Know Hope: It’s Over. Obama has won.

May 7th, 2008 · 1 Comment

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Today is the Day of Jubilee. It’s over. (Probably.)

Matt Drudge went first. Then Tim Russert, Chuck Todd, then Pat Buchanan and Karl Rove. Then Politico’s Ben Smith.

Clinton has cancelled her public schedule for today.

Ben Smith gets to the deep logic of why the race is over. By withstanding six weeks of Freak Show politics trying to fight for its own survival, he managed to improve against Hillary with women and working class men. The last chance was for Clinton to pull off an upset in North Carolina - the “game changer” that really would have split the race back open. By losing by such a wide margin and nearly losing Indiana, the Clinton Comeback was turned back.

But the most important metric is that, even if Obama manages only to get the minimum in each remaining contest, he’s already clinched a majority of popular delegates. Smith quotes delegate nerd Matt Seyfang:

Lake is still out, but I’m assuming the 1st goes 4-2 for Obama based on surrounding counties that Clinton won. He won’t break the 70 percent he needs for a 5-1 margin. The statewide assumes a 2-point margin for Clinton, still a big question mark with Lake out.

What’s interesting if these numbers hold is that this assures that Obama will win a majority of the 3,253 pledged delegates [excluding Florida and Michigan]. He’s now at 1,494. Under this set of numbers, he picks up 101 for a total of 1,595. A majority is 1,627, so he’s 33 short. If you assume he makes threshold in each of the remaining 24 districts for one delegate and then picks up at least one PLEO and one at-large in each of the 6 remaining contests, he’s at 1,631. The battle for the majority of pledged delegates is over.

That’s why you’ll hear the drumbeat through the day. And a rush by pundits and bloggers to get in their analysis of how the race was won. Andrew Sullivan, by right, goes first, arguing that black voters, betrayed by the Clintons, did them in:

After what the Clintons did in this campaign, and what they’ve revealed about themselves, and their alliance with Fox News and Bill Kristol and Pat Buchanan, this couldn’t be more appropriate.

This will be history’s verdict: in the end, the Clintons were defeated not by Republicans, but by African-American Democrats. How wonderful. How poignant. In the end, the karma gets you. Maybe it had to be this way. But this final coup de grace against these awful, hollow, cynical people is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Can I just say: Yippee.

And more headlines like this:
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Tags: Obama · US politics · politics

1 response so far ↓

  • 1 Dan Sullivan // May 7, 2008 at 11:48 am

    Realistically, it should be all over for her now. She can’t make the popular vote majority now that she was hoping would trump the popular delegates majority that he has for a while now and frankly pushing all guns blazing to include Florida and Michigan in a contested convention when Obama did (as did Edwards) as requested by the DNC and didn’t campaign there would simply gift Florida to the Republicans.

    Thing is that if Obama is contesting the centre with McCain and McCain has to fight for Independents it opens up a lot of space on the right of the Republicans for someone to run. It isn’t getting much notice but McCain is still not getting the support of roughly 1 in 4 Republicans who have made the effort to come out and vote in the primaries. Look the republican results in at Penn, NC, and Indiana, months after the issue of the nominee was settled.

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