Further Evidence That Clinton Won The Spin War

Two-thirds of Democrats want her to stay in the race if she loses -- loses -- either Ohio or Texas and wins either Ohio or Texas.

The Obama campaign's Bill Burton just e-mailed a paragraph's response to reporters:

The Clinton campaign said this race was all about delegates and that they would be tied or ahead by morning. But despite the 20-point lead in Ohio and Texas that Senator Clinton had just two weeks ago, we will still be well ahead in delegates tonight and they will have failed at achieving their plainly stated goals. They have floated proposal after proposal to try to subvert the will of Democratic voters and retrospectively change the rules of the nominating process, but the bottom line is that it will still be virtually impossible for them to catch up in delegates after tonight.

Comments

It's not a spin war. It's an education war. 90% of the voters do not understand either the math involved - how far ahead Obama really is or the process - this is about winning delegates not states.

Whose fault is that??? Perhaps, over the next week the Party and the media will help set them straight.

Posted by C.B. Todd | March 4, 2008 9:22 AM

Burton underestimates those lapdogs who call themselves journalists but spend their days on the phone with Wolfie.

Posted by anonymous | March 4, 2008 9:25 AM

Yes, Clinton won the spin war over the past couple of weeks. But keep in mind, the political reporters want the race to continue. It's high ratings. She's also been helped by a lot of conservative media that's decided that Obama is a bigger threat in November than she is.

Posted by Helter | March 4, 2008 9:32 AM

Yep, for all the talk of the media being biased against Hillary, the fact is that they simply want the race to be competitive and continue on. So they were on Obama's side when he was down and now they're on Hillary's when she's down. Spin wars tend to be more about what the media wants rather than how well either side's argument or presentation is.

Posted by Mike | March 4, 2008 9:38 AM

Here's hoping for a big Hillary victory tonight! Hillary climbs back in the race, Barack goes as negative as Hillary, both their negatives go through the roof as they burn through cash over the next few months and McCain skates to victory in November. Vote Hillary! MEGA DITTOS from Texas!

Posted by Dave | March 4, 2008 9:44 AM

Remember, regardless of all the other hype you hear today, she has to win by AT LEAST ten points and probably fifteen points in both Texas and Ohio. This is the math--not the hype. If she wins by less, then she stays in and this thing drags on, but there is no real shot at overcoming the pledged delegate lead.

This means the only way she can win is change the rules after the fact (FL and MICH) or convince the Supers to overturn the will of the people. Either one will destroy the Democratic Party. This is not pandering. Can you imagine how the African American community will react when the first potential black president is beaten by what they will see as a "rigged" election?

Devastating.

Posted by Lance | March 4, 2008 9:45 AM

If the nomination process is still about earning delegates, and accepting that most people who vote in the primary are not *that* stupid, why should anybody care about the spin?
The only issue I care about is significant number of GOP fellas voting for Hillary and distorting the math (of course, non-Dem fellas did distort the math earlier -- in Obama's favor).

Posted by sandrina | March 4, 2008 9:47 AM

What's bothering me about this whole thing is how Clinton tries to win through such shady means: lawsuits, whisper campaigns, involving the freaking Canadian government for chrissakes. If she wins it won't feel good to anyone but her most ardent supporters.

Posted by Lesley | March 4, 2008 9:50 AM

My feeling is that the automatic delegates will have sway and they will come down on the side of Hillary.

Posted by Tim K | March 4, 2008 9:53 AM

I think the issue is not so much non-Democrats voting in the primary (I say this since I am one), but non-Democrats voting who have no intention of even considering voting Dem in the general and are voting strictly for (in their minds) the weaker candidate.

It may be a legal vote to walk into the booth and vote for someone because they are more vulnerable to your candidate in the general, but it doesn't seem ethical.

Here's hoping the exits ask questions designed to discover what percentage of people are doing this. (Although, if you've already stooped that low, what's to stop you from lying on the exit...)

Posted by danweasel | March 4, 2008 9:55 AM

Another split decision here (or a modest Clinton win) is goig to be disaster for the party. While I have a preference between the candidates, I'd prefer the other candidate to win decisively than the civil war to continue.

Posted by JK | March 4, 2008 9:59 AM

"Vote Hillary! MEGA DITTOS from Texas!"

Well, it does seem to be a good time to be a McCain supporter.

Posted by Helter | March 4, 2008 10:04 AM

Won't it be ironic if Clinton wins Texas because of all those Republicans voting for her in the hope of stopping Obama's campaign. I'll bet then the Republican crossovers will start to count -- even though it's abundantly clear that they won't be voting for her in the general.

Posted by Amy | March 4, 2008 10:08 AM

I think it's adorable that the Clintons' strategy is to spend all their energy and money winning beauty contests and Sunday morning roundtable praise. Meanwhile those super lame Obama folks are all, delegates this, math that! Boo! You really stepped in it this time, Obama folks!

