First came Super Tuesday, with 24 contests and nearly 1,700
delegates up for grabs. Then it was the Texas two-step and primaries in
Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island on March 4. Now, according to Chris Bowers of Open Left, the latest, greatest Decision Day 2008
® is May 6, when the good voters of North Carolina and Indiana cast
their ballots for either the Hopemonger from Illinois or the Iron Lady
from New York.
"If Obama sweeps Indiana and North Carolina," writes Bowers. "The campaign is over."
It's
an interesting prediction. For starters, there's absolutely no chance
that the curtain will fall earlier. Clinton currently boasts an average lead of 16 points in Pennsylvania, so despite the fervent finger-crossing of Obamaniacs nationwide, she ain't goin' nowhere
before May. That said, the Indiana/North Carolina pairing not only
represents a bigger delegate prize (187) than Pennsylvania (158), but
it's also expected to be closer contest--meaning that the conflict-obsessed media
will put more stock in the results. ("Something unusual appears to be
developing in the Democratic presidential race in [Indiana]," wrote the Washington Post
earlier this week. "A fair fight." Case in point.) Which is why an
Obama twofer would signal Clinton's demise, according to Bowers. "May
6th is the first date
when Obama can reach 1,627 pledged delegates, or 50% + 1 of pledged
delegates," he says. "Right now, he needs 173.5 pledged delegates to
reach 1,627,
or 49.7% of the 349 to be determined between April 22 and May 6." In
Bowers' view, if Obama can win half of the delegates at stake in
Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina, he will simultaneously
capture the majority of pledged delegates--an important symbolic
victory--and erase Clinton's Pennsylvania gains, forcing the New York
senator to contemplate a "final option" that involves "winning the
support of more than 70% of the remaining superdelegates." That, he
says, "would be game, set, match."
The
only problem: it won't be. There are two reasons to be skeptical. One,
it's far from certain that Obama will reach the 1,627 milestone on May
6. According to Slate's handy Delegate Calculator,
if the returns in Pennsylvania and North Carolina hew to current
polling averages, and Indiana results, as expected, in a tie, Obama would
fall five or six short of the pledged-delegate majority. And while it's
easy to imagine Obama exceeding this tally--the latest PPP poll
predicts a 20-point win in the Tarheel State, for example, which would
put him over the top--it's impossible to imagine Clinton actually
conceding that such an accomplishment (or concern that her continued
presence is hurting Obama for November) has any significance."This is a very close race and neither
of us will reach
the magic number of delegates," she
told
Time's Mark Halperin yesterday. "We're both going to be short, and when
you think about the many millions of people who have already
voted, we are separated by a relatively small percentage of votes.
We're separated by, you know, a little more than a hundred delegates"
As long as Clinton sets 2,025 (and not 1,627) as the finish line--and
Florida and Michigan remain unresolved and the
pledged-delegate/popular-vote disparity remains close--she'll stay in
the race. And frankly, she has point. There's no precedent (see Kennedy
in 1980 or Reagan in 1976) for a candidate with thousands of delegates,
half the vote and a rival who's yet to clinch the nomination to simply
say "sayonara" in the midst of primary season.
Which means that nothing short of a May 7 "Superdelegate Stampede" to Obama will end the race before June. Could that happen? I doubt it. While I suspect that these political
poo-bahs, reluctant to overturn the "will of the people," will break
for the pledged-delegate/popular-vote leader in the end--a la Clinton supporter Maria Cantwell--they're also highly unlikely (for the same reasons, really) to weigh in before all of the people express their will at the ballot box. As Clinton said yesterday in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, "Over the next months
millions of people are going to vote. We should wait and see the
outcome of those votes.” And so the slugfest rightfully, inexorably continues--even though we're 95 percent sure how it's going to end.
