So, today some one thousand six hundred and eighty-one delegates to the Democratic National Convention will be chosen, along with their pledges to vote for (presumably) either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. The first candidate to 2,205 wins (including superdelegates); the candidates have already picked up around two hundred each. I predict that the winner (vaddevah dat means) on Tuesday will get something like a thousand delegates, thus propelling her to a nice lead, and requiring the loser, with a stinking 700, to take nearly two-thirds of the remainder to catch up over the Spring. Or vice versa. Not insurmountable, but let’s try to figure it in baseball terms.
Call the 4,410 total delagates and superdelegates more or less equivalent to the 162 games. Each delegate, then, is more or less twenty-seven and two ninths games. After today, we’ll be just about 67 games into the season. The middle of June. If I’m right, and the Senator from New York has more or less 1,200 delegates by the end of the day, let’s call that record 44-23, with Senator from Illinois being, say, 32-35. I’m not saying he would be out of it, but that’s a twelve game lead.
Of course, unlike in baseball, from here on in it’s a two-team race; every win for Chicago a loss for New York and vice-versa. And this is all predicated on my prediction, not to mention my arithmetic. And it is only over, as Yogi Berra said, when it is over. But as with baseball, it is unlikely that the team that’s winning in the middle of June will suddenly reveal themselves to be worse than the team that has been losing; what is likely to happen today is that we either find out that Barack Obama really is better at this campaign stuff than Hillary Clinton, or the other way around. Whichever it is, I don’t really think it’ll change much between here and Texas.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
It’s also Fat Tuesday, in addition to being Super Tuesday, which puts me in mind of New Orleans. People are still displaced from their homes years after the flood, though not because there hasn’t been enough time to get them the help they need. The restoration of Good Government is at stake this year. I hope voters keep that in mind this November.
it feels like support for the republicans is about as deep as a spilled glass of sour milk. but it’s not clear that mccain or romney would lose a “good government” fight outright.
Fat Tuesday! Pancakes!
I don’t think Goo-Goo ever wins at the Presidential level, does it? I mean, yes, you are right that it is at stake, but as a matter of rhetoric and politics, Goo-Goo is for some reason not (usually) persuasive.
Thanks,
-V.
There was an interesting argument over at TPM about incumbency vs. challengers. Don’t know if it applies, but it was interesting.
peace
Matt