The Clintons totally won the spin war this weekend. They won the spin war on Super Tuesday also! That was awesome when they did that. Maybe they'll get momentum and win 65% of the delegates in the remaining states! Up next: the Wyoming caucuses and the Mississippi primary. Make it happen, Clinton campaign! You can TOTALLY do it, I promise.

Posted by Joe Drymala | March 4, 2008 10:11 AM

I'm an Obama supporter & agree. His team was stuck in reactive mode this week.

No matter the result today, I think they will understand going forward that the "inevitability argument" doesn't work for him either. Average voters don't want to hear wonkish stuff about complicated delegate math. They want to see someone who doesn't take any vote for granted, even as a frontrunner.

So I expect he'll be back to fighter mode after today's vote & not a moment too soon. The one bright side is that HRC's gutter tactics give him the opening to go after her agressively, painting her as the establishment holding onto power at any cost & refusing to put the good of the party before her own self interest. THAT will strike a cord with folks.

Posted by KC | March 4, 2008 10:15 AM

"Perhaps, over the next week the Party and the media will help set them straight."

Not a snowball's chance in Hell. Wolfson and Penn have won the spin war -- and it DOES matter. They've consistently been better at managing expectations during this campaign. 3 weeks ago, everyone was saying TX and Ohio were Clinton "must wins," today, the pundits are saying if Obama loses, people will begin to ask "why?"

They also have led the sheepish press corp to the Rezko garbage, using nothing more than innuendo, on their timetable.

They also managed to convince the world that HRC was getting screwed by the media. Since when? We never heard a peep from her about unfairness until she started losing. It's laughable, but its working.

Obama's team has failed to 1) paint HRC as the status quo, 2) fuel the sentiment that many have that she is shady and secretive, by pushing her unwillingness to demonstrate the most basic act of transparency: releasing her tax returns from 06 and 07, and her WH schedules

Spin does matter. It shapes the national discussion. I have been frustrated by Obama's media people for a while now.

And he has to do what McCain did after the NYT's sex scandal story; he has to hold one presser, answer all questions, and put this Rezko story to bed. He didnt do anything wrong; his people need to realize that this "I've already talked about this plenty" line is a loser.

Posted by "My Name Is My Name" | March 4, 2008 10:36 AM

The spin war or the delegate war--which do you think a candidate would rather win?

Anyway, I want to note that tonight we will once again get a test of what is the dominant explanatory hypothesis in the primaries: demographics or regionalism. In particular, demographics would suggest a great night for Clinton in Ohio, Texas, and even Vermont. Regionalism suggests Ohio and Texas should be close (they are states on the borders of the Obama and Clinton regions), Rhode Island should be for Hillary, and Vermont should be for Obama.

Posted by DTM | March 4, 2008 10:38 AM

So I expect he'll be back to fighter mode after today's vote & not a moment too soon.

It won't make any difference. He won't win Pennsylvania, no primary in between will matter, and she'll get the nomination.

Again--pledged delegates don't matter.

Average voters don't want to hear wonkish stuff about complicated delegate math. They want to see someone who doesn't take any vote for granted, even as a frontrunner.

They also, unlike Obama's supporters, understand the difference between California and Nebraska, New York and Idaho, and Ohio and Vermont.

He has very little chance if Hillary pulls out Ohio only. If she pulls out both, he's in trouble.

Posted by Cal | March 4, 2008 10:46 AM

It is strange to simultaneously consider the two propositions, "Clinton is winning the spin war" and "the media is biased against Clinton." I could believe that sometimes one is true and sometimes the other, but surely not both at once.

Posted by Steven the all-knowing | March 4, 2008 10:54 AM

Tom Browkaw says that Obama has 50 superdelegates waiting to declare for him. Mark Halperin has been intimating such for days in his videolog.

http://thepage.time.com/

Wednesday, Obama will have shown that Hillary can not put a dent in his pledged delegate lead, out raised her in February and he has pulled even with her in superdelegates. Block, jab, upper cut. This is boxing folks, not football where touch downs count more than field goals. It's all about points - and knockouts are rare.

Posted by C.B. Todd | March 4, 2008 10:54 AM

Cal, you are very seriously deluded. Tom Brokaw says the Obama camp has 50 superdelegates ready to come out for him after March 4. It's a delegate race, and pledged delegates are 80% or so of the title -- it's very unlikely a large enough majority of the superdelegates would go against the pledged delegate winner to make the difference, especially considering Obama has many very powerful Dems behind him: Pelosi, Kennedy, Gore, etc..

Last I checked, a lot of people live in Colorado, Minnesota, Virginia, Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois, Washington, Georgia, and Maryland -- all states in play for Democrats in 20008 -- and Obama won most of those states by very large margins.

Posted by Ban Johnson | March 4, 2008 10:59 AM

At this point, the question isn't really who wins the spin war with the public or the media. It's who wins the spin war with the superdelegates. The public is generally going to buy what the media is selling and the media has a vested interest in making the campaign go on, so of course the latter is going to buy the Clinton spin, and the public will ingest it indirectly through them.

