I really don’t see him moving against Hillary. Unless you live under a rock, you already have a strong positive or negative opinion of her. I’d be hard pressed to find anyone that changed their opinion of her based on anything she said or someone said about her. Obama, he could definitely gain ground on, but could lose it if the Clintons begrudgingly stood behind him.
If it’s clinton, it’s going to come down to who can unify their base better. If Obama is ahead in pledged delegates and she gets the nomination from the superdelegates by horse trading in a smoke-filled room, that’s going to be an uphill battle for her.
If it’s Obama, it will be who can win the independents. Two completely different races. A lot more states will be in play on both sides. (example, he leads McCain by a point in TEXAS polling right now, of all places, and McCain leads by a point in MI and PA.)
^ Who do you honestly think will get the nomination? I was sure it would be Obama until Hillary started picking up steam. If she takes PA by a decent margin I can honestly see her arguement of, “I’m winning the big states we have to win to get the whitehouse” working with the superdelegates. Obama was a shoe in until the NAFTA and preacher scandals but now he’s finding himself in the strange position of defense and he doesn’t seem to handle it well.
On the other hand, as you mentioned, the idea of Hillary getting the nomination through backroom deals could tear your party apart.
So where do you guys tend to go for the information that you base your opinions on? Just keep up on the news? Which networks? Read the candidates books? Academic papers?
I honestly doubt it. Once the dem battle is over you’ll see McCain get a lot of attention, both good and bad.
It will be hard for McCain to beat Obama, just the two of them in a debate together will give a huge advantage to Obama (think JFK vs Nixon in 60).
Not to mention once the McCain “I actually don’t know shit about the middle east” ad gets airtime he’ll have a hard time recovering from that since it hits both his age and his ability to grasp moderately complex foreign policy issues.
I think it will be him unless he gets walloped by >15 points in PA, and loses indiana, which is a tossup state. The difference in delegates in PA is not going to be that big. If he loses it say 55-45, Obama would still likely carry a lead of over 100 delegates, and i think the party elite would be hard pressed to overturn that. If he gets spanked there and loses Indiana, he’d probably go in with a 50ish delegate lead, and I can see them making the case for her based on big states and momentum.
EDIT: that ad rocks. Thanks Joe, i completely forgot about it. There’s one in the works with him saying he’s the first one to admit he’s no expert on the economy as well…
EDIT2: Just saw Fry’s post. I read up on CNN and MSNBC, electoral-vote.com is a good daily recap from a neutral source, and I subscribe to Democracy for America (Dean’s old group) and True Majority Action, progressive lists. Those are usually skewed though, so I just get the issues I find interesting from them, and do my own research.
On another note, I was just reading up on the superdelegate site, which shows who supports who and if they received donations from either candidate. Obama gave $4200 to the Clinton campaign :lol:
wow. Hillary now wants to flip pledged delegates to her side, despite the fact that the states elected them to vote for Obama, because it’s technically not against the rules. :picard: Her communication director tried to spin it, but its pretty obvious where she was heading.
