Of course, nobody asked, but here's what I think happened last night in politics.
I think Hillary finally found something that would stick to Obama: the experience issue. With the economy seeming to be headed downward and the now-always underlying fear of terrorism, she found something that would stay in people's minds. And ultimately, with President Bush's ratings in the teens and 20s and what many consider to be his foreign policy blunders, it seems to be a legitimate fear for a lot of people.
When I was watching the election returns last night, I heard someone say that Obama had called himself a blank slate where people could project their own political feelings onto him, which so far had been a good thing. But with Hillary finding the experience chink in his armor, it was a negative because people then could look at him and think: "Hmmm. Haven't we already done the inexperienced Washington outsider thing already? And how's that working out for us?" Although one could make the case that her experience isn't that much greater than Obama's.
And again, it was negative campaigning that ended up doing it, at least partially, with the 3am phone ad being one of the predominant pieces.
btw for one of the best skewerings of that ad, fast forward to 6:40 of this Daily Show clip from Monday night.
So what now? Well, obviously no one's dropping out now and it looks more and more likely that we're heading to some kind of convention show down. I do wonder if the Michigan and Florida primaries are going to play into this at all. But one thing is clear, the Democrats are going to be in the news for a lot longer than the Republicans, with their "presumptive" nominee being taken care of in John McCain, undoubtedly causing resigned consternation among many parts of the party.
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2 comments:
Phil was wrong. Don't skip to 6:40 in the video. The rest is too funny to miss.
I'm glad you asked, Phil, because I'm pretty perplexed about yesterday's results as well. For one, I think the dual pseudo-scandals for Obama (The NAFTA misunderstanding and Rezko trial) tarnished his relatively undefiled image a bit.
There are a couple of interesting sites that let you calculate up the delegates for future primaries to come up with possible scenarios for the nomination. Here's one of the nicer ones... http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/27/obama-clinton-election-oped-cx_jb_0227delegates.html
What's fascinating is that if you plug in yesterday's numbers, and then assume ever other primary will be a loss by Obama at around 48% of the vote to Hillary's 52%, he STILL gains the needed 2025 delegates. My guess is, if Hillary's new-found revival continues, count on the issues of Florida & Michigan delegates coming back to haunt the party.
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