Is Obama About to Blow It?
Like the Dude dealing with Walter as they make the hand-off of his dirty undies, I'm deeply worried Obama is fucking this up. Yes, he has the momentum, the newspapers, the money, the endorsements, the press, and the pundits working in his favor. But there's one thing he doesn't have working in his favor: the numbers. And if he doesn't radically change his message in the next 48 hours to start screaming "delegate count!!" he could be in for trouble.
Here's why. Though Obama has been surging in all the polls, Hillary still has small but distinct leads in seven of the nine super-super-Tuesday states: California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, and Tennessee. Together, they account for more than 1,250 of the almost 1700 delegates up for grabs. (Real Clear Politics has great polling data on this -- though their delegate counts are off. This DNC blog and this Wikipedia page do the best job of analyzing the delegate mess.)
I've spent the last hour running some spreadsheet models for 2/5 (because, alas, I have no dates with Hillary supporters this weekend...and probably never will again after confessing this is what I do on Saturday nights, but I digress....), and, using the latest polling for the Super Tuesday states, it looks like Hillary will win between 12-16 states to Obama's 6-10, giving her about 875 delegates to his 800 -- and about 750,000 more votes cast nationally. (Delegates are awarded proportionally, so a candidate can lose a state but still draw significant numbers of delegates. I used the latest polling to award delegates for each state.)
So if you're Hillary, and you win twice as many states as Obama, 100 more delegates, and almost a million more votes -- but you face an insurgent candidate with all the momentum (who does exponentially better the more a state sees him, as the Washington Post discovered today and I noticed eight weeks ago) -- what do you do? I submit you do what Senator George Aiken told LBJ to do in Vietnam: declare victory and get out.
If these trends hold, Hillary would be crazy not to stand up and claim a national mandate on Tuesday. Tell us the country has spoken. Humbly accept the nomination. Hug Chelsea. Then put Terry McAuliffe and the other spinners on TV to announce that prolonging the nomination battle only benefits the Republicans -- if not Al Queda.
Don't think Hillary hasn't thought of this. She's got a superior press operation that thinks they can roll the press -- and a press that's been telling us for a month Super Tuesday will decide the whole megillah. 2/5 has an inexorable momentum. If she succeeds in this, the national numbers will push to 60-40 in the week following Tuesday, and the rest of the race will be mop-up duty.
What should Obama do? (Assuming he doesn't pull off the triple-bank shot and win Super Tuesday. I actually think he might -- and ignore those big Hillary poll leads in CA. This state is a total toss-up...but I digress again.) Climb the tallest media riser he can find and start screaming about delegates at the top of his lungs. He needs to frame this as a long-term war of attrition -- with all the voting to date equaling nothing more than a split decision.
And he needs to show people the numbers to make this work. Omitting super-delegates for a minute, if these polling trends hold (and if I've converted them to delegates properly), Hillary would have only about a 925-850 delegate lead -- with 2,025 needed for the nomination. That's nothing. On 2/5, no Obama aide should be allowed to speak to a reporter, go on TV, or appear in public without a little portable white-board listing these numbers. Better yet, convert them to percentages needed to win the nomination: Hillary has a "45% to 42% lead in delegates needed for the nomination." "It'll take another two months to sort this out." "Time to move on to the next states." Poof. A blow-out turns into a nail-biter.
The problem is that Obama needs to start framing the message as a long-term delegate fight right now. If he doesn't, the Clinton press operation will control the 2/5 frame, declare victory, and hope enough reporters bite.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen any Obama messaging along these lines. Nada. As I look at the Sunday wires, I see a few national reporters starting to speculate that 2/5 might not resolve everything -- and for all I know, some Obama press aides pushed that line. But if so, they're not pushing hard enough. And it's important to remember that, in the final days before an election, no one is thinking clearly and no one is thinking more than 12 hours out. Right now, on the Obama campaign, the comm shop is exhausted, the campaign manager is putting out fires , and Axelrod is looking at a giant map of media buys. No one is worrying about the 2/5 message. But unless someone starts, there'll be nothing to worry about on 2/6.
Here's why. Though Obama has been surging in all the polls, Hillary still has small but distinct leads in seven of the nine super-super-Tuesday states: California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, and Tennessee. Together, they account for more than 1,250 of the almost 1700 delegates up for grabs. (Real Clear Politics has great polling data on this -- though their delegate counts are off. This DNC blog and this Wikipedia page do the best job of analyzing the delegate mess.)
I've spent the last hour running some spreadsheet models for 2/5 (because, alas, I have no dates with Hillary supporters this weekend...and probably never will again after confessing this is what I do on Saturday nights, but I digress....), and, using the latest polling for the Super Tuesday states, it looks like Hillary will win between 12-16 states to Obama's 6-10, giving her about 875 delegates to his 800 -- and about 750,000 more votes cast nationally. (Delegates are awarded proportionally, so a candidate can lose a state but still draw significant numbers of delegates. I used the latest polling to award delegates for each state.)
