instance, Obama has hovered in the same range for ages, although Clinton has recently regained most of the undecideds. Sure, you can pick a recent peak (Obama) and trough (Clinton) and call the last few days the beginning of a trend line that will end with Clinton at 100% and Obama at 0%, but only if you trust that no one will remember your claim in 4 days time, or only if you don't mind looking like a fool.

If you look at Rasmussen instead, you can't even find anything that you could use to make up a trend line.

Have some mojo.  I agree with all of that.  Both candidates are much better at campaigning than they were 6 months ago.  McCain on the other hand is an extremely weak campaigner.  I feel good about our chances in November even though the MSM is going to be bending over backwards to prop him up.

There is alot of truth to that, as the race started it was being handed to her on a silver platter. Now she has to really work for it. And if she can win legitimately I'll happily vote for her.

She won the people of Texas.

Florida and Michigan will not give her what she wants. The DNC will not stand for it. And you can repeat the songs to the contrary for the rest of eternity, it is simply not going to happen.

And even if it did, for argument's sake, he's still ahead.

Um, no.  It's not spinning.  The poster offered facts.  If the rules are changed to allow some or all of the MI and FL delegates to be counted, then this race may well become a tie.  Right now, it's not, and unless the rules are changed, it's hugely unrealistic to expect that it will end in a tie.

Purely arbitrary?  I suspect the voter is going by the rules established by the DNC--rules that were supported by Harold Ickes, among others.

But it's academic; this contest will be decided by delegates, not popular votes.  Even the Clinton campaign used to say so, back when they thought they could win a majority of delegates.  Now, all their talk is about the popular vote.

I've read many posts from Clinton supporters decrying the "disenfranchisement" of Florida voters.  Yet if we were to make the popular vote the metric that matters -- whether or not we count FL and MI -- we would greatly and unfairly diminish the impact of the many caucus states.  Minnesota, to take one example, is a large state with a lot of pull in the Democratic party, as we can tell by the total delegates apportioned it.  But if we count only the popular vote coming out of its caucuses, we greatly diminish the value we place on Minnesota Democrats.  How in the world is that fair?  Obama won a big victory in MN, but if we were to count the popular votes out of MI, where Clinton "won" a 328,000 to 0 margin, Obama's bigs wins in many caucuses states are completely overwhelmed.  That's not fair.  That's ridiculous.  It's a cherry-picked metric designed to diminish Clinton's deficits in many states (she has, after all, lost two-thirds of the contests) while giving her huge boosts out of the only two states Obama didn't contest.  And why didn't he contest them?  Because he pledged not to.  Clinton did, too.

Right.  The primary.  That's what I said.

Texas caucus voters :-)

She won the Texas primary.  No debate there.  She lost the caucus.  No debate there?  She lost the state of Texas, in that she got fewer delegates.  Agreed?  She got more votes in Texas.  I concede that.  For someone who argues how important language is in another diary, you seem awfully flippant with your language of "winning Texas."  You should say she won the primary or she got more votes.  Anything else is disingenuous.

Because the delegate count doesn't actually count, unless it's super-delegates we're talking about!

That's fine with me.  As long as you count uncommiteds for Obama.

And they do vote in the GE, but I suspect not this time.

True.  And even as an Obama supporter, I would like to get rid of caucuses.  I want it to be as easy as possible for people to vote.  I look forward to the day that we all vote on our computers, despite my fear about how easy it would be to steal votes.  If we're doing electronic voting machines, might as well be able to do it from my apartment, right?

I'm not saying disenfranchise them.  I just don't understand how their popular votes somehow should count as an electability argument when they don't vote in the general election.  That being said, supers are so far unconvinced, so it doesn't really matter.  Popular vote is an unofficial tally anyway, so we can all count it however we want.  If it sways the superdelegates, so be it.

Well to use a baseball analogy that some of you like so well.  No team wins the game until the end of the ninth inning and one of the teams have the highest score.  You can't stop a game in the 7th inning and pretend that your team  won it.  It's void because it hasn't come to completion.  See, all the people haven't voted yet including the Superdelegates, so it's not over and noone's won.

I never said we were winning.  The point of the diary is that either candidate has a chance to win.  The SDs will decide who's most electable against McCain.  IMO, the tide is turning.

Okay since I can't find exact poll he was talking about, I'll go with yours then.  So Obama must feel like this is a winning strategy since he is so willing to go with upping his negative attacks.  What ever happened to his different kind of politics.  He doesn't believe in negative attacks, the little angel.  That's what I heard.  Regardless of you view of it, negative attacks are not going to help him.

And people cared so much that they voted for Obama by 20%.  

And here's the numbers from Ohio

Which Candidate Attacked Unfairly?
24% - Only Clinton
8% - Only Obama
29% - Both
35% - Neither

"He is actually an okay guy, if he loses, he'll campaign for her."

I wish I could believe the same for Hillary Clinton. If she loses the nomination, her goal simply becomes 2012, and she'd rather have McCain as president if that's the only way to make it happen.

Guess what. It's not up to Obama what "his voters" do. They have minds of their own.  And a lot won't vote if the perception is that the nomination was stolen from him.

Even if Obama asks his supporters to vote for Clinton, that won't matter. A lot won't.  

Agreed.  I would +2 the comment, but lost my ratings priviliges in the great Obama purge of 2008 ... =)

so there's nothing lucky about it.

One candidate played the game by the rules and won.

The other continually whines about the rules because they mean she lost.

Its true, she can. She would need:

To push Obama's lead in NC down to under 5%, get a clear win in IN (say 10%), get blow out wins in WV and KY (say 80%+), win solidly in OR, and hold Montana and ND to small margins (say, under 5%), and score a huge win in PR. If she pulled off all that, then she would only need to convince the majority of the remaining SDs to support her (and actually, if she pulled off that string of electoral victories, gaining about 10 points in each state from where she polls currently, I wouldn't be surprised to see the majority of the remaining SDs swing to her). Then, to finish it off, she could have the seating committee endorse half votes for MI and FL to give her an extra boost at the convention.

I don't see any sign of even a single part of that happening, but it still conceivably could happen. After NC and IN go as they are currently expected to, it will be a lot harder to come up with a scenario where she wins. And the scenario I described doesn't seem likely. The ground situation in WV (for instance) that karnacki described on the front page, is not what Clinton needs in order to pull off a huge victory in WV. The "a win is a win" position that Clinton stated after she won in PA is completely inadequate to get her the win that matters on the convention floor. She needs blow out wins, which take ground games that cost money, money she doesn't have, and an organizational focus on ground games that her campaign hasn't shown so far.

anna shane has referred to Clinton's current team as being excellent, and maybe they are, but they have a lot of lost ground to make up for, since Clinton's team for most of the primary season was a disaster. If Clinton's team hadn't been so bad, she would be the nominee already, instead of having only the faintest glimmer of the slightest hope of ever being the nominee.

Also, if popular vote was the metric the candidates would have run a totally different campaign in only a few states.  But let them keep repeating the lie.  SD's love being condescended to.