Well, unless something significant happens in the next few days, it looks like the Democrats are going to the convention. Neither Carter nor Kennedy nor Clinton had to wade through a contested conventions, and they were the only Democrats to win in the last sixty years. Disputed conventions in '68, '72, and '80 all yielded losses, big losses. Nineteen eighty-four was also somewhat in dispute and that was a landslide defeat for the Democrats. With the party screwed, it's time to look for external factors. The Democrats need either a bloodbath in Iraq or a complete economic collapse to win.
"Yes, she will" -- that's what they are saying at the Clinton rally. They are stealing the equally weak "Yes, we can'" from the Obama campaign. The Clinton campaign has been run ruthlessly, Karl Rove campaign, just like her husband did in '96 and '92. Rovian tactics didn't win on the Republican side; McCain beat out Romney and Huckabee, who each used pages out of that playbook. But, on the Democratic side, the Clinton campaigns loves the fight. I like fighting, but only if it is against corporations, capitalism, and war-mongering. Clinton, however, likes the politics of personal destruction.
Ultimately, Clinton is all about the personal, so is McCain. Obama, who seemingly is the personality candidate, is ironically not so. He is a movement campaign, about ideas. Clinton is about her and her husband, about her fight, her comeback. McCain is about he Hanoi Hilton and his supposedly impeccable ethics record. Obama is not really about him. (No one seems to know anything about him. They think he is all surface, when he is in fact the smartest candidate with the most innovative, though not always the best, agenda. They think he doesn't have any experience, but only because he's young. He has more legislative experience than Clinton and more time spent with working people. Oh, the ironies...) Obama's campaign is all about ideas. Not about empty terms such as change, but about the country reassessing itself. The campaign presents a communitarian ideal; what can we do for our country, a la Kennedy. (Clinton is all about what she can do for us, that is, give us this or that.) Obama, although not as dogmatic on the issues (sometimes to my chagrin), does have that spirit of Roosevelt, of radically changing thing. Clinton is all about incrimentalism. So, in the end, Obama is the new politics, not of "change" or "hope," but of the community, of the people, and of the larger world. (His speech tonight echoed that.) After so long of personality and individuals trumping ideas, we finally have someone to reverse but course. But the Clinton and their negative campaigning are going to cost us this possibility. President McCain awaits.
Obama lost Texas in four large counties in which Hispanics make up over 80% of the population: Webb, Cameron, Hidalgo, and El Paso. Clitnon netted 130,000 votes out of these counties; Obama lost by about 95,000 overall in the state. Hispanics killed Obama in Texas.
In regards to Ohio, either the exit polls in Ohio were fucked up or 100% of white people who did not finish high school voted for Clinton. While that latter is possible, it's unlikely. In either case, Clinton won Ohio by winning uneducated whites in Northeast part of the state, in cities like Youngstown and Akron. They provided half of Clinton's margin, but Obama only won four counties out of 88! Yikes! Pennsylvania is going to break similarly, if not worse.
"She was doing what George Bush does so well, which was going negative on your opponent but looking happy while doing it." - Mark Halperin on Hillary Clinton
