Running Primaries Thread

zeke --
Find that bucket of cold water again.
It's nice spin you've got there, but, if she wins Texas and Ohio huge, the momentum turns (again), and probably for good. (I don't think she will -- and, if she does, "huge" will get redefined so that it doesn't mean what it means now.) I think she's about 100 delegates behind at the most right now. That margin is not going to change that much, one way or the other, over the next two Tuesdays.

 

I don't disagree with any of that. But I'm saying, she's going to have a tough time running up any kind of margin in Texas.

2/3 of the delegates are up for grabs in the primary via congressional district. Either candidate needs something obscene like 63-64 percent in that district to tip the delegate math. In other words, in a four-delegate district, a 62-38 win for either candidate is a 2-2 delegate tie.

The other third will be allocated via a caucus. Obama's people know how to bring those home.

Obama is flooding Texas with organizers and has a huge list of supporters there already.

Either way the popular vote ends up going, I'll guess Texas is close to a delegate split.

That's putting a lot of eggs in the Ohio basket for the HRC folks, and, frankly, I don't know if there are enough delegates in play there to even get it done. I think Obama's lead in pledged delegates right now is something like 62.

Nothing is over. My only point was, if the roles were reversed, the coverage of this strategy (admittedly, not chosen quite so quickly, a la Rudy) would be a lot more dismissive. If I were running her camp, I'd be thinking seriously about trying to make a stand in Wisconsin. Just me.

All I'm trying to say.

 

So you're agreeing with the article I posted on the last page

 

It's often been said that Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh on one end, Philly on the other, and Alabama in the middle.

 

Well it is good to know that all of the racist rednecks live in the south......

I've said it before, I'll say it again -- there are parts of the Northeast that are far more racist than any place in the south could ever hope to be and while it is fashionable to assume Rendell was talking about the center of Pennsylvania, I'd suggest he visit places like Fishtown and Port Richmond and any number of the neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia and he'll find some of the most closed-minded, racists on the planet.

 

Don't we have to define "some" before we can even begin the conversation? And I like how he threw "probably" in there so he's not making a definitive statement.

Using the broadest definition, absolutely. Just as there are "some" people in NYC, D.C., Miami and LA who are "probably not ready to vote for an African-American."

 

My dad was making the same argument against Obama, saying that people wouldn't elect a black man president. I told thim that was true -- 20 years ago. I don't think, with all due respect to our older folks, that they realize the shifts that have gone on in this country in the last 20 years. So, no I don't think it'll be a major, nomination-shifting problem.

 

According to the Constitution, you are correct. I mean, ex post facto cuts both ways, right?

You can't make something someone did that was legal at the time illegal later and then prosecute them, and you can't make something someone did that was illegal at the time legal later and then prevent prosecution.

At least, that was my understanding. I'm not a lawyer or a Constitutional scholar.

 

Would those people be voting Democrat otherwise? Or the older, southern whites Rendel is talking about?

 

What these analyses (is that a word?) about HRC grabbing Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania fail to take into account is Obama's momentum. Momentum alone is going to gain him votes in both states and make it that much harder for HRC, no matter how the demographics break down.

And her campaign's claims that she's better against McCain is pure hogwash.