Kyle Bell

March 4 was not the decisive electoral day that Barack Obama was hoping for. It did not put Hillary Clinton away. But contrary to popular belief in the media, it was not a decisive electoral decision for Hillary Clinton, either. In fact, her primary mission was to close the huge delegate gap that divides her and Barack Obama. She failed to do this in remarkable fashion. NBC projects that when all is said and done, all of the hoopla about a Clinton comeback will net her no more than 9 delegates. She currently trails by approximately 150 delegates.

The race that the Clinton campaign once described as a race for the most delegates is now a race for… well, whatever Hillary says from one day to the next. The flip-flopping and double talk on the part of the Clinton campaign has been astounding to me. Not to mention the fact that none of Obama’s wins (or accomplishments in life, for that matter) mean anything. Below are all excuses from Hillaryland for why she does not win:

Why did Obama win South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia? Black people. Nebraska, Kansas, North Dakota, Colorado, Maine, Alaska and Washington State? Caucuses. Illinois and Hawaii? Obama’s home states. Washington D.C., Virginia and Maryland? Damn, more black people! Delaware, Vermont and Connecticut? Affluent liberals. Iowa? Corn-loving hippies. Utah? Ah shucks, I don’t have a reason for that. Let’s just blame it on the Mormons. The fact, which they do not want to realize, is that Obama is the more appealing candidate to the majority of voters.

Compare that to Hillary, who is only appealing to traditionally liberal big state voters. Case in point: California, New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey. These are states that Obama or Clinton would win quite easily in a general election. The irony there? I just named nearly a third of the states Hillary has won. The states that Obama has won (namely Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, Missouri, Virginia and Georgia) Hillary does not have as good of a chance, according to all the polling done to date. In fact, while John McCain will put Minnesota, Wisconsin and even Michigan in play this fall against Hillary, Obama would put Colorado, Virginia, Missouri and Georgia in play. Hillary could not do that.

Moving past the argument for why Obama is the better candidate, I am now going to present to you why Obama will be the nominee. In fact, he should be referred to as the “all-but-nominee” at this point. If you are a Hillary supporter, it is best for you to now realize that Hillary is not going to win (and I will show you why). Furthermore, unlike other Obama supporters, I am not opposed to her continuing her campaign. I have a selfish reason. I want to work hard to deliver Indiana for Obama on May 4. But of more benefit to us Democrats is the fact that the campaign coverage will be focused directly on Hillary and Obama for the next several months.

Not only will we get free media coverage, allowing us to voice our message against John McCain and the Republicans, we also are going to be swarming Pennsylvania for the next 7 weeks, and doing the same in Indiana and North Carolina after that. Obama and Hillary will be going from town to town campaigning across the country, much like they have already done. Almost every state will have a voice in the process for the first time in many, many years.’

One of the last significant Indiana primaries was back in 1968. Robert Kennedy was dashing across the state and we will likely see the same thing in the weeks and months to come. What does this mean for the party? Well, for one, up-close exposure. This is a state that is all-but-ignored in both the primary and general election campaign. To have high profile Democratic candidates criss-crossing the state will help the party further towards winning in the fall. You can also bet that one of the two Democrats running for governor (Former Representative Jill Long Thompson and businessman Jim Schellinger) will endorse and campaign alongside one of these presidential candidates. I look forward to it.

Now let’s get to the reality of the race. I posted about this several weeks ago. It was highly unlikely then that Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic nomination. It is more unlikely, almost impossible, for her to win today. Why? March 4 was her last best hope. If she can only net fewer than 10 delegates out of winning Ohio and Texas, how does she expect to close the 150 delegate gulf between her and Obama? Answer: she doesn’t. She can’t. “Kyle, what about Pennsylvania?” I don’t care if he wins or loses it, she can’t win the nomination. Here’s why:

1. Given past results, demographics and polling, Obama is going to win Mississippi, Wyoming, Oregon, North Carolina, Montana and South Dakota.

2. For the same reasons, she is going to win West Virginia and Kentucky.

3. The competitive states are Indiana and Pennsylvania. Hillary would be favored in Pennsylvania, Obama in Indiana.

According to CNN, including super delegates and with not all of the delegates counted from Texas, Washington state or a few other places that favor Obama, Obama has 1520 and Hillary has 1424 delegates. Using the most liberal estimates in Hillary Clinton’s favor, Hillary Clinton will still trail Barack Obama. In my model I will give her the competitive states of Indiana and Pennsylvania, as well as all of Puerto Rico. You can see this for yourself at http://cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/29/delegate.counter/index.html by plugging in the numbers.

