I've been watching Clinton's strategy for the end game and like her strategy for the , it confuses me. It looks like she's more or less willing to hold serve, beat Obama in IN, lose in NC, beat him in WV and KY, lose in OR, beat him in PR, and hope for maybe an upset in SD or MT.
March primaries
What strikes me about that strategy is that that's a way to not lose, not a way to win. I play that way in poker tournaments sometimes and just try to outlast people, and the thing is that that's a great way to get into the money, but it makes it next to impossible to actually win.
So how can Clinton win? Well it's still a longshot, but this is the chance that I see. Feel free to tell me where I'm wrong but this is a good faith effort so try to keep the insulting to a minimum.
1) Reach out to the African American community.
This is crucial for anything else to happen. How do Democrats win elections? They keep the margin as low as possible with Caucasian voters and run up the score in the African American and Latino community. Look at the exit polls from PA in 2004. Kerry lost white men by 10, white women by 2, but won 84-16 among African Americans. Look at Maryland. Same pattern, only more pronounced. Look at Wisconsin, a state not usually associated with minorities, and you see the same pattern. Michigan? Bush had a 10 point lead among Caucasians, Kerry a 79 point lead among African Americans.
Clinton should be expected to do far better among Caucasian women, but that wouldn't be enough to make up for what would happen if African Americans would stay home. Superdelegates know this and comments like Clyburn's terrify them. There's no way that superdelegates can move en masse when there is the chance of a backlash. In the same way that Obama has to show ability to make progress among white men, Clinton has to make inroads among African Americans or it doesn't matter what else she does. She doesn't have to win them as a group anymore than Obama has to win over women. However, she does have to stop angering a core group.
2) Win North Carolina.
Clinton is playing to not lose now. That's a great strategy to keep yourself in the game, but if she actually wants to win, she needs to take some chances. When you're down late in a football game, you have to pass the ball and not worry about interceptions. Pour the kinds of resources into North Carolina that Obama did into Pennsylvania. If she really thinks she can win, she could lend the campaign money and pay herself back out of the general election funds. A 2-3 point win in Indiana would be enough for her to keep going, but if she loses North Carolina by 15 points, she'd be in a worse position than she was before Pennsylvania in both popular vote count and delegate count with only a few small states to go.
Clinton needs a game changer and this late in the game, North Carolina is pretty much the only one she has left. She needs to stop worrying about playing the expectations game and instead fight like she can win.
3) Stop trying to use Michigan in arguments.
The Florida election is important to Clinton's chances. It nets her 40 delegates and a 300,000 gain in the popular vote count. While it wasn't supposed to be a contested election, she could make a decent case that a new one wouldn't have results that would be that different. Any comeback needs to have those votes. There's only one problem. She's tying Florida to Michigan.
Unlike Florida, Michigan isn't seen as a fair election to anyone other than the biggest Clinton supporters. Not only was Obama not on the ballot, but Clinton made a move on the uncommitted delegates, filling many of those with her own supporters. Can you make an argument that Michigan should count as voted on? Sure, but it won't convince anyone who doesn't already believe. Fighting for the Michigan vote wastes resources, wastes good will, gives more power to the argument that Clinton will do anything to win, and weakens an argument (Florida) that she actually could theoretically use to her advantage. It's good red meat for her supporters, but the goal in arguing is to bring people to your side. Anything that involves Michigan isn't convincing.
3.1) Stop arguing about debates
This is a minor point, hence the .1, but it's psychologically crucial. Demanding more debates is what people do when they know that they've lost the election. She's not going to get them - like it or not the ABC debate gave Obama all of the cover he needs to not schedule any more - and it feeds into the perception that she's going to lose. If she wants to win, she needs to abandon that and try something else.
4) Come up with an overwhelming case in some metric.
The problem for Clinton here is twofold. Obama has the easier case to make because he just has to have the superdelegates go along with the primary elections whereas Clinton has to get them to flip that result. Moreover, Obama's lead in pledged delegates means that he has to move far fewer people over to his side than Clinton does. Clinton needs an incredibly powerful argument. Why isn't the popular vote case she's making convincing anyone? Because it involves first adding Florida, and then adding Michigan, and even then it's a tiny lead. Why isn't the electability argument winning her support? Because the difference between her lead and Obama's lead in many states is small, and she has the opposite problem in Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, and Wisconsin, all of which she'll need even if she can flip Ohio. She needs a case that's powerful, something that doesn't have two or three if clauses in it. What is it? I don't know, but if she wants to win - as opposed to continue to not lose - she needs to find it.
This, of course, is the crucial step that would need to be done no matter what happens in the others. I don't know how she can do this, but achieving 1-3 above would at least give her a shot of the metric existing.
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