Posted on 01/07/2008 3:29:17 PM PST by Richard Poe
| by Richard Lawrence Poe Monday, January 7, 2008 |
Permanent Link Past Columns |
FORGET IOWA. Forget New Hampshire. Forget the Democratic primaries altogether. The fix is in for Hillary Clinton. When Democrats convene this August in Denver, they will nominate Hillary as their candidate for President of the United States.
The day after Hillary’s loss in Iowa last Thursday, her campaign chief Terry McAuliffe told reporters, “Listen, Hillary is going to be the nominee. There’s no question.”
McAuliffe was not indulging in wishful thinking. He was stating a fact. He knows things the rest of us do not.
One thing McAuliffe knows is that Hillary controls a decisive majority of the Democratic Party superdelegates. The superdelegates control 42 percent of the votes needed to nominate Hillary. They may vote for whomever they wish, for any reason, and may change their minds at will. In August, they will nominate Hillary.
Democrats started the superdelegate system in 1984, to give party leaders tighter control over the nominating process.
This was partly in response to the catastrophic defeat of George McGovern, the radical, anti-war demagogue who, in 1972, lost every state in the union except Massachusetts to Richard Nixon.
To prevent such maverick candidates from winning the nomination in future, party leaders rigged the system. State delegates were no longer permitted to nominate presidential candidates on their own. Henceforth party-approved superdelegates would also cast votes.
Superdelegates are party stalwarts, Democrat officials whose loyalties favor party over state. Their number varies from one election to the next. Currently there are 852 superdelegates, including 29 state governors, 232 congressmen, 49 senators, two “shadow” or non-voting senators from the District of Columbia, and 540 Democratic Party leaders and officials of various sorts.
At this year’s Democratic Convention, 4,049 delegates will vote. Hillary must get 2,025 votes to win the nomination. This is the so-called "magic number". The 852 superdelegates total 42 percent of the magic number. In a close race, their votes could prove decisive.
At this writing, CNN reports that 257 superdelegates have already pledged their votes: of them, 154 (60 percent) have pledged for Hillary; 50 (19 percent) for Barack Obama; and 33 (13 percent) for John Edwards.
Should Hillary falter in the primaries, the superdelegates will likely come to her rescue and nominate her anyway.
The Web site 2008 Democratic Convention Watch offers updated lists of superdelegates who have and have not pledged their votes.
Of course, Hillary cannot win from superdelegate votes alone. She must get a sizeable number of state delegates as well. This presents no problem for Hillary. Her political machine is deeply entrenched in America’s urban centers. These crowded cities can overwhelm rural voters, bringing entire states into Hillary’s camp, with large numbers of delegates.
The decisive date will be February 5, dubbed Super Duper Tuesday by political pundits. Twenty-four states will hold their primaries that day.
"These states include some of our largest and most delegate-rich states, such as California, New York, Illinois, Georgia, New Jersey and others," notes Steven Hill, political reform director for the leftwing New America Foundation. "Together these two dozen states hold enough delegates to nearly decide the presidential nomination all by themselves."
Hillary is counting on that. As Steven Hill explains, "Having a single primary day with so many states... gives great advantage to those candidates with the most campaign cash and name recognition... It creates a virtual wealth primary in which new presidential faces will be quickly eliminated."
In any contest of wealth, Hillary has the advantage. Her blue-chip backers include the likes of Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, wife of Sir Evelyn de Rothschild of the famed Rothschild banking dynasty.
“I'm always doing everything I possibly can for Hillary Clinton…”, Her Ladyship told Portfolio magazine. “I have been waiting for this since Bill Clinton left office, frankly.”
Married November 30, 2000, Lady de Rothschild spent her wedding night in the Clinton White House.
OpenSecrets.org reports that Hillary has raised $90.9 million, only slightly higher than Obama’s $80.3 million.
However, most of Hillary’s money is off the books. No one knows how many millions Hillary has laundered through George Soros’ “Shadow Party”, a network of Democrat front groups masquerading as non-partisan charities. These include Fund for America, the Democracy Alliance, America Votes and Media Matters for America, among others.
Republicans need to stop gloating over Hillary's every misstep and see the big picture. Hillary has the money, the machine, and the support of global financial elites. Unless we can muster a counterforce of similar strength, Hillary will win the nomination and the presidency.
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Richard Lawrence Poe is a contributing editor to Newsmax, an award-winning journalist and a New York Times bestselling author. His latest book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party, co-written with David Horowitz. |
That is a real posibility. If Obama piles up a decisive lead in primary wins, and then they go to convention, and a bunch of votes appear basically out of nowhere to nominate Hillary Clinton, it won't sit well with all the Obamists, much less the rest of the land.
Could be a Pyrhhic victory.
If she can’t win primaries, she certainly can’t win the National.
&&&
Never underestimate the Clinton Voter Fraud Machine.
As followers of politics should know, Terry McAuliffe is not always right. He’s not even always very smart.
Oh, let’s not be coy. He’s an idiot and a bulls**t artist.
Correction, the Hillary Clinton advantage in the Super Delegates will be 170 not 250, so it is more of a meaningless advantage.