Now for the sake of argument, since the Clinton’s love argument, let’s give her Pennsylvania by about 10 delegates, which is approximately what she got out of Ohio. In Pennsylvania’s case, it would be 85-73. We will also give her Indiana 40-32, West Virginia 16-12, Kentucky 28-23, and then all of Puerto Rico’s 55 delegates. Again, these are the most liberal estimates by giving her the benefit of the doubt in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Puerto Rico and so on.

Now we’ll give him Wyoming 8-4, Montana 10-6, North Carolina 62-53, Mississippi 21-12 (it should be a blowout like the rest of the Deep South), Oregon 29-23, and South Dakota 9-6. We’ll split Guam 2-2, since neither will likely get high enough percent to win 3-1. What’s the result of this? She is still behind by more than 50 delegates – and this model includes super delegates who have pledged to date.

There are many reasons why this above scenario is not likely to play out. For one, there is no reason to think that she will get 8 delegates from Indiana when that’s almost as well as she did in Ohio and Ohio has twice the number of delegates up for grabs. Her percentage in Indiana would not be greater than what she did in Ohio, and the certainty that she wins the state is, at best, murky. We also assumed that the voting patterns from Ohio translated in Pennsylvania (i.e. she wins by about 10%). Furthermore, we gave Obama fairly low delegates out of states where he is likely to win big (namely North Carolina, Oregon and South Dakota). Each of these could prove false, and yet she fell short in the best case scenario for her.

Now let’s factor in the remaining super delegates. If you split the remaining uncommitted super delegates, you will get 1980 delegates for Obama to 1933 for Hillary. Again, this does not factor in the remaining uncounted delegates from the Texas caucuses (which Obama won) and Washington state (where Obama also won). Under the scenario we just played out, she would need 273 super delegates out of the 358 remaining in order to become the nominee. That is a roughly 75% of the super delegates remaining. Does anyone really believe that the super delegates will go flooding to the rescue of someone who will have lost a majority of the states (Obama will not just have won a majority, he will have won more than double hers), elected delegates and popular vote? If you think so, be my guest. You are just as delusional as Hillary thinks Obama voters are for supporting him.

Since I know the Hillary people are dying to say it, let me just point out that, as much as it pains me to tell you this, even if you factor in a new primary or caucus in Michigan and Florida, Hillary still will not be the nominee. Michigan and Florida moved their primaries up before February 5, breaking party rules and were punished by receiving 0 delegates to the national convention. To rectify this and seat these delegates, the party is talking about having new primaries or caucuses in June.

Remember that 1980 and 1933? Okay, now we’re going to do a little more math. Hillary got 55% in Michigan in January with no one on the ballot but “Uncommitted”. She won’t do better than that with Obama on it if a new primary takes place. On the other hand, Hillary only got 50% of the vote in Florida. There’s no reason to think she will do much better than that a second time around. Given that she won Ohio by roughly 10 delegates, we’ll give her Michigan by 10. Again, we are giving her the benefit of the doubt once again. Now let’s give her Florida by not 10, but 20. Why? It’s a bigger state.

Under this scenario, where we included Michigan and Florida in the results, as well as super delegates, Obama would still be ahead by 17 delegates. In other words, Obama could afford to lose Florida by anything from 1-36 delegates and still have a delegate advantage over Hillary. She would need 37 delegates from Florida in order to overtake him. An important thing to keep in mind is that Hillary won New York with 59% and only netted 48 delegates there. Her net out of California was 44 delegates. She won both states by larger margins than she could win Florida and both states have notably more delegates. There is absolutely no reason to think that she could get the 37 delegates she would need.

My conclusion is this: given the rosiest scenarios, Hillary Clinton fails to catch Barack Obama in delegates. She can not, will not, win the Democratic nomination. Hoping for her to do so would be like hoping the New York Mets, being behind the Atlanta Braves 14 games with 20 games to go, would win their division. Sure, it could happen, it is mathematically possible, but the chances are beyond what I will accept as credible.

The ONLY thing that concerns me is she keeps using negative campaigning. Too much negativity from her will make Obama unelectable against McCain. She is already trying to make him look like a Muslim. Her campaign needs to restrain itself. She’s not going to get nominated, so the alternative is hurting the nominee. For… what? So she can win a few more states? So she can run in 2012? That’s beyond selfish.

Would I prefer her be out? Yeah, just to have peace of mind and to bring the party together. The fact that they will be campaigning from one city to the next in battleground states should help nonetheless, and despite whatever result, she will not catch up. There’s already plenty of sound bytes McCain can use in tv ads of Hillary attacking Obama. The best thing that happened all week though? Bush endorsed John McCain. Bush and McCain will bring the Democratic Party together after a divisive primary. Electing John McCain is “four more years” of a Bush presidency. No one wants that.