posted May 14, 2008 12:33 PM            

I'm not saying yay or nay on any candidate but if you believe half of what you read then there's no way Ms. Clinton can catch up.
Is that right?

second question,
can the superdelegates change who they pledge their support to?
(like in the 11th hour?)

last question,
with as close as the race is now, isn't it possible that in the end it will be the superdelegates who decide who the candidate will be?

maybe I should have started this post with
"please don't laugh"

posted May 14, 2008 12:38 PM            

quote:

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second question,
can the superdelegates change who they pledge their support to?
(like in the 11th hour?)

---

lala, I was wondering the exact same thing.

juni

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What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted May 14, 2008 12:50 PM              

Can Hillary Clinton still win?

Yes, Hillary Clinton can still win the nomination - but it will be tough

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

After a slew of primary and caucus victories for Barack Obama - who has been out-organising Hillary Clinton's machine, and getting months of media adulation - he has been suddenly stopped short of coronation.

Mrs Clinton won in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island, and once again, the race is on.

Even more importantly, it seems for the first time in a long time that her message of experience and getting things done may outweigh his call for change.

Yet despite Mrs Clinton's burst of momentum, and Obama's success, it is impossible for either one to secure the 2,025 delegates that would give them the Democratic nomination with pledged delegates alone.

Both need the support of many of the 796 super-delegates - the elected officials and party dignitaries who have special voting rights in the nominating process - to get the nomination.

So, despite months of glee over big turnouts and voter enthusiasm, the hand-wringing has begun anew in the Democratic Party over how to get to a nominee.

Obama's upper hand

There are two mathematical realities that matter to both campaigns.

* First, winning delegates does not necessarily mean winning the popular vote. Mrs Clinton's victories in a pile of big states including New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, Ohio and Massachusetts have kept her within striking distance of taking the popular vote from Obama

* Second, no matter how well Mrs Clinton does in the remaining state contests, come June - at the end of the primary and caucus season - Mr Obama will have more pledged delegates than she will

Mr Obama also has a clear upper hand with super-delegates so long as he has the majority of pledged delegates and the majority of the popular vote.

Harrison Hickman, a prominent Democratic pollster and advisor to John Edwards, has a theory for the reason behind the reluctance among super-delegates to veer away from the candidate with the pledged delegate lead. He calls it "Gore Guilt".

He says that Democratic voters felt so bruised by the 2000 election - in which former Vice-President Al Gore went all the way to the Supreme Court to fight for lost Florida votes that could have made him president - that they are reluctant to allow the nomination to be decided by a cabal of elected officials and party dignitaries voting in accordance with their own personal beliefs.

Yet it is precisely this argument that Mrs Clinton will have in her corner if she can win the popular vote.

If Mr Obama is forced to argue that he has more delegates while Mrs Clinton has more votes, his position is dramatically weakened, especially given the history of the very party that was forced to put up with the Bush administration for eight years, despite Mr Gore winning more votes in 2000.

Recent polling confirms this. A 6 March Rasmussen poll shows that 57% of Americans think the candidate with the most votes should win the Democratic nomination. Only 26% of Americans think the candidate with the most delegates ought to win.

No room for error

Along those lines, Mrs Clinton's path to the nomination depends on accomplishing three things.

* First, Mrs Clinton must win the popular vote so that she can present her majority as a reason for super-delegates to get behind her

* Second, Mrs Clinton must also lessen the gap between her number of pledged delegates and Mr Obama's. Mr Obama already has one more caucus victory this week: Wyoming, which he won by a large margin on Saturday. He is also favoured in the upcoming contests in Mississippi and North Carolina. Mrs Clinton must win decisively in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Puerto Rico. Florida and Michigan, two states which have been disqualified from the process for breaking with party rules, also hang in the balance

* Finally, Mrs Clinton must prove resoundingly that she is the more electable of the two candidates in a general election and would be a better president. She must combat Mr Obama's claim to the mantle of change and at the same time emphasise her credentials to prove that she is best able to beat John McCain

Super-delegates do not have to vote until the end of August, at the Democratic Convention in Denver.

Six months is plenty of time to build an unbeatable argument for super-delegate support - but there is little room for error and almost no room for losses.

posted May 14, 2008 02:08 PM            

I bear in mind that those at Politico are also political pundits and take most of what they say with a grain of salt. It's the nature of pundits to hedge their bets and also wish for a close political race which extends their coverage of candidates.

They paint a dim picture for Hillary winning the nomination...but hold open the possibility.

It's all going to come down to the Super Delegate vote and either way that goes, the democrat party is going to get hurt in the general election...my opinion.

No matter who the democrat candidate turns out to be, the supporters..voters of both have expressed strong opinions they will vote for McCain in the general election if their candidate isn't the democrat nominee. That's a disaster in the making.

On the other hand, John McCain seems to be doing all he can do to make sure the base of the Republican party..the conservatives won't vote for him in November. After talking the talk that he's gotten the message America sent him and especially conservatives over the illegal alien issue, he's once again talking about an amnesty plan..though that's not what he calls it. It's "Comprehensive Immigration Reform". The way McCain and Bush...among others would deal with the illegal immigration problem is to make it go away. With a stroke of the pen, those who were formerly illegal aliens would suddenly become legal immigrants. This has fired up again in just in the few days.

Another issue is a recent McCain speech where he talked about man made global warming. An issue virtually every conservative believes is a total hoax and there's McCain giving it not only credence but promising to pledge America to solving it. That means trillions of US dollars being thrown at a non existent problem along with a blizzard of new federal regulations. That doesn't square with the McCain persona of a small government guy or a tight fisted fiscal conservative.

Even more disturbing is McCain cozzying up to La Raza, the extremist group which has the avowed purpose of wresting the Southwestern United States, including California away from the United States and returning it to Mexico.

I don't know who is advising McCain but if this continues, he's likely to get more liberal votes than conservative and he can't win on that basis even if the democrat candidate blows their own campaign out of the water.

posted May 14, 2008 03:51 PM            

Politics is a never ending dilemma.

posted May 14, 2008 05:04 PM            

I can't disclose it because I am using my real nick. We live in an unsecured online world , so have to protect my privacy. Computers is my bread and butter, so I am aware of security breaches happening all over the world.

posted May 14, 2008 10:48 PM              

quote:

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Even more disturbing is McCain cozzying up to La Raza, the extremist group which has the avowed purpose of wresting the Southwestern United States, including California away from the United States and returning it to Mexico.

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I wasn't aware of this group. Are these Americans who want this?

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The truth is ... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else. ~ Countee Cullen

We are weaving character every day, and the way to weave the best character is to be kind and to be useful. Think right, act right; it is what we think and do that makes us who we are. ~ Elbert Hubbard

posted May 14, 2008 11:32 PM            

Many of the demonstrations over the immigration bill were organized by La Raza and their demonstrators carried Mexican flags, raised Mexican flags at US post offices and had the slogan...Europeans go home.

"Thus La Raza supports continued mass Mexican immigration to the United States, and hopes to achieve, by the sheer weight of numbers, the re-partition of the American Southwest as a new state called Aztlan -- to be controlled by its alleged rightful owners, the people and government of Mexico."
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=153

The groups leader is an American citizen...I think, but many of the members are illegal aliens.

posted May 14, 2008 11:34 PM              

I'll read more on the link, and get back to this later.

Thanks Jwhop.

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The truth is ... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else. ~ Countee Cullen

We are weaving character every day, and the way to weave the best character is to be kind and to be useful. Think right, act right; it is what we think and do that makes us who we are. ~ Elbert Hubbard