itsmeeeeeee

It's Still Over For Hillary
By Dick Morris

RealClearPolitics - Articles - It's Still Over For Hillary

The real message of Tuesday's primaries is not that Hillary won. It's that she didn't win by enough.

The race is over.

The results are already clear. Obama will go to the Democratic Convention with a lead of between 100 and 200 elected delegates. The remaining question is: What will the superdelegates do then? But is that really a question? Will the leaders of the Democratic Party be complicit in its destruction? Will they really kindle a civil war by denying the nomination to the man who won the most elected delegates? No way. They well understand that to do so would be to throw away the party's chances of victory and to stigmatize it among African-Americans and young people for the rest of their lives. The Democratic Party took 20 years to recover from the traumas of 1968 and it is not about to trigger a similar bloodletting this year.

John McCain's nomination guarantees that the superdelegates wouldn't dare. A perfectly acceptable alternative for most Democrats, McCain would harvest so large a proportion of Obama's votes if Hillary steals the nomination that he would probably win. Even putting Obama on the ticket would not allay the anger of his supporters; it would just make him complicit in the robbery.

Will Hillary win Pennsylvania? Who cares? Even if she were to sweep the remaining primaries and caucuses by 10 points, she would move just 60 votes closer to Obama's total of elected delegates. And she won't sweep them all. Even if Hillary wins Pennsylvania, the largest prize up for grabs, Obama will probably win North Carolina, which is almost as large. He's likely to win Mississippi and Wyoming and has a good shot in Oregon and Indiana. The most likely result of these coming contests is that Obama will be roughly where he is now, about 140 elected delegates ahead of Hillary.

Suppose that Hillary will carry those states by enough to offset Obama's delegate lead. The proportional representation system makes a knockout impossible and so mutes relatively narrow victories as to make them almost inconsequential. Little Vermont, with 600,000 people, gave Obama a net gain of four delegates, half of what Hillary won from the Texas primary, a state with 20 million residents. Even after Hillary won big-state victories in Ohio and Texas, she drew only 20 closer to Obama's total of elected delegates.

Hillary won't withdraw. That much is for sure. The tantalizing notion that 800 insiders can offset a season of primaries and caucuses will drive both Clintons to ever-escalating rhetoric. Will their attacks hurt Obama? Likely all they will achieve is to give him needed experience in the cut and thrust of media politics.

Left out of the entire equation is poor John McCain. Unable to get a word in edgewise and unsure of which Democrat to attack, he will have to watch from the sidelines as Hillary and Obama hog the headlines. If the superdelegates deliver the nomination to Hillary in the dead of night without leaving fingerprints at the crime scene, McCain's nomination will be worth having. If Obama prevails, it won't be worth the paper on which it is written. The giant killer, Obama will have soared to new heights of popularity and McCain won't be able to bring him back to Earth in the nine weeks that will remain.

Suggestion for Obama:

The next time Hillary uses the recycled red phone ad, counter with one of your own. When the phone rings in the middle of the night, have a woman's voice, with a flat Midwestern accent, answer it and say, "Hold on" into the receiver. Then she should shout, "Bill! It's for you!"

Because with Hillary's complete lack of any meaningful experience in foreign affairs, and her lack of the "testing" that she boldly claims, she'll be yelling for Bill.

Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of “Outrage.” To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to DickMorris.com.

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HarperLee

After they sold us the Iraqi war, I am not surprised that the MSM
is playing dumb about the fact that Hillary has lost. Chris Matthews and Larry King slobbering about how Pennsylvania will be the deciding state like we are all morons. CNN lying about Obama's superdelegate
count.

Jesus Christ, both Bill Clinton and Ed Rendell both more or less said that she had to win big in Ohio and Texas or withdraw. Chuck Todd
announced on MSNBC that the caucus votes would not be available for days -- yet all the major networks declared Texas for Hillary not twenty minutes later. Obama is going to win more delegate votes in Texas. What happened to "win big" in both states? Even without the caucus votes, didn't Clinton just have a 3% lead?

But what I cannot understand is why some of the powerful, rational,
sane Superdelegates who really care about the Democratic party
won't do the right thing and end this carnage.

I may make a YouTube video myself -- The same people who sold you the Iraqi war are back and better. Now they will cram Hillary
Clinton down your throats!

Alwayzpeaceful

There is some video or youtube to this.

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SMILE

Alwayzpeaceful

This is the video I was talking about.
Hillary's 3 AM Call :: Comedy.com

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SMILE

Syxxt3

Dick Morris, eh? Fox News Contributor. I love how all these people are suddenly reliable journalists. I saw another thread with a blog from Andrew Sullivan.

You'll do well to stay away from these guys. These guys will be the ones that bite you in the ass later.

As someone else posted there are over 1000 delegates left to be awarded...does that not make the nomination wide open? Mathematically it is going to be hard for either candidate to get to 2,025 delegates.

All of the players that contributed to the Bush victories are lining right up behind McCain. You would think the Kerry swiftboating would have taught you guys a lesson.

It taught me one. I hope there is a clear winner in this but I have to be realistic about it. Neither will get to 2025.

Put on your seatbelts...It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

winthrop

That is pretty funny.
But Dick Morris is a liar unworthy of your attention. A year ago he lied about Mr. Obama, and his current infatuation will no doubt be short-lived should Mr. Obama win the nomination, since he has a history of turning on his former friends. Once the Clintons are off the public stage, he will have to find another back to bite, and his penchant for writing to the tastes of Right Wing mouthpieces such as Newsmax, WorldNetDaily and FoxNews will need inspiration.

Heretic

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"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

itsmeeeeeee

i'm fully aware of who morris is, and his background - but the fact that clintons once trusted him enough to hire him is PRECISELY WHY i posted his article...

as a reminder of some of the clinton's own mistakes, their own connections with dubious characters, and flawed judgments.

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CosmicRocker

Clinton never " trusted" Morris.
He came in as a hatchett man, drawn into the flame of power by Clinton, to go after the Republicans, for a temporary time.

Morris is a true whore - pay him and kick him out the door when finished.

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Traveling Wilburys (l to r)

Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Roy Orbison

Syxxt3

Definitely, an operative who works for the highest bid.