And I'm supposed to believe this? Why? Is it the first time Terry McAuliffe told the truth? The guy is slime.
Except that the black vote will go to Hillary, not Obama.
Yes!
Let the super delegates nominate her. She'll be toast.
The flaw in this is if she loses the primary vote by a large margin. The RATs will have to jettison all their push for popular vote over electoral college in order to annoint Toonette. Once again, we’ll have the coattails of death.
This, to me, once again highlights the genius of our founding fathers. They understood these kinds of voting dynamics better than anyone in the modern day. The electoral college was a counterweight, but NOT TOO MUCH of a counterweight to the popular vote. How did they get this SO RIGHT?!?!?! If the BREADTH of Hillary’s support, geographically, was stronger, she would have a shot at being carried by the superdelegates. If she can’t even win the popular vote in the primaries in enough states, then she certainly can’t count on the superdelegates.
If everything was on the up and up, the superdelegates would be a reflection of national support. But since they most likely will not be, if Obama gains more momentum, that will show she does not have the “coat-tails” for anything. This is just so cool (on paper!).
“If this human toilet hillary is the dem candidate, she’ll lose the general election by a larger margin then Kerry’s loss to Bush in ‘04.”
You are wrong. Hillary will win the election. You have to see the big picture. If everything stays as is, Hillary loses. Which means one of two things have to happen.
1) She has to win Ohio. My guess was Kerry was supposed to win Ohio but they ran out of time. Notice Wolf Blitzers commentary on Ohio. The state was Green, not blue or red. Even though Kerry was down by 100,000 votes and the Republican areas weren’t yet counted, they refused to give Ohio to Bush.
2) Hillary picks up Richardson and they win New Mexico and Virginia. Richardsons own family won’t vote for him and he is still around? Plus “Macaca” was huge.
42% suprdelegates. Trust me, Hillary is the nominee and the next President. It’s going to be the biggest comeback in the history of US politics. She will be a conquering hero.
You read it here first.
Quite a few people on this thread have pointed that out and I tend to agree, but this is the Clinton's we are talking about. Bill won his first Presidential election because of a Third Party run by Perot. He won his second because of a 'fall of the stage' performance by Dole. Neither election victory required popular support. So if this is Hillary's strategy, steal the nomination, perhaps we should expect either a third party run or a Republican Fall Guy.
Hill has a 2.5% lead from pledged delegates - 104 more than Obama out of over 4000 to be cast.
If she got 60 to 20, which she will not, among all the super delegates, she would get an edge of 8.5% of the vote that way.
The pledged vote margin simple reflects the state of the polls as of 2-3 months ago.
Hill can't lock it, the voters are sovereign, and they are rejecting her for Obama. The reason is not far to seek - Obama beats nearly the entire Republican field by 5 to 10 points in the head to head polls, while Hill runs 0 to 5. Either one delivers the same policy outcomes, but Obama simply has lower negatives from less baggage. Hill brings nothing to the party except that baggage. So why go there?
Your last remaining option is Thompson, and he needs the help THIS MONTH.
One possibility, perhaps they really are racist. Another possibility, perhaps they really are sexist. Yet another possibility, the Clinton's have some control over them. Your logic is sound, but applying logic to dimwits is an imprecise science at best. They do what makes them 'feel' good.
That's right, Doug. There is no way on God's Green Earth that if Obama were to win decisively through Super Tuesday that these super delegates will not mostly jump ship. It is simply too hard to believe that this various mix of governors, senators, congressman etc. will in essense blacklist themselves in future elections by defying the "will of the people" or more precisely "the base" by taking a beaten Hillary and pulling her from the ashes.
Only if Hillary, in losing, has been essentially neck-in-neck in the primaries but couldn't seal most of the deals would such a scenario be even remotely acted upon.
And I can guarantee you that if such a move was taken the base would demand a retraction AND would demand an end to the super delgate status.
The idea of a super delegate posse riding to the rescue seems only possible if a true outsider with no political experience (celebrity with $, billionare with ambition, etc) was to trounce the those with the standard political pedigree.
I say this because the idea of a volatile convention is anethema to the base.
154 super-delegates are die-hard comrades for Hillary?
That's a small number of people, but,
I'm sure Hillary has at least that many who
will do ANYTHING for her!
LOL, great cartoon!
Agreed. The radical left among the Gen X'ers are pushing for a seat at the big table. To them we Boomers are very old news.
Going to be some convention season.
Thank you, Dubh_Ghlase. You are right. Complacency is our greatest enemy.
Hillary never gets into a card game unless she knows in advance that the deck is stacked.
As I stated in my column, Hillary cannot win the nomination with superdelegate votes alone. The superdelegates can help her only in a close race, if she comes to the convention with a respectable number of state delegates.
I believe she will.
Her big chance will come on Super Duper Tuesday. In order to get the votes she needs, she will employ the time-honored Democrat expedient of milking major cities for phony votes. More importantly, she will unleash scandalous information about Barack Obama.
Most likely, her smears against Obama will be leaked to "Republican" media, such as The New York Post, so that Hillary herself will not be blamed for the dirt-slinging.
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