April 28, 2008 - 7:51am
Could Clinton's Pennsylvania victory be wiped out by Montana?
By James W. PindellCategory: President, Pindell Report
Senator Hillary Clinton didn't even have a few hours to bask in the glory of her Pennsylvania victory before she was making the pitch. She needed money. Badly. Her campaign debt was already the subject of national news stories. In her victory speech that night Clinton asked people to give money that night. Luckily, her campaign claims they raised $10 million after the victory.
While there is no shortage of analysis about which candidate has how many delegates, right now it is the money game that matters most. Already in the elected delegate count it is nearly impossible for Clinton to be ahead of Barack Obama before the national convention.
If she has any shot at getting the nomination two things have to happen. First, she has to continue to win states that allow her to appear competitive and raise money for the next contest. Second, she needs superdelegates to go her way. Considering the second is contingent on the first, Clinton has to be focused on money. Money is the only way she can compete in later contests.
This gets to Montana. Montana's Democratic primary, alongside South Dakota, is held on June 3, the last primary day. Last week in Pennsylvania Clinton was able to gain nine delegates on Obama. For all of the breathless coverage and attention of Pennsylvania if Clinton doesn't have the money to compete in Montana those nine delegates could be wiped out.
Montana awards their 16 delegates baed on a complicated, but proportional system. To receive any delegates she would need at least 15 percent support. Unless she drops out she is nearly gauranteed that.
This is not to suggest that Clinton is taking the contest lightly. Before both Clinton and Obama attended a major Democratic Party fund-raiser there earlier in the month, Bill Clinton went there to lay down the ground work.
And besides delegates the stakes couldn't be higher because it is the last chance to grab momentum before the Denver convention.
When we look back on this year we could be looking at what
happened in Montana, not Pennsylvania.
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Syndicate
Let's see how you feel after the Press Club today, pip.
It's turning before your very eyes. You can look back on today and know that's when it happened.
Obama deserves the win
Obama is still in the lead, Hillary gained little with Pennsylvania with respect to pledged delegates
Trumped Up?
You want to talk about being trumped up? Clinton's whole campaign has been trumped up. She still continues to claim that she WON in Florida and Michigan, when all delegates agreed not to campaign in either, and Obama wasn't even on the ballot. She constantly references these votes as if both candidates fought hard for them, and she triumphed, when in reality this was not the case. Keep in mind she also claimed to land under sniper fire in Bosnia. Without trumping up her campaign, Hillary would be left appearing as she actually is, the loser. Obama won the majority of the country's votes, Hillary simply won some of the bigger states.
You've made quite the unexpected case for Obama
In the last two Presidential elections, Dems lost when they won the popular vote, suffered elections rife with voting irregularities that worked in Bush's favor while Diebold and other electronic voting machine companies remain firmly in the GOP camp.
Now we have the argument: "He (Obama) has successfully gamed the system to underrepresent peoples' voting power in places that don't support him, and to overrepresent voters' power in places that do."
If, Obama has that kind of mastery and control over the electoral system, perhaps he is just what we Dems need. LOL!
This is exactly the point.
This sums up precisely why Obama's virtually non-existent but trumped-up lead is so bogus. Montana in no way, shape or form resembles Pennsylvania's impact in terms of the national election, nor the Electoral College, nor the principle of one man, one vote. (How's that for different metrics?) He has successfully gamed the system to underrepresent peoples' voting power in places that don't support him, and to overrepresent voters' power in places that do. Rewarding him for this manipulation comes with the price of electability.