So if you're Hillary, and you win twice as many states as Obama, 100 more delegates, and almost a million more votes -- but you face an insurgent candidate with all the momentum (who does exponentially better the more a state sees him, as the Washington Post discovered today and I noticed eight weeks ago) -- what do you do? I submit you do what Senator George Aiken told LBJ to do in Vietnam: declare victory and get out.
If these trends hold, Hillary would be crazy not to stand up and claim a national mandate on Tuesday. Tell us the country has spoken. Humbly accept the nomination. Hug Chelsea. Then put Terry McAuliffe and the other spinners on TV to announce that prolonging the nomination battle only benefits the Republicans -- if not Al Queda.
Don't think Hillary hasn't thought of this. She's got a superior press operation that thinks they can roll the press -- and a press that's been telling us for a month Super Tuesday will decide the whole megillah. 2/5 has an inexorable momentum. If she succeeds in this, the national numbers will push to 60-40 in the week following Tuesday, and the rest of the race will be mop-up duty.
What should Obama do? (Assuming he doesn't pull off the triple-bank shot and win Super Tuesday. I actually think he might -- and ignore those big Hillary poll leads in CA. This state is a total toss-up...but I digress again.) Climb the tallest media riser he can find and start screaming about delegates at the top of his lungs. He needs to frame this as a long-term war of attrition -- with all the voting to date equaling nothing more than a split decision.
And he needs to show people the numbers to make this work. Omitting super-delegates for a minute, if these polling trends hold (and if I've converted them to delegates properly), Hillary would have only about a 925-850 delegate lead -- with 2,025 needed for the nomination. That's nothing. On 2/5, no Obama aide should be allowed to speak to a reporter, go on TV, or appear in public without a little portable white-board listing these numbers. Better yet, convert them to percentages needed to win the nomination: Hillary has a "45% to 42% lead in delegates needed for the nomination." "It'll take another two months to sort this out." "Time to move on to the next states." Poof. A blow-out turns into a nail-biter.
The problem is that Obama needs to start framing the message as a long-term delegate fight right now. If he doesn't, the Clinton press operation will control the 2/5 frame, declare victory, and hope enough reporters bite.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen any Obama messaging along these lines. Nada. As I look at the Sunday wires, I see a few national reporters starting to speculate that 2/5 might not resolve everything -- and for all I know, some Obama press aides pushed that line. But if so, they're not pushing hard enough. And it's important to remember that, in the final days before an election, no one is thinking clearly and no one is thinking more than 12 hours out. Right now, on the Obama campaign, the comm shop is exhausted, the campaign manager is putting out fires , and Axelrod is looking at a giant map of media buys. No one is worrying about the 2/5 message. But unless someone starts, there'll be nothing to worry about on 2/6.
Labels: Elections
posted by Earl Warren at 12:00 AM
7 Comments:
Excellent analysis, EW. I totally agree.
Great stuff, but I'm not entirely sold. Right now the Obama shop needs to be messaging on one thing and one thing only: "meet Obama." As you point out, the more people know Obama, the more they like him. (Thank goodness Axe is scrutinizing the media buy - they need every ad they can afford right now.) Delegate counting is an insider's game and deflecting scarce communication resources to that message -- even if it's directed only to the media or political elites -- doesn't make the most sense to me. The media WANT a fight. They want this to drag on to March, or April, or the convention. And I get the feeling most know the difference between winning the most states and winning the most delegates.
It didn't seem to me like HRC got much traction out of her ham-handed attempt to frame the Florida vote as a "vote of confidence" (complete with Potemkin Village-like victory party), mostly cause the press didn't bite. I absolutely agree she will TRY the same tactic again, if she wins most states on Tuesday. But I doubt -- I hope?? -- the press will fall into line this time either.
PS: and just to keep in interesting, Zogby today has Obama up slightly in CA and essentialy tied in NJ and MO.
(and a love letter: thanks for keeping up the posts, EW. they are always good food for thought)
Sorry to hijack the thread to talk about the taboo subject of class rank, but for those of us hoping to apply for clerkships, when can we expect our class rank? I heard from 3Ls that they didn't get their class rank until summer. This is troubling, since the academic rules clearly state:
3.06 Disclosure of Class Rank Information for Limited Purposes -
***
(A) Information to be Made Available. By October of each year, the Registrar shall determine the grade point average (GPA) of students in the second-year class after two semesters of study, students in the third-year class after four semesters of study, or members of the last graduating class after six semesters of study. By March of each year, the Registrar shall calculate students' GPAs after three semesters of study for students in the second-year class and five semesters of study for students in the third-year class....