Superdelegates are different. They're much more likely to be aware of how bad it would be for the party if this goes down to the convention, and also of how virtually the only way for Clinton to win is for that to happen. A number of superdelegates have tipped their hands - Richardson, notably, who said that whoever has a pledged delegate lead after Tuesday should be the nominee. This is another way of saying "Obama should be the nominee."

If Obama really has 50 superdelegates in his back pocket, to unleash, presumably, tomorrow, that suggests that they, unlike the media, haven't bought Clinton's spin.

Posted by John | March 4, 2008 11:05 AM

I would rather win the delegate war. But the spin needs to get much tighter and crisper from Obama.

He needs to puncture holes in the narrative HRC is weaving. He's been biting his tongue for fear of the counterpunch: "I thought you were a different kind of politician."

But if he keeps this up, he'll be in trouble, because most people dont pay too close attention to the day to day stuff, but they'll buy into HRC's experience claims.

It's interesting: HRC attacks Obama's perceived strengths directly. It's the Rove approach to politics. Obama has NOT attacked HRC's perceived strengths directly, and I have been scratching my heads for months as to why?

Posted by "My Name Is My Name" | March 4, 2008 11:06 AM

Hey Cal,

I think you're in the wrong party. This here's the "Democratic Party" not the "Automatic Delegate Party."

And by the way, what's automatic about those delegates? Can you roll up their windows with a button, or is it more a transmission issue?

Posted by James in NJ | March 4, 2008 11:26 AM

"Can you imagine how the African American community will react when the first potential black president is beaten by what they will see as a "rigged" election?" - Lance

Quite possibly the most important point made in this entire thread.

Posted by socctty | March 4, 2008 11:55 AM

If Clinton takes the popular vote in Texas and Ohio today, Obama should recognize the inevitable, and just pull the plug on his campaign for the good of the party. After all, there will be no chance of him winning the nomination if he can't win in any of the big states.

Posted by mw | March 4, 2008 12:28 PM

The bottomline is there is only so much "trouble" you can get into when most of the voting has already happened and you are way ahead.

Posted by DTM | March 4, 2008 12:43 PM

If Clinton takes the popular vote in Texas and Ohio today, Obama should recognize the inevitable, and just pull the plug on his campaign for the good of the party. After all, there will be no chance of him winning the nomination if he can't win in any of the big states.

Ah yes, invoking the Putinesque "40 states don't count" metric, which will certainly convince the superdelegates to support Hillary's cause. Well played, mw!

Posted by Joe Drymala | March 4, 2008 12:51 PM

Joe, Have you ever been in any of those states? I think most people there would agree that this decision should be made in California and New York.

Posted by mw | March 4, 2008 1:05 PM

Okay, I'm a fervent Obama supporter and cannot stand the tactics Clinton has been using in this campaign.

But isn't there an argument that keeping her in is a good thing? First of all, I think Obama can keep beating her, which further validates his stance as the nominee, whereas all this pressure on her to drop out will be seen as undemocratic.

Second, I'm kinda glad Obama is getting vetted now. Getting Rezko out of the way is a good thing. When McCain tries to bring it up this summer, he can say "hey, we already went over this in the winter, this is old material, or do you want us to bring up the Keating Five?" Much better to be hammered by a fellow Democrat than a Republican.

Third, it keeps the party in the headlines and keeps interest high. We are turning out new members to the party, generating buzz, all while McCain sits on page ten.

Maybe I'm rationalizing, but I'm not certain that a good competitive race is going to tear the party apart. I'm beginning to think its a good thing.

Posted by Jayhawk Max | March 4, 2008 1:50 PM

Jayhawk, I think you made several good points. The last thing Obama wants is to appear as if he's been the beneficiary of an unfair process. I know it's BS, but it's become increasingly clear that the MSM will likely paint Dems pressing HRC to drop out tomorrow as just that...which just plays into her "poor, picked on me" stance.

However, Obama CAN still beat her convincingly in the upcoming contests & I think he'll be better positioned to do so now that the Clinton's new strategy is crystal clear (and they've p*ssed off a whole new group of voters with this week's gutter tactics).

So the Obama camp may have been a bit flat-footed this week, but you can bet that they're already gearing up to pivot & fight back agressively...thereby proving that nothing is being "handed to him" & that he CAN withstand withering attacks. Add to that the fundraising totals & superdelegate endorsements yet to be announced...and he's looking pretty darn good.

I agree.

Posted by KC | March 4, 2008 2:34 PM

Joe, Have you ever been in any of those states? I think most people there would agree that this decision should be made in California and New York.

D'oh. I couldn't read your ironic tone earlier. Well pwned, mw!

Posted by Joe Drymala | March 4, 2008 2:41 PM

Win, lose, or draw, both Bill and Hillary Clinton still have some powerful explaining to do: http://theseedsof9-11.com

Posted by Peggy McGilligan | March 4, 2008 4:56 PM