I guess what I still don't get about the Clinton "I can win big states" argument is this: NY is deep blue. It's not going to vote for a Republican. So how relevant is it in this context? Same for California. Massachusetts.

I just don't get this argument as it applies to these particular states.

The others? Like Ohio and Pennsylvania? Yeah. Particularly Ohio.

(But what about Missouri? Oh. That doesn't fit the theme of the Clinton argument, so it's completely forgotten at this point).

God, just end this. Please.

1. More states
2. 600,000 more votess
3. more delegates

and the Democrats are having an argument about who is winning.

Is there a Clinton in the race?

Inescapable conclusion is that the Clintons are more than willing to launch a civil war in the Democratic party by comparision to which 1968 will pale

That's because, as many have long known and many Democrats have forgotten, the Clintons will do anything, say anything...they are parasites and if it takes a long and expensive fight to cleanse the body politic, better now than later

Obama does better in h2h polls. Furthermore, it looks like Hil's only path to the nomination means civil war, poaching and super dels. She will have a very hard time winning the GE after a divided convention and possible rioting. It's time for the remaining supers to step up, endorse Obama, and put an end to the favors Hil is doing for McCain.

I hate to say it Greg, but...duh!?!

That's been the argument pretty much all along. And I don't see how the supers are not picking up on it, seeing as he's significantly narrowed the gap in superdelegates since Feb 4th from over a 100 to now about 35. And he keeps rolling them out, picking up two more this past week before his Mississippi win.

They get it, it's time for the news media to finally get it.

Greg,

The arguments are amplified because Kamp Klinton can't, and won't, catch up. "Electability" is the last, pathetic (and incorrect) argument Hillary has to play, and it's not a good one for her. She has managed to unite the country, Republicans and Democrats coming together in disdain for her sleazy politics.

Obama has a pretty good point. MI & PA polls out today show no real difference between HRC & BHO - in fact BHO does a little better in PA ironically despite being behind by 20pts in the dem race.

BHO is actually polling a lot stronger in CA than HRC and some swing states like IA are strongly BHO but strongly MCC vs HRC. FL they both lose.

States HRC would bring: AR, possibly WV & TN. That's it.
States BHO would bring: NV, NH, CO, IA, OR,WI, MN possibly VA, SD, KS, NC.

That's a good memo. Especially coming from the signatories. And it fits in well with Dean's 50-State strategy...there's only one way to get any of the dem principles actually passed into law. Expand the party -- don't limit it to 3 battleground states. PLUS doesn't that make it so much easier for McCain? To let him assume the votes of so many states?

Guh. Isn't this race over already?

The logic gets a little screwed up here. He's electable because more people are voting for him. Or more people are voting for him because he's electable...whatever. But electablility in the general election is and always will be just theory.

My main argument to the supers really is the pledged delegates. That's not theory, it's reality. Even if the supers somehow theorized that thay knew better about electability, it's a very dangerous and very undemocratic road to go down. The pledged delegate count should rule - period. I would say this even if the shoe were on the other foot.

And Hillary can whine all she wants about the "undemocratic" nature of caucuses (my experience is that it was true democracy in action) but one "caucus delegate," as she is now saying, is a hell of a lot more democratic than one super delegate.

Denver is going to be one utter disaster if this doesn't get settled...

It's somewhat interesting that how Barack Obama's single most critical supporter right now is Puerto Rico governor Anibal Acevedo Vila. P.R. is favorable Clinton ground and the island's tradition of running winner-take-all primaries could have, if the Governor was a Hillary supporter and chose to do winner-take-all, have thrown 63 pledged delegates into her column.

Now THAT would have made the primary interesting. It certainly would have been fun to watch the Hillary spinmeisters try to make the case that P.R. is an important state.

C'est la vie, better to have a clear Obama win.

The other factor is not only Barack's electability, but what his candidacy will do for down ticket candidates. I think I've read that it may be work as many as 12-14 house seats and quite a few senate seats. If Hillary is the candidate, besides the alienation of democratic voters, the republican base will come out in unprecedented numbers and many of these seats will be much harder to claim. Just look at Hastert's old seat with Bill Foster winning as just one example. This is about a new working majority as part of the overall electability argument.

"One thing to keep in mind about the Obama camp's electability arguments"

I think I'm starting to understand you, Greg. You're a masochist, right? You love getting spanked. That's why you make careless statements like that. You KNOW people are going to question your partisan hackery, but you don't care. You WANT to be punished. Because you're a BAAAAD boy. A VERY bad boy.

