How Many Votes Will Hillary Get at the Convention?
August 18th, 2008 at 01:03am Mark Noonan
Amie Parnes and Ben Smith put a bright face on what may end up quite a catastrophe for Obama, Hillary and the Democratic Party:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez says she’s happy for the chance to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Democratic National Convention — and she predicts that as many as half of the Democrats in the House could join her.
Just how many former Clinton supporters will vote for the former first lady during the symbolic first ballot is anybody’s guess, but each of them will be called upon to do so — whether they want to or not.
On Friday, the Obama campaign confirmed that the floor vote in Denver, intended to assuage Clinton supporters still stewing over her narrow loss, will be conducted as a state-by-state roll call…
…For Obama’s camp, the roll call is a ritual that will defuse any potential tension with Clinton or her supporters without affecting the outcome or the theater of Obama’s dramatic nomination.
Said Sanchez: “I believe there are a lot of supporters for Hillary among the superdelegates, especially now that they’ve agreed to place her name in nomination. I think half the House Democrats would probably be Hillary supporters, especially women. … I felt she was the most experienced and the best candidate and I still feel that way.”…
…“It’s a bizarre strategy,” said one Democratic strategist of the roll call. “It could backfire and show that her influence is waning. Chances are, she’s not going to have as many delegates vote for her on the floor as she had in the primary.”…
…“My boss is totally conflicted about it — and pissed Hillary is putting us in this position,” said a congressional staffer for another New York House member. “We still haven’t made up our mind and I don’t know when we are going to.”
Another New York delegate, speaking on condition of anonymity, predicted that as much as 30 percent to 40 percent of the New York delegation would pick Clinton over Obama during the symbolic vote.
Obama’s decision to accept a roll call vote, which came after weeks of talks with the Clinton camp, doesn’t mean he’ll let the process get out of hand, observers say.
“The convention is about nominating Barack, so his people want to speed through the vote as fast as possible so it won’t take too much TV time,” said a Democratic delegate who plans to vote for Clinton. “They also want to avoid a scenario where she’s leading at any point.”(emphasis added)
I highlighted “symbolic” because I’d like to point out that its not symbolic at all - they are real votes being cast at a real convention. The last bit I highlighted shows the danger - the delegates can pretty much do what they want, especially the super delegates, and while the official word is that it’ll just run smoothly through the roll call, the fact of the matter is that no one knows for certain what will happen.
Don’t forget: Obama did not want this roll call. In fact, I’m extraordinarily surprised he allowed it and I can only explain it as a gigantic error on his part, or a subterranean current of pressure from super delegates growing increasingly doubtfull on Obama’s long term prospects. When you add together the disappointment a lot of Clintonites feel, Obama’s inability to generate any significant polling lead over McCain and Obama’s disasterous appearance at Saddleback, the ingredients are all there for the super delegates to come to the realisation that they’ve picked the wrong candidate. Also good to keep in mind that the Clintons never do anything other than actions they believe will advantage themselves - they didn’t set up this roll call in order to help Obama.
Entry Filed under: Campaign 2008, Democrats
9 Comments
1. TampaBayRayz-4-evah-don't-mess | August 18th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Mark:
With the caveats that while I can’t vote, I much prefer Obama to McCain, I really think you nailed this one. You’re in fine company. Only Krugman, Matt Taibbi and Sean Wilentz have been of your point of view on this subject.
I’m still trying to figure out what’s happened over the last 7 weeks. On the day Clinton “suspended” her campaign, the electoral map showed Obama in landslide territory with 400 in reach and an big favorite to make 340 electoral votes.
Last I checked the straight up polling which would tend to suppress McCain’s number had an Obama lead within the margin of error. The electoral map showed Obama with a very slender lead which could be overturned by ties. The cash and futures markets have gone down to -$1.50 Obama and 60p Obama respectively.
McCain has, quite simply, dominated the summer with a cursory effort at best. We probably agree on some of the reasons and disagree on others. Let’s discuss Clinton, first, however, because we agree on that.
Clinton did not withdraw nor did she cede her delegates to Obama. She suspended her campaign. I had assumed that she was the obvious choice for VP or, if Obama really did hate her that much as the media claimed, she would have gotten promised some other goody and an identifiable Clinton superdelegate would be chosen for the VP slot, such as Rendell or Strickland, who could sew up PA, OH, WV for him and put IN and KY in play.
