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In the new issue of Time, Karen Tumulty's list of the Five Mistakes Hillary Made includes a damning anecdote from a Clinton campaign strategy session last year:
As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn
confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her
over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates.
It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows,
Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their
delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to
award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider
Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and
let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much
vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?"
So maybe that's why Clinton says she'd be winning if the Democrats used Republican rules. Her chief strategist thought they did!
Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson tells me he's "denying on behalf of Penn" that it ever happened.
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Now that Barack Obama has all but secured the Democratic nomination, his campaign appears to be softening a bit when it comes to Michigan and Florida.
Today, the Michigan Democratic Party settled on its final proposal for divvying up the state’s delegates: Clinton gets 69 delegates, Obama gets 59. (That’s about halfway between a 50-50 split and the state’s Jan. 15 votes, which would have given Clinton 73 and Obama—or, rather, “Uncommitted”—55.) The Obama camp’s reaction? “It is clear results in January won’t be used to allocate delegates, and we agree with that decision,” said spokesman Bill Burton. Not quite a full endorsement of the plan, but it's a far cry from what they could say, given that Obama wasn’t on the ballot there.
Florida, meanwhile, has not finalized a plan to seat the delegates—the “plan” is still to seat them all. But they know that’s not realistic. More likely, the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which meets on May 31, will approve a compromise deal. (Or at least to settle on a plan to submit to the Credentials Committee in June.) Last week, one member of the committee, California Rep. Garry Shay, predicted that Florida will be seated based on the January results, with each delegate getting half a vote. That seems likely, if only because the DNC gets to punish Florida for violating the rules without alienating Florida Democrats for all time.
In this case, too, it looks like the Obama camp is coming around. “I think they’ve loosened up a lot,” said a Democratic insider familiar with the seating process. “They went from suggesting 50-50 to now saying we can work something out. It doesn’t matter to them anymore. They’re looking toward the general election, and that’s far more important.”
In other words, they know they’ve already won. Obama reportedly plans to declare victory on May 20, when he’s all but guaranteed to secure a majority of pledged delegates. He currently leads by 166 pledged delegates, so losing 10 of them to Clinton in Michigan and 40 in Florida (a proportional delegate split would be 111-74) wouldn’t make him vulnerable. By May 20, it won’t matter whether or not Florida and Michigan are seated—Hillary isn’t catching up.
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Yesterday, Trailhead invited readers to imagine what would have to happen for Barack Obama to lose the Democratic nomination. And boy did you respond. You, dear readers, are a motley assortment of creative and disturbed geniuses.
Scenarios tended to fall into a few categories: embarrassing revelations, major screw-ups, Clinton ex machinas, and unfortunate occurrences. Others involved Obama turning out to be someone—or something—other than himself, such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (“note that you never see the Rev. & Obama in the same place!”), “the smoke monster from Lost,” Dennis Kucinich in disguise, and John McCain’s illegitimate black child. Several other scenarios involved zombie attacks and alien invasions. Yet another described a heinous Aristocrats-like stage performance by the Obama family.
We can’t possibly share them all, but here’s a sampling organized by category. Winners are at the bottom.
Embarrassing revelations:
Obama is actually 34 years old, too young to be president.—Marc Sylvestre
Video surfaces of Obama at that Rev. Wright “God Damn America” sermon that he claims he didn't attend, especially if the video shows him applauding that statement.—Brian Weber
Obama photographed raising pinky while sipping latte!—Benjamin Clark
Customs agents find one of Natalee Holloway's “Carlos ’n Charlie's Aruba” T-shirts in his luggage.—Tom Grayman
Obama’s opening his mail while being interviewed by Bill O’Reilly. He drops a Hallmark card. O’Reilly helpfully picks it up for him and reads the inscription: “Barack: Thanks for the visa! See you soon! Your BFF, Nadhmi.”—Boyd Reed
Pictures of an 8-year-old Obama in his local neighborhood bomb-making class with William Ayers and other Weather Undergrounders.—Jen Geiger
The Drudge Report uncovers shocking photographic evidence that Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden were actually college roommates. … They depict Bin Laden doing keg stands while Obama stands to the side holding his turban and counting in Arabic.—Rudy Santelises
He shot Alexander Hamilton. And there's video.—Andrew Rice
Reader Mark Schondorf submits a whole list of shocking twists, including: “Hillary summons a Kraken”; “Obama was a ghost THE WHOLE TIME!!!”; “Hillary goes back in time to kill Obama’s mother”; “Hillary wins because, as it turns out, she's Keyser Söze”; and “Unbelievably, the aliens are afraid of water.”
