Mike O., a.k.a. “Data Troll” had an interesting post Dec. 15 entitled “And What If Obama Stops Queen Hillary’s Coronation?“ Well Mike, I think that’s exactly what’s going to happen and here’s why.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) will probably win Iowa big time. He already has a pretty good lead here and remember that second choices matter in our caucuses. If small candidates such as Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), etc. don’t get enough votes at each site to be viable (must get 15% or more of attendees to be viable), then their supporters can either remain undecided (as many did in 1972 when little-known Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter finished second to “uncommitted” here in Iowa) or choose a viable candidate as their second choice (Kerry benefited greatly from these votes in 2004 when he won in Iowa).
It is my hypothesis that most of those small candidate supporters represent anti-Hillary votes, and they will flock to Obama (and Edwards to a certain extent) as a second choice because he represents change after eight years of the “evil” George W. Bush. Once Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) loses Iowa, her “inevitability” is gone. People who were voting for her for that reason (thinking that she was the inevitable nominee) will jump ship, realizing that she’s a flawed candidate who 40% of Americans say they would never vote for in a general election (remember, they’re desperate to regain the White House after eight years of Bush).
Obama will then have all the momentum going into the nation’s first primary, New Hampshire, and with so many subsequent primaries front loaded to the end of January and beginning of February, Hillary will not have the time to recover from these early (and probably sizeable) losses and Obama will have all the money he needs to keep her from trying.
From there, I believe he will role to the nomination.
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The one factor that may save Hillary is the 843 Super-delegates; these are party officials and not selected in the primaries and caucuses. I’m fairly confident that at least 75% of these have given Hillary at least an unofficial commitment. Nothing they can’t go back on, though.
It would be really embarrasing for the Donks if Obama wins the primary/caucus delegates by a good margin, then loses because of the ‘undemocratic’ super-delegate voting bloc. I think the bloc would end up revolting at that point and the back-room deals would be undone.
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