Sunday, February 10, 2008

The inevitable candidate, ladies and gentlemen...

Hillary Clinton's odds of winning the nomination: 3 in 10, according to Intrade.

Hillary is now pursuing the Giuliani Strategy, v. 2.0, and betting it all on Texas, Pennsylvania and Ohio. She has just lost Maine. She isn't favored to win a primary or caucus for a month. Not only that, but her team is bragging about how little effort they put into these states that Obama recently won. I guess that's the only way they can go, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence, now, does it?

As Obama wins more and more "blue" states, the meme that Hillary gets the vote of "blue state" Democrats loses coherence for her supporters. Illinois, Delaware, Connecticut, Washington, and now Maine--soon, Maryland, Virginia and D.C., and then Hawaii and Wisconsin. This thing is for real.

For the candidate that has doubled down on "experience" this isn't exactly confidence-inspiring. She doesn't seem to have a clue on how to go up against Obama in these contests--indeed, she seems to still be a step behind Obama instead of the other way around. Did she never even envision the possibility of the campaign going beyond Super Tuesday? Rookie mistake, that. At least her red-faced, finger-wagging husband is keeping out of things now.

Hillary lost her shot to knock Obama out of the race. Nobody is going to save her if she has a lower amount of pledged delegates at the end of primary season, and if she thinks she can snatch this thing with superdelegates she's crazy. At least half the Democratic Party would sit home on election night. The election is over. She lost.

The Man, The Myth, The Bio

East Bay, California, United States
Problem: I have lots of opinions on politics and culture that I need to vent. If I do not do this I will wind up muttering to myself, and that's only like one or two steps away from being a hobo. Solution: I write two blogs. A political blog that has some evident sympathies (pro-Obama, mostly liberal though I dissent on some issues, like guns and trade) and a culture blog that does, well, cultural essays in a more long-form manner. My particular thing is taking overrated things (movies, mostly, but other things too) down a peg and putting underrated things up a peg. I'm sort of the court of last resort, and I tend to focus on more obscure cultural phenomena.