Major screw-ups:
Obama confesses that the blackout “ending” of the series finale of The Sopranos was his idea.—Scott Schiefelbein
The only way that Obama could possibly lose the nomination is if video of him punching a baby surfaced.—Nick Wilhelmy
There is only one unforgivable crime in America … dogfighting.—Tom Bianchi
The reason he doesn't believe the government created AIDS is because he did.—Shane Mehling
Clinton ex machina:
The best scenario for Hillary is to run as John McCain’s running mate. And for McCain to die.—Dea Henrich [So Obama would still be the nominee, but we had to include.—Ed.]
The Clinton campaign digs up records in the National Archives proving that Hawaii was not a state at the time of Obama's birth, thereby making him ineligible.—Pamela Belyn
Bill Clinton starts campaigning on his behalf before June 3.—Eric Samuels
Hillary sheds two tears.—Jon Cowan
Unfortunate occurrences:
Obama will need to be photographed windsurfing … and then get eaten by a shark.—Stephen Defibaugh
Obama, trying to fit in with the Oregon locals, goes on a white-water rafting tour arranged by Lanny Davis Excursions.—Boyd Reed
Hillary invites Barack to her home in Chappaqua to talk about ending the race. The visit eerily resembles the movie Misery.—Boyd Reed
The winners: The best submissions managed to make a concise joke, summarize all of Obama’s vulnerabilities at once, or vividly capture the mind-bending paucity of Clinton’s odds of survival. Here are three that did the job:
3rd place: Hillary appeals to the Supreme Court, which, based upon a 2000 ruling, decides that the candidate with fewer votes wins the election.—John Kirkbride
2nd place: Hillary Clinton must parachute into Pakistan while under heavy sniper fire, infiltrate al-Qaida using a fake beard, putty nose, and duct tape, and capture Osama Bin Laden, whilst singing the “Star Spangled Banner” with one hand over her heart and an American flag lapel pin prominently shown on her outfit. She must film all of this in HD and create a montage scored to Lee Greenwood's “God Bless the U.S.A.” Meanwhile, Barack Obama must publicly convert to Islam and change his name to Osama Hafez al-Mohammed Hussein Ayatollah Obama, while burning an American flag in the Crystal Cathedral as he replaces the crucifix with a do-it-yourself Piss Christ, while performing an abortion on the exhumed body of Terri Schiavo. He should also be naked. It should then rain frogs. That ought to do it.—Jason in San Diego
1st place: One of the lesser-known consequences of quantum physics is an event called “quantum tunneling.” Here's how it happens: At a campaign stop in West Virginia, completely out of the blue, the aggregate wave functions of all the particles in Barack Obama's body end up instantaneously transporting him through the entire Earth and leaving him treading water somewhere in the Indian Ocean, or leaving his various particles scattered inside the mantle. The odds of this occurring are such that any macroscopic object tunneling through any barrier is highly unlikely in the lifespan of the universe, but it could occur!—Michael Blessington
Thank you for the submissions. You heard them here first!
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More Clinton supporters get antsy, Obama unveils a bold new strategy
to ignore Clinton, and her money woes could be deeper than expected.
All of which sinks Clinton's chances another 0.2 points to 2.3 percent.
California
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, an early and dogged supporter of Hillary
Clinton, voiced doubts that Clinton "can get the delegates that she
needs" to the Hill yesterday. Feinstein also cited "negative dividends" from the race dragging on much longer. Combined with yesterday's McGovern defection, dissent in the ranks seems to be spreading. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.