I also assumed that Obama having gotten through the worst crises of his campaign over it’s last three months stronger than ever, would work with his economic and foreign policy teams to design a message or series of options in those areas which would play to his advantage in speaking ability, youth and mood of the electorate. I felt he had to come out with a somewhat small “c” conservative message of small tax cuts, large spending cuts especially if it meant ending the wars, and a plan of dollar support on the monetary side. Basically, a Ron Paul message modified for center consumption.
Instead, Obama stayed far away from his issues. Strickland was encouraged to quit. Rendell got a cursory look. Clinton didn’t even get that, despite a gracious exit and some pretty good campaiging on her and Bill’s part for Obama.
It was worse, still. The mood among hard-core Obama supporters was far less one of moving on than that of Clinton supports. It has seemed to me that the Obama campaign’s approach was to assume a win under all condidtions and to make these last 7 weeks be more about running still against Clinton than against McCain.
I understand that I have more leeway to criticize Obama than you do McCain but I’m sure you’ll admit that Obama understands economics better than McCain does and can express himself better on complex issues. If you disagree and think that McCain is perfect, you hurt your own argument because I believe that McCain would only hurt himself if he tried to argue economics with Obama. Yet, McCain connects way better with the American electorate at a gut level than Obama does.
Obama, I believe, made one crucial error which he has now compounded over and over again. He believed he could not lose so in addition to ignoring Clinton completely, he began to adopt quite a few of McCain’s positions, flip-flopping a THIRD OR FOURTH TIME. I think he was trying to peck away at McCain in Red States assuming the Blue and Purple state were locked away.
So, instead of doing his economic and foreign policy homework, he came out with a wishy-washy statement on choice which satisfied no one and annoyed everyone. He came out with a statement on Iraq which was both equivocal and somewhat imitative of McCain at the same time with the same result. In fact, he went to vague or McCain light on practically every issue including on domestic and in-shore drilling,which was a small enough issue with enough gray area that he should have supported anyway to begin with.
Rank and file Democrats got furious. Clinton supporters went nuts over this. So, to claw back some respect and to, perhaps, patch up some perceived foreign policy weakness, he did that world tour with the throngs of admirers.
All that did was prove something everyone of his electorate already knew, and give plenty of ammo to the minimum 40% of the electorate which was hard-core McCain for whom those speeches would be red-meat. Obama forgot about that part. He could not pretend to be Bill Clinton and HATE Bill Clinton at the same time without any of Clinton’s accomplishments and a Republican electorate which had been marinating in patriotism and had grown to view every foreign state with suspicion.
By this time, the polls have begun to swing for McCain. OK, I figured, now Obama was going to get serious on economics and foreign policy and take a few risks as an economic conservative and war opponent. Instead, with problems in Central Asia starting to boil, he ducked and gave McCain the issue to own. Worse still, he tried to gain back some red state love by giving an ANTI-AFFIRMATIVE ACTION speech while McCain had a meaty foreign policy issue to discuss in real time. Nevermind that I disagree with McCain’s hawkishness. He expressed his VIEWS, while Obama flip-flopped once again, further alienating his base, leaving independents and centrists scratching their chins.
Obama does not appear to be in any hurry to abandon this strategy: ignore the Clintons, ignore his party power structure, and try to win it on personality with a “me-too” approach to McCain’s issues!
His terrible Saddleback performance was the worst idea and worst result yet. Even Kerry had the good sense to avoid Bush there in 2004. Obama, who felt like his friendship with Warren and Robertson would help him, took the bait. No matter what the realities are, in 2008 no Democrat can out-Jesus or out-War any Republican. No Democrat is credible in that arena. Yet, that is exactly the arena Obama has chosen to fight in with McCain.
I know that Obama is a very bright man. He has to know that his sources of funding are not 20,000,000 college students. His sources of funding are Wall Street, Hollywood, Big Labor, the Bar, the insurance and drug lobbies, the coal lobby, and the Business Roundtable. By and large, those groups are libertarian. They like low taxes, a good economy, and are not interested in social policy and certainly not in a Democrat adopting a weak version of Republican social policy. They’ll tolerate a little of it if they WIN. That’s it.
Re-enter Clinton. Obama can spin this any way he likes: some grand magnanimous gesture, some obedience to protocol, whatever. The truth is that once he shut Clinton out, she told him she was going to exercise her right to take ONE VOTE.
