Clinton camp, the day after
Posted: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 12:08 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro
Many of the arguments the Clinton campaign has been making on how their candidate should win the nomination have fallen away this morning.
Popular votes and Michigan-Florida have been the stuff of talking points and conference calls from the Clinton campaign for months. But on today’s day-after “State of the Race” call, those arguments as selling points to superdelegates have lost steam.
The popular vote
After Pennsylvania, the new talking point from the New York senator was that she was then winning the popular vote, that more voters had voted for her than anyone in the history of Democratic primaries. The only way that was true was if Florida and Michigan counted, and in Michigan, Obama was given zero votes, a hard sell to superdelegates to begin with.
That is no longer the case. Obama erased her Pennsylvania popular vote gains with his more than 230,000-vote victory in North Carolina -- even with those zero votes.
Michigan and Florida
The hope for the Clinton camp was that by seating the delegates from Michigan and Florida, it could substantially cut into Obama’s pledged delegate lead and overtake him in the popular vote. Neither looks possible now -- even if the campaign get the delegates seated based on the voting from those primaries. The campaign hopes it could get the pledged lead under 100 or close to it by seating those delegates the way it would want, spokesman Phil Singer said.
The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee on May 31 “will consider two challenges,” Singer said. “We believe RBC will seat those delegates.”
But Singer acknowledged that neither of the two challenges the RBC will take up calls for delegates from Michigan and Florida to be seated in the way the campaign would most like -- with a net of 58 delegates. (Currently, by the NBC count, Obama leads by 166 pledged delegates. So even with the 58 delegates, Clinton would not get under 100. Potentially with blowouts in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico, it’s possible.)
What’s left?
“I dispute that it’s a nullification strategy,” said Clinton strategist Geoff Garin, “because that suggests some delegates have more votes than others. …The rules of the party anticipate there will be people who’ve watched the process from beginning to end and make a good faith judgment on what’s best on behalf of the party and country.”
The only hope is to convince undeclared superdelegates that Hillary Clinton has the winning coalition for November, that she is more electable than Barack Obama and is polling better than him against John McCain in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Hillary Clinton will make her case this afternoon on Capitol Hill in a meeting with undeclared elected superdelegates. It might be her last chance.
NOTE: The spin on the results last night… the campaign says it was down 8 points in Indiana 10 days ago. Aides called her win there a “significant accomplishment,” considering how Obama has done in other states neighboring Illinois. “It was a good victory under challenging circumstances,” Garin said. …The campaign added that Obama had called Indiana a “tiebreaker.” … They congratulated Obama on his win in North Carolina, but gave this caveat… “North Carolina does also represent progress for us,” Garin said, citing that they had done better with white voters last night than they had seen in internal polls earlier. …
Going forward, spokesman Howard Wolfson billed West Virginia as a “critically important key swing state in November” and a “critical test.” He added that Clinton predicted she would win West Virginia in the fall if she’s the nominee. …
The argument left to superdelegates: Clinton would be a better candidate against McCain; Obama can’t win blue-collar voters; he hasn’t proven he can win swing states (though they don’t mention Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Virginia and Colorado). …
As far as money drying up, the campaign sees Clinton’s $11 million in loans to the campaign as her “commitment” to remaining competitive. There were also no proclamations of how much money had been raised after last night’s Indiana win, like the claimed $3.5 million in 24 hours after Pennsylvania en route to $10 million, which the campaign says it did raise.
QUOTABLE: “What are the rules of this? … There are no rules.” -- Geoff Garin, Clinton strategist.
(The context of this was Garin saying, “I expect that when we get to June 3rd, we’ll have a very close result, raising the question of how close is close. It’s a little hard to tell with Michigan and Florida.” He added that party leaders and elected officials do not have to “follow the pledged delegates. What are the rules of this?” He asked, do they have to vote their district, their state? “There are no rules. It’s about what’s in the best interest of the party.”
