DeclinetoState
04-25-2008, 12:39 PM
By ELIZABETH DREW | 4/25/08 4:47 AM EST
The torrent of speculation about the end game of the Democratic nomination contest is creating a false sense of suspense – and wasting a lot of time of the multitudes who are anxious to know how this contest is going to turn out.
Notwithstanding the plentiful commentary to the effect that the Pennsylvania primary must have shaken superdelegates planning to support Barack Obama, causing them to rethink their position, key Democrats on Capitol Hill are unbudged.
“I don’t think anyone’s shaken,” a leading House Democrat told me. The critical mass of Democratic congressmen that has been prepared to endorse Obama when the timing seemed right remains prepared to do so. Their reasons, ones they have held for months, have not changed – and by their very nature are unlikely to.
Essentially, they are three:
(a) Hillary Rodham Clinton is such a polarizing figure that everyone who ever considered voting Republican in November, and even many who never did, will go to the polls to vote against her, thus jeopardizing Democrats down the ticket – i.e., themselves, or, for party leaders, the sizeable majorities they hope to gain in the House and the Senate in November. Elizabeth Drew (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9862.html)
One response, from down the page:
Elizabeth Drew: are these arguments really from some secret superdelegate in Congress or from one of the 18-year old Starbucks worker types? The reason why I ask is that these arguments have appeared on the web for months on just about every blog discussing the campaign and in major newspapers as well. They are not novel or extraordinary at all. Logical? Yes. A deep secret? No.
The torrent of speculation about the end game of the Democratic nomination contest is creating a false sense of suspense – and wasting a lot of time of the multitudes who are anxious to know how this contest is going to turn out.
Notwithstanding the plentiful commentary to the effect that the Pennsylvania primary must have shaken superdelegates planning to support Barack Obama, causing them to rethink their position, key Democrats on Capitol Hill are unbudged.
“I don’t think anyone’s shaken,” a leading House Democrat told me. The critical mass of Democratic congressmen that has been prepared to endorse Obama when the timing seemed right remains prepared to do so. Their reasons, ones they have held for months, have not changed – and by their very nature are unlikely to.
Essentially, they are three:
(a) Hillary Rodham Clinton is such a polarizing figure that everyone who ever considered voting Republican in November, and even many who never did, will go to the polls to vote against her, thus jeopardizing Democrats down the ticket – i.e., themselves, or, for party leaders, the sizeable majorities they hope to gain in the House and the Senate in November. Elizabeth Drew (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9862.html)
One response, from down the page:
Elizabeth Drew: are these arguments really from some secret superdelegate in Congress or from one of the 18-year old Starbucks worker types? The reason why I ask is that these arguments have appeared on the web for months on just about every blog discussing the campaign and in major newspapers as well. They are not novel or extraordinary at all. Logical? Yes. A deep secret? No.