Mississippi Primary Results thread

[CaptainChewbacca]

Polls closed about five minutes ago, exit polls have it Obama 69 / Hillary 31. So much for comebacks.

[Sriad]

Haven't you heard? Mississippi Doesn't Matter.

[consequences]

IIRC, she didn't bother to show up there this last week. I'm frankly amazed that she could get that many after that kind of display of contempt.

[Darth Wong]

I'm really getting tired of Clinton explaining that more than half the states in the country don't matter.

It sounds good to say that certain states are really important, but they're only important if you were competitive in all of the other states. If you get your ass kicked in those other states, then Florida and Texas and the other Clinton-Approved™ states don't matter at all.

[Flagg]

I'm really getting tired of Clinton explaining that more than half the states in the country don't matter.

It sounds good to say that certain states are really important, but they're only important if you were competitive in all of the other states. If you get your ass kicked in those other states, then Florida and Texas and the other Clinton-Approved™ states don't matter at all.

The sad part is that there is actually pretty sound logic in what Clinton is saying. Democrats don't tend to win Presidential elections in alot of the states Obama has won primaries and caucuses in. So in the general election, those states likely won't be giving their electoral votes to the Democratic nominee.

The real problem with this strategy (and it's the DLC guide to campaigning, which is why they continued to lose for 12 years) is that it doesn't even bother asking the people in those states for their votes. That's why Howard Dean did his 50 state strategy and managed to make gains in "red states". Because for the first time in over a decade, there was actually a concerted effort to win elections in states that the DLC was willing to just completely give up on. I think that it will probably not make a difference in states like Mississippi and Alabama this presidential election. That said, it might hurt the Democrats chances of electing state and federal congresspeople there if the Presidential nominee has that attitude about those states.

[Invictus ChiKen]

There calling it for Obama now

On a side note you can go to the CNN website and play with a Delegate Counter yourself.

Delegate Counter

Playing with this thing showed me something. Depending on how big Obama wins Mississippi. A Clinton win in Pennsylvania (as she is expected to) may not give her the lead.

I goofed around in it and got a Scenario where Obama cross the finish line after Purto Rico after a MINOR loss in Peensylvania and major Victories the rest of the way.

[Darth Wong]

I'm really getting tired of Clinton explaining that more than half the states in the country don't matter.

It sounds good to say that certain states are really important, but they're only important if you were competitive in all of the other states. If you get your ass kicked in those other states, then Florida and Texas and the other Clinton-Approved™ states don't matter at all.

The sad part is that there is actually pretty sound logic in what Clinton is saying. Democrats don't tend to win Presidential elections in alot of the states Obama has won primaries and caucuses in. So in the general election, those states likely won't be giving their electoral votes to the Democratic nominee.

I dunno about that; if you look at the real demographics of Clinton's victories rather than the red state/blue state dichotomy, she wins among rural conservative voters. In other words, people most likely to have false teeth, wear NASCAR hats, and vote Republican in the general election. I seriously doubt they're going to swing her way against a war hero like McCain.

[Flagg]

I'm really getting tired of Clinton explaining that more than half the states in the country don't matter.

It sounds good to say that certain states are really important, but they're only important if you were competitive in all of the other states. If you get your ass kicked in those other states, then Florida and Texas and the other Clinton-Approved™ states don't matter at all.

The sad part is that there is actually pretty sound logic in what Clinton is saying. Democrats don't tend to win Presidential elections in alot of the states Obama has won primaries and caucuses in. So in the general election, those states likely won't be giving their electoral votes to the Democratic nominee.

I dunno about that; if you look at the real demographics of Clinton's victories rather than the red state/blue state dichotomy, she wins among rural conservative voters. In other words, people most likely to have false teeth, wear NASCAR hats, and vote Republican in the general election. I seriously doubt they're going to swing her way against a war hero like McCain.

Oh, I completely agree with you. I was just saying that most of the states that went for Obama in the primaries likely won't go for whoever the Democratic nominee is in the general election. At the same time, most of the states Clinton won likely will go for the Democratic nominee in the general election.

As a side note, I was dicking around with that Delegate Counter Invictus ChiKen posted and found something really interesting. Even if Obama and Clinton split the delegates of all the remaining states, Obama needs only 126 of the 350 remaining (by CNN's estimate) super-delegates to secure the nomination.

[Darth Wong]

There calling it for Obama now

"They're", not "there". I fucking hate the way Internet illiterates routinely butcher words like that.

[Invictus ChiKen]

"They're", not "there". I fucking hate the way Internet illiterates routinely butcher words like that.

D'OH! Well now I feel rather intelligent... Back to the paper for me...

Writes fifteen times "There is a location; they're is the contraction for they are."