If Obama were ahead of McCain nationally by 9 and looking at 350 EVs, Clinton wouldn’t be bothering. Obama has merely a few days to right the ship. He has made things worse by his collection of convention speakers. He’s got very few of either Clinton’s superdelegates scheduled and very few of his OWN superdelegates who lean left no matter how popular with the party they are. You more or less HAVE to give Wexler a prime spot if you want any shot at Florida. Instead, he’s got the blandest Blue Dogs he could find and is likely to pick Biden for VP which is no different really than picking Lieberman.
The late Obama-deciding super-delegates could very well mutiny in this and give Clinton a first vote win or make it interesting, anyway.
That would probably ensure a McCain win and perhaps destroy the actual Democratic Party, but given how useless the party has been over the last 7 years, I’m wondering if that’s not such a bad thing having once been one myself.
I’ve noticed a lot of Obama’s African-American supporters getting pretty irritated and taking second looks at Bob Barr as a Ron Paul proxy.
Should Obama boot this one really badly and McCain win with 320+, I think that a Green/Libertarian fusion party which paid a lot of heed to economic conservatives and social, foreign policy and judicial liberals could take a tremendous bite out of the Democratic party, leaving the “me-too” Blue Dogs and disgruntled Obama supporters left to preside over an irrelevant Democratic Party.
Obama certainly wasn’t nominated to campaign the way he has been. I like him but I had hoped for something stronger.
Glad it’s not my problem.
2. Richard of Oregon | August 18th, 2008 at 11:03 am
What is the upside of this for Obama? Perhaps he’ll learn that appeasement is not always the best strategy.
3. TampaBayRayz-4-evah-don't-mess | August 18th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Richard of Oregon | August 18th, 2008 at 11:03 am
What is the upside of this for Obama? Perhaps he’ll learn that appeasement is not always the best strategy
There is no “learning” for Obama. This was his shot. He’s president or he’ll finish out his term and quit the Senate. He can’t survive in their hated by both parties with no power base outside Oprah Winfrey and while her show is foolish, she’s no fool. She doesn’t waste time or money on losers.
How can he raise money from the Bar Association having strongly advocated the death penalty and incarceration of juveiles with adults? How can he raise money from Hollywood having been Rick Warren’s tea-boy? How can he raise money from Wall Street, having said the word “Jesus” 1000x more than the phrase “monetary policy”?
Ron Paul is still playing the music Democrats and Independents like hearing. I’m not a Democrat any more and haven’t lived in the US for a long time, but I really hate the Democratic orthodoxy sometimes. Depending on how the next few weeks play out, if I were Howard Dean I’d trade Obama to the Republicans for Paul, Jeff Flake and Tom Campbell.
Obama, I think, is better suited to the Republican Party and these libertarians are better suited to the Democratic party.
4. Ryan | August 18th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Obama is a socialist. THat right there shows he has an inherant olack of understanding of economics. At a very basic level.
5. TampaBayRayz-4-evah-don't-mess | August 18th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
4. Ryan | August 18th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Obama is a socialist. THat right there shows he has an inherant olack of understanding of economics. At a very basic level.
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I believe that Obama is NOT SUFFICIENTLY VERSED IN CAPITALISM. I don’t think he’s a “Socialist” in the formal sense of the word. Many capitalist countries in the West have a more generous social or public sector than the US does, but I don’t know if there’s a “socialist” state anywhere in the way, say, Marx or Lenin defined it.
I’d say that Obama was about as far from a socialist as you can find among big-league Democrats. Clinton and Edwards had more generous health-care plans. Both had far more general VA benefit increases.
I have no real evidence to expect that Obama would do much more than continue Bush’s budgets and overall priorities really. He’d toss out one $1000 tax “rebate/loan” thing. That’ s about the only thing slightly favoring the poor he could do. Even with a Democratic Congress, the votes just aren’t there to roll back Bush’s tax cuts. Or to make any serious spending cuts.
I don’t see any will on his or McCain’s part to do anything to address the country’s economic problems
Again, Obama has basically spent the whole summer telling working people to take a hike.
I guess I can’t blame you for thinking he’s a socialist because at the same time as he’s been telling working people to take a hike, he’s been using wild rhetoric about “corporations” being to blame for all America’s ills. It’s rank hypocrisy and trust me as a fiscal small “c” conservative and monetarist but social liberal I am not alone in seeing through the rhetoric.
Everybody across the spectrum of any sense knows that a strong middle-class and a vibrant corporate sector BELOW the Fortune 500 to include the smaller companies and entrepreneurs are the backbone of a country’s economy.
