Obama is Weak in Key Gen. Election States

[ruggerson]

FULL STORY

Boston Phoenix

Two weeks ago we noted that, in spite of all the press hype promoting Barack Obama, the Democrats were only two steps away from chaos in their nomination process.

Now make that one step.

An Obama sweep this past Tuesday was probably never in the cards, given Hillary Clinton's strength among working-class voters and Hispanics, which she's had virtually all along. But a Clinton sweep of Texas and Ohio is something the media did not prepare for, as they ignored the evidence staring them in the face and essentially drove Obama around the track for a victory lap before the race had ever taken place.

Now the party has a huge problem. Sure, Obama has a narrow lead among elected delegates -- a margin he's likely to hold after the run of primaries ends in June. And, on paper, he's still the current favorite to win the nomination in August.

But if Obama emerges as the nominee, it's now clear his campaign is headed into the autumn homestretch with some enormous holes.

[BeatleBoot]

1. 'Ya Think ?

Pretty obvious to me.

[papau]

8. the Starbucks crowd plus AA's and a few college kids win caucuses and red state primaries - but not

the general.

Unless Obama can win PA and thus show he can get the non AA working man vote, we don't have a chance with him at the head of the ticket.

[blogslut]

10. And suddenly I can't see you anymore

n/t

[awaysidetraveler]

11. Yeah, papau... just throw in with McCain, why don't you?

I mean, if you're not going to rally around the winner, then what are you doing here?

[BeatleBoot]

16. Straight from the GOP Call Center....

Hope you're not dialing in from India.

[thunder rising]

2. Particularly with all pot shots from the Clinton camplaign.

[Sulawesi]

3. Maybe the author should have read the latest batch of SUSA polls that have

Obama beating McCain by a larger margin than Hillary...

[blogslut]

4. Obama won Texas

He won the most delegates. He'll be fine in the General election. He woke up a sleeping giant.

[awaysidetraveler]

13. Yep, that's the truth of it.

There's no two Texan elections: there's one Texas and one Texan election with two parts.

[jackson_dem]

22. How do you win Texas in the general by losing the popular vote 51-47?

:eyes:

[blogslut]

26. You win by counting the whole

The caucus counts. You add the two together and each candidate collects their delegates from the results. Obama won more delegates. You know what delegates are, right?

[jackson_dem]

28. They have real elections in the general, not sham contests for the affluent, healthy, and under 60

[blogslut]

31. You have no idea what you're talking about

You take the words of others and parrot them. You use talking points instead of injecting your own opinion.

Have you ever participated in a caucus? They're populated by people passionate enough about their political future that they are willing to do more than just vote. Caucuses are as grass-roots as you can get. Bottom up governance.

I'm a single mom, poor and without a car and I walked to my precinct and I caucused.

[ExtraGriz]

5. everything looks good on paper

until its applied to the real world....and as your post stated, obama looks real good on paper.

[NJSecularist]

6. Hillary is polling just as bad as Obama in Florida

http://www.nbc-2.com/News/documents/080228_masondixonpoll.pdf

McLame: 47, Obama: 37
McLame: 49, Hillary: 40


In Ohio, here are SurveyUSA's poll results
http://www.surveyusa.com/
Obama: 50, McLame: 40
Hillary: 50, McLame: 40

As of right now, the polls aren't showing much of a different in the two biggest key swing states.

[Diane R]

7. Obama has a 'narrow' lead in delegates? Do you know what Hillary would have to do to catch up?

[jackson_dem]

25. I know she doesn't have to do much to erase Obama's narrow popular vote lead

:bounce:

[awaysidetraveler]

9. What Hillary needs to do to win this election:

?

As it stands (notwithstanding superdelegates) Hillary Clinton needs to beat Barak Obama by an average of 24% in the remaining elections to surpass Obama's 141 pledged delegate lead (AP) and win the nomination.

http://www.slate.com/features/delegatecounter /

If she keeps her 32 superdelegate lead, she needs only an 18% average lead over Barak Obama to beat his 109 total delegate lead.

If Florida and Michigan hold new elections and allow Obama to campaign, Rasmussen projects that Hillary Clinton
would win. In Florida she would gain about 55% of the vote, giving her roughly 108 delegates, and Obama would
lose with only 39% of the vote, gaining 77 delegates. However, they are statistically tied in Michigan, meaning
that Obama would likely split the vote there with Clinton. Therefore, Clinton should gain 31 delegates in this
scenario, which we'll call scenario A.

In scenario A, after the FL and MI re-vote, Clinton will only need a 12% average lead over Obama to secure the democratic nomination.

Florida's election put Hillary Clinton at 49% (105 delegates), Barak Obama at 33% (67 delegates),
with Edwards at 14% (13 delegates). So if Florida is seated as is, Clinton stands to gain a net
of 38 pledged delegates. Michigan's election gave Hillary Clinton 55% of the vote (73 delegates),
and "undeclared" might go for Obama in a settlement, leaving him 40% of the vote and 55 delegates.

So if these delegates are seated as is, Clinton will gain a net of 56 delegates in this scenario,
which we'll call scenario B.

In scenario B, Hillary keeps her superdelegate lead, convinces Howard Dean to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates
as is, and then she wins the remaining races by an average of 8% in each of the remaining elections.