[D.Turtle]

The sad part is that there is actually pretty sound logic in what Clinton is saying. Democrats don't tend to win Presidential elections in alot of the states Obama has won primaries and caucuses in. So in the general election, those states likely won't be giving their electoral votes to the Democratic nominee.

The logic is wrong on so many levels it simply isn't funny.

First of all, it assumes the Democrats will only be competitive in states they were competitive during the last election. Second of all, it assumes that if Obama doesn't beat Clinton in a state, he will lose to McCain in that state. Third of all, it assumes that Clinton will win the states against McCain that she beat Obama in.

SurveyUSA did a nation-wide poll looking at a general election match-up between Obama and McCain and between Clinton and McCain and then looked at the electoral votes that would have been won if the states would vote at exactly the percentage they got (in summarizing the results and awarding the electoral votes they ignored the Margin of Error).

Results:
Obama 280 vs McCain 258
Clinton 276 vs McCain 262

Seems close? It isn't. Take a look at this picture showing the Margins of the victories in those Matchups (From here):
Obama vs McCain:

Clinton vs McCain:

"Strong" is a 15%+ margin, "favorable" is a 10%+ margin, "lean" is a 5%+ margin, and "tossup" is less than a 5% margin for either candidate.

Looking at those results: Hey look, Texas leans to McCain if Clinton is the candidate, but is a tossup if Obama is the candidate. And hey, Obama and Clinton both win Ohio, New York, and California!

The electability argument is pure and utter BS.

Playing with this thing showed me something. Depending on how big Obama wins Mississippi. A Clinton win in Pennsylvania (as she is expected to) may not give her the lead.

The only way Clinton could go into the lead after Pennsylvani is if she would win each and every single delegate from that state. Even catching Obama with a dead girl AND a live boy at the same time on national TV live[/live] couldn't hand her such a victory.

I goofed around in it and got a Scenario where Obama cross the finish line after Purto Rico after a MINOR loss in Peensylvania and major Victories the rest of the way.

Even if Clinton would win Pennsylvania with a huge margin (127-31, which is close to a total blow-out) and Obama only ties everything else, he would still be the winner of the nomination. You did include superdelegates, didn't you?

Try to look at the amount of victories and the margins of the victories that Clinton would need to catch up with Obama in pledged delegates - they just aren't realistically possible.

[Patrick Degan]

I think that Obama actually could win several "red" states, enough to capture the electoral majority and win the White House. He's following the same "50-state campaign" philosophy as Howard Dean, not conceding a single battleground if he can help it, treating each state as important and spending the effort in those states. He has made it clear that, to him, the voters in those states count.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton has destroyed her own credibility with millions of voters in states she's dismissed as unimportant (i.e. ones she's lost in). Those voters will not forget and if they do, the GOP propagandakorps will make sure they're reminded of it every day until November. It is certain a good number of them would not pull the lever for Hillary Clinton in November in the wake of her expressed contempt, and that can make the difference in a close race where Diebolding has its chance to tip the balance.

Obama can negate John McCain's "experience" by convincingly attacking his judgement —as he has already done. By contrast, if Hillary attempts to wheel out the experience card, it will be all too easy to stack up her few years in the Senate and her eight years as First Lady as a house of cards to be knocked over by a man with more than 20+ years in Congress and a war veteran to boot, and her own vote for the war in Iraq can be turned against her. And her own arguments against Obama on the grounds of inexperience can be turned against her by GOP flacks pointing out that her husband, Bill Clinton, had even less experience (zero, in fact) in national politics before winning the White House in '92 and that her current anti-Obama argument is hypocritical on its face; the clear sign that she would say or do anything simply to grasp onto power for herself. Thus, her strengths end up turning into weaknesses.

Finally, Obama is young, dynamic, articulate. John McCain will look like Dead Man Walking next to him. It has been an observable phenomenon that in presidential races, the man who looks like a loser next to his opponent invariably is the loser in the general election. This last point is salient because, for all our veneer of civilisation, we're still basically primates and choose our pack-leader in much the same way —by looking at the primate who most shamelessly waves the biggest dick before the rest of the pack. This is not to say Hillary could never win, just that the terms would be slightly different —the female being strong enough to box the ears of the dick-waver and showing him up as weak before the rest of the pack. But since Hillary has already conceded ground by endorsing McCain's experience in comparison to Obama, she's negated her own credibility on the attack. And by essentially dismissing hope and the desire for change as motives to vote for Obama, she's negated any effort to convince the voters why they should pick her as opposed to McCain, since she's already presented herself —quite bizarrely for a would-be challenger to the incumbent party in the White House— as the anti-change candidate. And again, her strengths are turned into weaknesses.

In short, Obama has a better chance in this race than the red/blue state dichotomy suggests, and has a better chance of prevailing over McCain than a Hillary Clinton who has already negated her own strengths ahead of the game and who is a person a lot of people could get very excited against, even if they can't get very excited for McCain.