One would think that idea would be a normal part of his rhetoric but it’s not. And for the life of me, I don’t know why. It’s a message that pretty much cuts across all racial, ethnic and cultural boundaries.
Obama’s stubbornness in ducking or lack of interest in discussing serious economic policy choices doesn’t particularly reflect well on McCain, in my mind. McCain has said nothing either to suggest that he wouldn’t pursue an even looser fiscal policy and encourage an even looser monetary policy by the Fed than that which has prevailed under Bush.
I don’t live in the States so I have no vote. If I did, I probably would have voted for Ron Paul knowing what I know now assuming Paul had still been in the race in whichever state I was residing.
6. Ryan | August 18th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
OBama is a socialist. If you look at his policies, he is quite blatantly so right down the line, from increasing by large amounts regulations and government interference in business, to highly graduated income taxes, to income redistribution projects, to NAtionalized healthcare - please, tell me even the one area where he does not want to move things in a socialist direction? THere isn’t.
Obama, however much you might wish to believe otherwise, is a socialist. He doesn’t even try to hide it.
ANd claiming he is “Less SOcialist’ than other democrats does not make him not a socialist.
Obama is a SOcialist, and has an appaling lack of understanding of not only economic issues, but of just about any issue relevant to the presidency you can name.
7. TampaBayRayz-4-evah-don't-mess | August 18th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Ryan: Obama does not want to NATIONALIZE health care. He didn’t even want to change anything from the way it is now until Clinton and Edwards make an idiot out of him at one of the debates. Even they don’t want to nationalize health.
I think you’d like socialized medicine, myself. In my country, my mom fell and broke her wrist and got a NY Hospital-trained orthopedic surgeon and 4 days in a Johns Hopkins hospital affiliate in a private room, brand new, with a 48″ plasma TV — all for the princely sum of $20. Without the national health, it only would have been $4000.
That’s beside the point. You like the states the way it is and you have to vote your beliefs as we all do. I will say that there are NO national politicians in the US who are “socialists” in the Marxist-Leninist sense. They all believe in capitalism with differing views of how much or how little to regulate certain industries.
I don’t appreciate Obama’s neglect of the economy any more than you do. I think this is an American thing of calling the Democratic Party “socialist” as kind of an insult. Not to say that they follow exactly the teaching of Marx and Lenin. This is where my disagreement with you come from.
I really don’t see Obama offering to move the country in any direction at all. He has no economic plan. So, I assume he agrees with either Bush, McCain or both. He flip-flopped to now AGREE with McCain on Iraq. He has spoken of getting rid of some of Bush’s tax cuts. I don’t agree. I have no problem with them. But Obama hasn’t even been so specific as to say whether he’d go back to the extra bracket of 39.6% federal which they had during
Clinton. Nor has he said he’d lower the family trust and estate threshold. So, I don’t see anything terribly bizarre there.
He hasn’t said anything about going to a more steeply graduated system of marginal taxes. I happen to think that Americans aren’t under-taxed; they’re over-taxed, and I prefer a flat-tax and VAT system myself.
Obama is against ALL “redistribution projects.” I believe such things are unconstitutional anyway. Obama, like all politicians, wants to add more regulations to the businesses and industrial trade associations which didn’t support him and reduce regulation on those which did.
Look at the stiff regulations the Bush adminsitration put on the commercial banking industry. He has mandated that banks act as unrecompensed policemen for the federal government, which has cost billions in profits. I would like Obama to be for getting rid of this regulations. Sadly, he is not. He is exactly where Bush is on commercial bank regulation.
If Obama were indeed a “socialist,” I wouldn’t like it at all, but at least I would know he had a coherent set of views. I see neither coherence nor VIEWS in particular. If “socialist” just means “Democrat” that’s an American argument I’m not part of and it’s taking an extremely loose definition of “socialism” going by the dictionary.
But none of this had to do with my original point in which I agreed with Mark and felt that Obama’ s support was indeed weakening to the point that HRC could win a floor vote at the convention.
8. Danish Artist | August 18th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
I hear popcorn futures are a good investment for this convention.
9. Ernest barker | August 19th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Looks to me like the floor vote puts the democrat nominee for president up for grabs again. Especially after Obama’s blustering defeat at Saddleback. I can see former president Clinton on the phone working the super delegates now. Saying something like: “Did you hear that idiot Obama? Couple that with God Damn America, how can you super delegates vote for him? That is why we have super delegates to protect us from the peoples choice when they screw up!” Yep, never count out a Clinton