A Rabbinical Analysis of the 2008 Election, Part II (The Good Rabbi's Blog)

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Yesterday, I posted my analysis of the 2008 election thus far from the Republican perspective. Today, I'd like to focus on the Democratic perspective. Before I continue with my look at the two main candidates (curiously enough, Mike Gravel is still in the race, despite the fact that he's basically polling exactly even with me, and I'm not even running), I'd like to address a main difference between the Republican and Democrat approaches to primaries. In keeping with their general philosophy of sharing, holding hands, and singing Up With People! songs, the Democrats tend to split the state and district delegates proportionally. Republicans tend to be more about winning, so their primaries are winner-take-all (i.e. if a candidate wins a state, they get all the delegates from that state). Figuring out the delegate counts involves an abacus, and a very complex formula, that closely rivals handicaping college basketball teams during the Holy month (which may explain why my previous attempt showed that the Carolina Tar Heels would secure the nomination). Because math is not exactly the forte of California hippies, the San Francisco Chronicle has an excellent article that explains how this all works.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, the big news that came with Super Tuesday is that believe it or not, Obama seems to have overtaken Hillary's delegate count. Whether or not this turns out to be true (remember, the math here is hard), I think that I have to give the man his dues and point out the obvious: Obama won super Tuesday, hands down. I say this because Hillary Clinton has over a hundred super delegates (delegates to the convention that are not bound to a particular candidate), and is still barely ahead, if at all, in the overall delegate count. She has all the machinery and the operatives the Democratic party has to offer, including the ultimate political juggernaut in the party, her husband. Even with all this, Obama continues to show increasingly stronger results. What's really telling is the margins between Clinton's and Obama's respective votes. Clinton only won the states that she needed to survive super Tuesday (although the sheer size of New York and California obscure that fact). The momentum has definitely shifted to favour Obama, as even in the states he did not carry, he was right behind Clinton. Clinton won California because of a deliberate attempt to stoke a disdain for Blacks among Latinos and Asian Americans. Amongst White voters (even women) he pulled even with Clinton in California. In most of the toss-up states (Utah, Missouri, Minnesota) Obama has won handily. He even managed to get at least 40% of the vote in Clinton's adopted home state of New York, came in under ten points behind Clinton in New Jersey, and out-and-out won Connecticut (both of which are in New York's back yard). All of this was done with about two weeks for Obama to campaign in states where the Clinton had name recognition and a comfortable double-digit lead for months. He's managed to bridge the racial divide in the south, as well has win states such as Alaska, Idaho, and North Dakota, that are not exactly known for their huge Black populations.

The second main reason that Hillary Clinton is in major trouble right now is that her entire strategy going into her candidacy (her grand master plan, if you will) was to create this air of inevitability, crush Edwards, Richardson, Biden, et al on Super Tuesday and use the event as a coronation ceremony of sorts. She's raised tens of millions of dollars since 2000, and she banked about half of that money in the general election pot, which renders that money useless in this fight, because under U.S. election laws, money declared for the general election can only be used in the general election. Obama on the other hand, left nothing to chance, and placed the bulk of the money in the primaries, which can be used now. So, Clinton has unwittingly tied her own hands when it comes to usable money. Unfortunately, her fundraising abilities have stagnated, because she used a smaller donor pool of party big-shots who give the maximum amount of $2,400 per person. This was fine for her campaign at the time because she was expecting to be the nominee TODAY. But with Obama's rising strength and development as a candidate with an increasingly sound, somewhat liberal platform, she is returning to the money well to find that it is drying up. Obama's money scheme centered around the "drop in the bucket" philosophy, where a lot of people contribute a small amount of money (similar to a church offering) and the collective total (when combined with the big donors) is enough. While in the beginning, this seemed like an insane strategy, he has been able to inspire hundreds of thousands of people to give $1, $10, $50, or $75 at a time. Considering that each person has a legal limit of $2,400, he can now reasonably expect (and has received ) even more money at a constant pace. And with each passing success his web-site's donor list has grown, so he can now get even more money to keep his campaign running. Also, the psychological impact of Clinton not being able to keep up would be somewhat damaging to her.

Next comes the largest obstacles to Clinton: time and perception. I say time not because it is running out, but because there is so much of it. Obama swept the elections on Saturday and Sunday (he didn't just win, he thoroughly trounced her) and he's set to sweep the so-called "Potomac Primary" here in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia tomorrow, giving him a week's worth of uncontested momentum. He will then have weeks to campaign and spread his message in Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania etc. In every contest so far, the more the state in question has had time to vet Obama, and he has had to debunk misconceptions (such as having no real policy or platform) the higher his poll numbers go across the board. It's a fact. So Clinton is painted into a corner, forced to adopt a Giuliani strategy of making Texas and Ohio her make or break, last stand states, and pray that her organization can withstand the Obama momentum. And as Giuliani saw in Florida, this doesn't always pay off too well. The good news for Hillary is that she is Hillary Clinton, and there is no way the media will ignore her while Obama goes on his tear through the contests over the next several weeks.

So, lets just say that hypothetically her and Obama walk into Denver fairly tied when it comes to delegates. Hillary will probably win in a brokered convention where all her savvy and connections will secure a deal for her to be the nominee. Plus her uncontested victories in Michigan (where Obama and Edwards weren't on the ballot due to sanctions by the national party against the state party) and Florida (where neither of the two others were allowed to campaign or make inroads amongst voters), will in the end be counted, again due to connections (which I think would be a complete travesty, and will cost Howard Dean what little authority he currently has). However, a brokered convention would appear so wrong, so un-democratic that it would be the kiss of death for Hillary, who already has a perception of being cold and calculating. This would disenfranchise a good chunk of the independent, young and possibly Black voters that Obama brought with him to the convention (it's just this bloc of voters, by the way, that represents the future of the Democrats - if they're disenfranchised yet again, the repercussions will be felt for years). Couple that with the fact that a brokered convention ending up in the coronation of a Clinton would be a gigantic call to arms to conservative voters, and McCain would end up winning. The only way for Hillary to avoid this would be to make Obama her running mate, and quite frankly, not only does he have no incentive to do that, he has every incentive not to do it. In the end, if he should get the nomination, he would do better to find someone else to be on the bottom of his ticket (maybe a White man).

Therefore, at the end of the day, Obama is holding all or most of the cards and Hillary knows it. To recap why he won super Tuesday: Clinton did everything she had to do, while Obama did everything he wanted to do. And that makes all the difference.