Anyone know how we can enforce this rule?
Thanks 10:35 for the very-thought-out counter-point. I totally agree the campaign needs to be pushing Obama in as many states as possible, with as much free media as possible. That appears to be what they're doing -- his schedule is taking him across 4-6 states in the next 24 hours, while Hillary appears to have spent 3 long days in CA and is now doing this "national" town-hall thing.
But I don't think the campaign faces an either/or choice in this. IF the campaign is running the comm shop right, they should have state-level press secretaries who push the "meet Obama" line in all 22 Super Tuesday states.
Basically, these are inexhaustible late 20-something and early 30-something staffers who grew up in the state in question on campaigns, know logistics, and spend all day on the phone with local print, radio, and TV reporters, hoping to drum up free coverage in the local news by dangling 5m with the Senator in a video feed or phone call. (That's why you'll occasionally see Obama or Hillary actually talking to the KRON political reporter on the 11 o'clock news these days.) The trick is to maximize exposure with minimum output from the Senator. In the Big 5 states, they should also have a deputy press-secretary pushing the ethnic and foreign-language media.
But the NATIONAL comm guys -- the ones based in Chicago but probably riding on the plane with the national traveling press corps -- they have a bit more freedom to push a national message, contact national reporters, appear themselves on cable news, etc. They already meet three times a day and decide how to "frame" the next news cycle -- what story to push. I'm suggesting they need to push "long-term war of attrition" right now. Let the state-level staffers corral the free media; they herd the big-dogs from the NYT, WaPo, CNN, etc.
Anyway, that's how it SHOULD be set up -- but I've also heard some very troubling reports that Chicago has grown a bit dysfunctional -- it's possible they're making some sloppy errors.
On the other hand, the Clinton operation will NOT be making tactical errors, and while I agree the FL meme was a bust, there's a big difference between declaring victory in a state no one campaigned in and declaring victory if she wins more states, more delegates, and more total votes -- which looks possible at this point. And it WOULD be a big victory for Hill! That is impressive! That's why you start damage control before the damage is done.
12:32, just cause I don't want you hijacking my damn thread, Dean Ortiz will send an e-mail mid-summer letting rising 3Ls know they can request their rank. She won't release them to 2Ls during the year, whatever the rules might say. Yeah, it's a little late, but if you want to know where you stand, calculate your own GPA using the Academic Rules, and then note that the Order of the Coif (Top 10%) is somewhere around a 3.5. (Somewhere on the website is the exact number I think.) That should give you an idea of where you stand. Now leave my thread alone at least for the next day!
actually, the stats listed on Boalt's website are not all that accurate. last year 3.5 didn't get you top 10%. Also, a personal approximation of one's GPA will not suffice for 3Ls applying to clerkships this spring or 2Ls applying to judges who accept early applications. and it's not all that helpful for giving to recommenders especially when you have to go back and correct your estimate.
bottom line: the Academic Rules state that the Registrar will calculate class rank after students' 3rd and 5th semester. It might put a cramp in their 10-4 schedule, but rules are rules.
Earl -
Thanks for your insightful posts.
A few questions:
- What indications are there, if any, of who will win the mail-in ballots on Tuesday? HRC or Obama? The network spin seems to be that Hillary will edge out Obama on the mail-ins because they were distributed right after her New Hampshire victory. I don't buy that, but I figured you might have some analysis. Do these new polls take into account the mail-ins? If so, how reliably do they do that?
- Now that California finally matters in nominating a Democratic candidate, do you think Californians will decide to be like Iowa, buck the Clinton machine, and go with the inspirational underdog (Obama)? I happen to think that, to a certain extent, both Iowa and New Hampshire were competing with each other in terms of "Oh, I'm special" points and can lead the nation toward the currently underrated candidate (though I suppose they weren't willing to be so contrarian as to go for Biden, Richardson, etc.). Now that California counts, I'm hoping that voters here do decide to be contrarians (at least against the Clinton machine) and give Obama the popular victory. Do you think there's a chance that many other voters will think this way? (And it's not like this means picking a candidate who isn't great for California; I think Obama would be great for the state).
- Lastly, we're Californians. Of all the states in the union, we believe in dynasty the least. We shake things up. We throw a new hero on the pop charts or the silver screen or in the political arena at an alarmingly fast rate. I think it's in keeping with a vital aspect of this state's ethos to reject dynasty and vote for a new face. Anyway, do you think that anti-monarchical/dynastic tendencies are at all on the minds of democratic voters and independents?
- Bradley effect? Are these California polls infected by the supposed phenomenon? I certainly hope not.
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