Will "scenario B" occur? If it could occur, would it be advisable? The answer to that is no, and again no.
Democrats agree on fair rules where everybody gets to vote and all the votes get counted:
if you can't agree to that, then you're simply not one of us--no matter who you vote for.

So that leaves the 12% hope of Hillary Clinton in scenario A, which is an almost impossible scenario.

Why hasn't the media divulged this mathematical reality to Hillary Clinton and her supporters? Well... it is complicated math, I'll grant you that. But why isn't the media breaking it down and reporting it as a simple fact?

I suspect that they want us to slug it out in the streets. Should we let them divide our party that way?

No.

Best of luck as you find your way back home to the Democratic Party.

[XemaSab]

14. I really dig this map

:thumbsup:

[OHdem10]

12. Hillary,s base is those Americans making under 70K annually

Folks this is 3/4 of the whole country.

This leave 30% of the better educated and rich. The GOP gets from
this group also.

So far Hillary is winning in the states that Democrats must win
in order to win the election.

[Mooney]

18. We'll carry those states in the GE anyway no matter who the nominee is.

Oh, and PS, I make less that 70K a year and I didn't vote for Clinton, and she's my senator.

[suston96]

15. The Democratic nominee must carry BOTH the Clinton base and the Obama base.....

....to win in November.

[cooolandrew]

17. That is inconsequetntial he wins the overall states in polls against mccain. HRC perception ...

perception distortion won't change that. he is front runner and will get superdelegates as the frontrunner. Dean says that is hwo they will vote.

[FlyingSquirrel]

19. This has been debunked already

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4919597&mesg_id=4919597

Didn't see one coherent response to this thread disputing it.

----

The following states have been consistently blue in each election from 1992 to 2004:

California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin

Total electoral votes, 248

----

Okay, now we have three states that lean blue (3 out of the last 4 elections): Iowa, New Hampshire, and New Mexico.
That's 16 of the necessary 22 swing electoral votes we need if we can carry them this year, assuming the Blue states stay Blue.

The above three states have pretty much been a statistical toss-up between Clinton and Obama. 38 delegates for Clinton, 37 for Obama.

We have five states that lean red (3 out of the last 4 elections): Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Montana

I REPEAT: Florida is a red-leaning state. Furthermore Edwards was on the ballot and gained 14.4% of the vote there. The vast majority of his support has since moved to Obama. Those claiming that Hillary has a better chance of swinging this state in 2008 had better come up with a new argument because there's just no way to know for certain just going by those election results, and in any case there's still a good chance that the state will remain red.

-----

Of the remaining red-leaners, Clinton's slight advantage in Arizona (10 EV) is balanced out with Obama's convincing win in Colorado (9 EV). Montana has yet to vote.

So that brings us to the true swing states. They all went Blue in 1992 and 1996, and Red in 2000 and 2004

Arkansas, Ohio, Tennessee, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, Kentucky, West Virginia

Obama convincingly won Louisiana (9 EV) which cancels out Clinton's convincing Arkansas win (6 EV). Kentucky and West Virginia have yet to vote. Missouri and Nevada were statistical ties.

If you look at this graph from Pollster.com you can see that Obama could easily have won Ohio given a few more weeks of campaigning.



That leaves just Tennessee with its 11 EV's as an advantage for Clinton among swing states, and there are plenty of combinations without TN that would swing the election our way (not that I'm conceding TN if Obama wins the nomination).

[JorgeTheGood]

20. I've been posting in several threads ...

that McCain will take California. None of the dems want to believe it. Well now it's starting to work it's way into print.

With BO as the candidate -- the dems take CA for granted at their own peril.

Bookmarking for that "I told ya so" day. LOL

[FlyingSquirrel]

21. If you're hoping CA will fall to McCain so you can tell everyone you told them so

then you definitely do not belong on Democratic Underground.

[JorgeTheGood]

27. That's not what I said and you know it ...

I only pointed out the problems we're going to have in Nov by taking the blue states for granted. This year is a different ballgame and by saying "I told ya so" it might help the dems learn something for the '12 election.

And if anyone is going to kick me off DU -- it certainly as F*CK won't be you ...

I've been a member here since 2001 and have had several articles, essays and pieces published here back in the early days.

If the mods want to toss me for whatever, that's fine but keep your threats to yourself.

[FlyingSquirrel]

30. Not a threat, just an observation prefaced by the word "if"

I don't know why you keep tossing this CA thing in there every few posts, but in any case Dean's "50-state strategy" is not "20-state strategy" so of course it does not mean taking anything for granted including CA.

[JorgeTheGood]

32. I toss the CA warning in there ...

for a couple of reasons ...

1st -- hopefully the dems will pick up on it and adjust the campaigns accordingly -- if we lose CA in the GE -- we lose the election.

2nd -- it's true.

[GOPBasher]

23. Obama always polls much better against McCain than Clinton does.

Hillary has a worse problem: her negative ratings are always near 50%. It is pretty much impossible to win a general election campaign with negative ratings that high.

[NeedleCast]

24. Obama was weak in the Primary

Had no chance to win, or so everyone thought.

Seems he's doing okay now.

[nonconformist]

29. K & R nt