Either that, or a bad writer.

I submit that supers will be considering electoral votes, not popular votes or candidates won in the primary in determining who they cast their convention vote.
Beyond the process question I raised: My prediction is that some way will be worked out for Hillary to withdraw from the primary for the good of the party and because she wants a Democratic in the WH. No, I'm not smoking funny stuff.

It's clear that both campaigns are spinning this to the superdelegates.

They have to do it because neither one of them can win the nomination by pledged delegates. They will be tied, barring something exceptional.

When there is a tie, superdelegates break that tie as independent voters, based on the "electability" and GE potential.

So that's why Obama is suddenly focusing on electability. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with Clinton doing the same.

Obama is not electable due to the people he hangs with......racists and Jew-haters. People will not vote for him. You will not be able to fool all the people.

I think the math of the situation has been done, and it is all going to play out as described in Obama's favor.

What really bothers me about the HRC campaign now is the presumption or belief that if they say something, however nonsensical, often enough that it will somehow become true, or at least presumed to be true by the masses. It is the same fundamental fault about BushCo that drives me to despair.

And there is just enough of the 24-hour MSM that parrots back ANYTHING they are told ... because, I guess, if somebody wraps it up for you then it is lots easier than thinking, or basic investigation ... that I get worried that this sort of Newspeak could work, and poison the whole process.

There are many problems with the "big state" spin but I would like to point out one more:

Big states are already accounted for by the pledged delegate system. eg. California had a ton of delegates. Clinton won her fair share of those, so should have whatever advantage that confers.

That Obama is beating her in delegates despite her very few big state victories is remarkable, and is based on his huge landslide victories in dozens of midsized and smaller states.

Hillary is in essence trying to double-count the big states. The small and mid size states already have less of a voice, based on apportioned delegates.

Is this concept too difficult for the MSM?

In the spirit of promoting agreement between Clinton and Obama supporters, I suggest that the following statements are true and even obvious to us if we stop grinding our axes for a moment:

1. No one really knows what's going to happen in the general election. It has hasn't even started yet.

2. McCain matchup polls are highly unreliable at this time. The election is 8 months from now. 8 months ago, Giuliani was leading the polls.

3. Winning the primary does not mean that a candidate will win the state in the GE. Losing a primary does not mean that a candidate will lose the state in the GE.

4. OH, PA, and FL are very extremely important swing states, and right now, Clinton is more popular in these states than Obama.

5. It would be most excellent for the Democratic Party to win over states that have voted Republican in recent elections, including MO, CO, VA, and possibly others. Given the mood of the country, winning such states is more likely now than in the past eight years. Even the ability to compete in traditional red states would force the Republicans to divert their resources. Currently, Obama is more popular in these states.

6. Both Clinton and Obama have energized a spectacular number of primary voters and raised a spectacular amount of money. Obama's organizational and fundraising capabilities have been especially innovative and especially impressive, since he started the race with far fewer political connections than Clinton.

I'll say this until I turn blue in the face--or purple: If we never organize and compete in a red state, it will always BE a red state.

Here's the actual quote from David Plouffe:

Now that Mississippi is behind us, we move on to the next ten contests. The Clinton Campaign would like to focus your attention only on Pennsylvania – a state in which they have already declared that they are "unbeatable." But Pennsylvania is only one of 10 remaining contests, each important in terms of allocating delegates and ultimately deciding who are nominee will be. Senator Obama campaigned in Pennsylvania yesterday and will do so again later this week, but he will also campaign aggressively in the other upcoming states – he will travel to other upcoming states in the very near future.

Where exactly does he say Pennsylvania won't count? Yeah, that's what I thought.

This beg state meme, like all of Clinton's self-promoting arguments, is an insult to any normal person's intelligence. At a certain point, these super-delegates have to ask themselves, "Just how stupid does she think we are?"

These general election polls are notoriously bad. Dukakis was 15 points ahead of Bush elder at this point, but never had a chance in the general election despite winning the debates.

Polls at this time in 72 showed McGovern ahead of Nixon and he lost by the biggest landslide in modern history.

If we nominate someone from the far left of the party, someone the repugs will consistently label "a community organizer--the most liberal senator in Congress," we'll lose. Obama doesn't have a chance in Hades in a general election.

People talk about increased AA turnout, but AA turnout was high in 00 and 08. I think it will be even higher if Obama runs, but most of that turnout will be in states where we don't have a chance. We'll lose 53-47 instead of 55-45 in the Southern states.

