Some Thoughts on the Democratic Nomination

Lately, I have been reading a lot of posts from Clinton and Obama supporters about the election. Many are extremely… strident. Many also show scant resemblance to reality. First of all and forever, Hillary Clinton maybe many things, but she IS NOT a secret agent of the Republican Party.

Here are some other thoughts.

Clinton and Obama supporters are arguing about which states are more important to winning in November and what predictive value winning primaries in those state has to carrying those states in a general election. I would argue that winning a primary tells you next to nothing about what will happen in a general election. Just because Clinton loses a primary to Obama does not mean she is any less likely to carry that state in November. Obama won Wyoming, but short of a Reagan style landslide he will not carry it in the general election. If you want to base your primary vote on electability, look at the head to head polls, not primary results.

Neither Clinton nor Obama will be able to clinch the nomination with only pledged delegates. In that sense, the nomination will be decided by the “superdelegates.” But this is not necessarily an advantage for Hillary Clinton. While she may have started out as the candidate of the Democratic establishment that may no longer be the case. Unless something unexpected happens to injure the Obama campaign, he will bet he nominee. If for no other reason than that if the superdelegates give the nomination to Clinton (with Obama otherwise ahead), it will rip the Democratic Party apart and virtually assure McCain wins. The superdelagates can see this as well as we can.

Obama has charisma, energy, and excitement on his side. He has inspired many younger people to get active in politics and they will be extremely angry if they feel the election is “stolen” from their guy. I am not saying that if Hillary wins she will have stolen the election, just that it will be perceived that way be large numbers of people.

So given all this, let me wish Hillary Clinton a victory over Obama after a long bitter convention fight.