Black Box Report

Faced with weeks of questions over whether Hillary will drop out, Clinton supporters are understandably elated over her victories in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island, ending her losing streak. Of course, Clinton had been expected to win all of these contests up until 2 weeks ago, but...Exciting! And blogger Taylor Marsh is more excited than most:

Eleven wins at Barack's back and he couldn't close it out; couldn't seal the deal.

In the opening stands Hillary Clinton. The first woman who ever had a chance to change the country and the world in one swoop. A woman with the U.S. military Armed Forces standing by her side and backing her up. Strength beyond wisdom, which comes through alliances gotten through years of hard work. A woman with a lifetime of experience applying for The Job.

A fighter, but not just to win. To lead. To change the world. A woman at the helm. It can happen. Believe.

Then it's on to Wyoming, and Mississippi, and Pennsylvania, and Guam! Yeeeaarrghh! I imagine if Taylor Marsh and Andrew Sullivan shared the same blog, it would lead to its utter annhiliation, much like mixing matter and antimatter.

Clinton's supporters can "believe" all they like, but the bottom line is the delegate spread has barely budged, and the math hasn't changed:

Clinton has changed the momentum of the race, and has clearly bought herself some more time on the campaign trail, but the cold, hard numbers haven't changed much at all. Indeed, in some ways, they're worse, given that Clinton is running out of time (and states) to catch Obama in the overall delegate count.

But she can't quit now, having just won 2 big contests...and Rhode Island...especially when her new strategy has just begun to work:

The Clinton campaign got rough and nasty over the last week-plus. And they got results. That may disgust you or it may inspire you with confidence in Hillary's abilities as a fighter. But wherever you come down on that question is secondary to the fact that that's how campaign's work. Opponents get nasty. And what we've seen over the last week is nothing compared to what Barack Obama would face this fall if he hangs on and wins the nomination.

So I think the big question is, can he fight back?

While the Obama campaign is to be commended for taking (mostly) the high road during this campaign, he'll almost have to fight back at some point, as Clinton's campaign is sounding more and more like the Rush Limbaugh dittoheads that assisted her win in Texas:

It's a similar story in Texas, where Limbaugh has the most listeners of any of these states. Obama won the Republican vote 52-47, but conservatives (22 percent of all voters...) went against Obama. For the first time since Super Tuesday, they were Clinton's best ideological group: She won them 53-43. And Clinton won 13 percent of the people who said Obama was the most electable candidate.

...Clinton won the Texas primary by about 98,000 votes out of 2.8 million cast. If the exits are right, about 252,000 of those voters were Republicans, and about 618,000 were conservatives. Clinton truly might have won the Texas primary on the backs of Rush Limbaugh listeners.

What's this mean? Psychologically it's hilarious: Every joke that's ever been told about how the right needs the Clintons to survive is true. Hillary Hatred is the gas, the ethanol, and the rocket fuel of the staggering GOP.

You would think that getting cheered on by those who have Democrats' worst interests at heart would make one think long and hard about a) what a protracted nomination does to the party's chances in November, and b) how low your lowball attacks really need to be. Now Hillary has to decide whether soldiering on is worth the destruction of her party:

She can't win. But she can ensure that Obama is so bloodied, to use Rush Limbaugh's description of the Clinton strategy, that Obama is damaged goods come the fall. After all, if Hillary can't get the nomination, then nobody should. While I respect the arguments that the lengthy primary process has skyrocketed Democratic turnout and organizing, it's also tearing us and our candidates apart. And get ready for Team Clinton to go even more negative after last night. That means more racism and more made-for-GOP-TV statements about how John McCain is the most experienced candidate for president.

At the very least, Team Clinton could stop with stuff like this:

They say irony is dead, but Hillary Clinton's campaign may be on a mission to prove that wrong. In a memo today, the Clinton camp went negative on Barack Obama for, yes, going negative on Clinton. "Senator Obama lost Ohio and Texas because voters had doubts about his ability to serve as Commander-in-Chief and steward of the economy. But instead of addressing those concerns, how is Senator Obama responding? By attacking Senator Clinton," the memo reads.

"With one of his top foreign policy advisers acknowledging yesterday that he is not ready to take the 3am call and one of his principal supporters in Texas unable to name a single legislative accomplishment, Senator Obama's time would be better spent making the case for why he can do the most important job in the world just three years out of the state senate."
......
Forget the inherent internal contradictions here; the Clinton campaign hasn't made any secret of its negative campaigning strategy over recent days. As a colleague observed -- correctly, we think -- the memo is sort of like starting a fight, then complaining when the other guy hits you back.

If Clintons didn't keep stooping to the kind of underhanded, bare-knuckle politics they complained for years were used against them, they might have had the nomination sewn up by now.

Like children, Florida and Michigan broke the rules of the house and threw tantrums about it, and DNC Poppa Howard Dean grounded them both. But they can't stay grounded if everyone is to attend the family reunion at the national convention in Denver. So what to do?

We're in the Democratic sandbox again, with the kiddies wrestling over the toys and their National Committee nannies telling them to play nice and follow the rules.

But Florida (Republican) Governor Charlie Krist and Michigan's Jennifer Granholm are being soccer moms asking for the scores to count, even if their little angels were a bit out of bounds. The Obamas are yelling foul, and the Clintons are in cheerleading mode.
......
Now that Florida and Michigan have smashed their primary playthings, do we buy them new ones or send them to their rooms without dinner? What's the best way to teach them to share with others?

Howard Dean has finally given the kids an ultimatum: Hold a re-vote or let the DNC's credentials committee decide what to do with the delegates. An option Team Clinton won't like too much:

Howard Dean will not bend the party rules to grandfather in the disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida, the Democratic party chairman said in a statement today.

Instead, he put the state parties on notice: either they can wait and allow the credentials committee to decide whether to seat their delegates, or submit to a re-vote sanctioned under DNC rules. "We look forward to receiving their proposals should they decide to submit new delegate selection plans and will review those plans at that time," he said in the statement.

"Everyone seems to be asking what the DNC will do," a Democrat close to Dean said. "But the question is: what will the state parties do."

Dean's statement implies that he has no intention of changing the rules to accommodate any solution proposed by the candidates or the state parties. There has been some suggestion that the two remaining presidential candidates might try to broker a deal among themselves. His line in the sand narrows the options for Hillary Clinton's campaign because it is unlikely that a credentials committee would endorse a delegation congenial to her mathematical interests.

So it's looking like we'll get a couple of do-overs, but who will pay for them. The public? The DNC? The candidates? And will they be primaries, or caucuses?

The Florida Dems, especially, are in a pickle. A caucus would not only be expensive but…(would) exclude its large contingent of military members serving overseas - even in combat zones. But it's a mess of their own making.

And while the details get worked out, Democrats form the all-too familiar circular firing squad:

If the Democrats don’t lose this election, it won’t be for a lack of trying.
......
The other problem, though, stems from infighting and a lack of party discipline that resulted in what seems in retrospect to be a very boneheaded maneuver; the decision not to seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan. To be fair, all parties are at fault here. The state party establishments are at fault for deciding not to play by the rules. The national party establishment failed because they did not come to a more amenable solution; the DNC should have worked around the clock with all parties involved until they had a firm and fair solution before the primaries actually began. And the candidates themselves failed to a degree by standing by and letting it happen. Here it’s difficult not to fault Clinton more than the rest of her competitors at the time as it would be she who would attempt to then use the situation for her own political gain under the guise of seeing Democracy’s work done.

To be fair, it wouldn't be a Democratic contest without some sibling squabbling and inter-party chaos.