And all these "new voters" coming out, people who didn't vote in 2004? Even reasonable people like Donahue and Maher, who jumped on the Nader electra glide in 00 and sent us sliding headlong down the trash chute into this 8 year long bum trip, wised up in 04. People who stayed home in 04 aren't going to venture outside the basement of their parents' home this time either.

I was searching around for polls and found this one at Gallup that was dated March 4th.:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/104752/Public-Divided-Whether-Obama-Has-Necessary-Experience.aspx

I shows McCain and Clinton way out in front when it comes to the perception of who has the most experience, with McCain leading. They also broke it down among Democrats, Republicans and Independents. The next question was which one was thought to be most ready to be president based on experience. McCain had 49%, Clinton 30% and Obama 16%. That was also broken down into Dems, Repubs and Indies. Clinton won handily among Democrats with 56%, Obama next and McCain trailing. Then came the question about what is more important, leadership skills/vision, issue positions or experience. Leadership skills/vision came out ahead among Democrats and Independents, but issue positions came out ahead with Republicans. Experience ranked last with all of three groups.

Considering this, and the theme that Obama has been running with, the results seem to favor him. Still, I was left wondering whether a certain combination would trump another in a swing state. The polls still show Obama and Clinton running about the same in a national match up against McCain, but how will it work out when all those Democrats, Republicans and Independents go into that booth in November?

Bringing this back to the main topic of this post, who won the most votes in a primary or caucus is a little iffy to use as a guidepost to who will win in the general election. However, this Gallup poll does tell us what is most important among different segments of that electorate.

As far as swing states are concerned, we are probably up against a large portion of conservative leaning voters who, though fed up with Bush and the war, may find McCain more comfortable a fit than either Clinton or Obama. There may be a few who are just disgusted enough to be urged over the line towards our party's candidate. Regardless of the extremely close policy positions of the Democratic candidates, I think those few would be more likely to vote for Clinton than for Obama, simply because of the experience factor. Remember, those who would be willing to swing wouldn't be the crazy Clinton haters. That type would never vote for a Democratic candidate no matter who was running on their party's ticket. Those few who would might be just the few we need to swing the state.

I tend to think of Clinton supporters as strong party loyalists while a good bit of Obama's support comes from independents caught up in the moment. I think this ends up working in Obama's favor. Someone who would vote for Clinton despite years of her being smeared by conservative media is not likely to see McCain as a good second choice when there is another blue option. Those mobilized to vote for Clinton will show up to vote for Obama if he is the candidate. On the other hand, Obama supporters are invested in him and may sit out or play spoiler if he is not the candidate. This would be one explanation for why Obama can win Ohio and Florida in the general election after losing them in the primary. The strong blue supporters who are behind Clinton are loyal. Those who voted for Obama are questionable. Ironic that the core base that votes for Clinton is less important than the new votes Obama brings to the table. If this election was about turning out the base then Clinton wins. But the war, the environment, and the economy are already going to turn out the base so its the soft middle and the coattails that matter most. I have heard lots of anecdotal evidence that many Obama supporters will opt out if he is not on the ticket so I sure hope if Clinton manuevers into the top spot on the ticket that she can convince Obama to stand with her as VP.

Those are just my two cents.

Here is a thought experiment: Would Obama be able to guarantee the top spot by quietly suggesting right before the convention that he would consider a third party run if Clinton were to win? Not that he would go through with the threat, but just let the possibility leak a little to supers. I am not sure if that hint of another year 2000 Nader would force supers into his camp or cause them to abandon ship and go all in with Clinton. Tactically, it could be a truly brilliant threat or could totally backfire. I have informally asked several friends who are divided on the question. Obviously this is not a good strategy now while he is ahead. But if Clinton is winning the backroom brawl for supers after the primaries are done, this would be a nuclear option for Obama. Its him or mutually assured destruction. He certainly has the power to irrevocably fracture the party. Would that machiavellian grab for power work?

They are right on the money.

Something else the delegates ought to consider, coming from the unlikely source of Alex Castellanos, a scumbag Republican media consultant who nevertheless is clearly more on the ball than scumbag Hillary strategist Mark Penn:

"Obama is the hope and future of the Democratic Party, not Hillary, and everyone knows it. He is the one bringing new energy and voters. He could be a Democratic Reagan, invigorating the party for 25 years. If the Clinton people knee-cap Obama, it would be like killing Santa Claus Xmas morning in front of the children. The children won't forget or forgive."

As quoted by Tom Edsall on the Real Clear Politics website.