Potomac Wipeout

I realize I am turning this into a political blog (other than my strike updates of which thankfully there will be no more), but I want to weigh in on what has occurred over the past 5 days in the battle for the Democratic nomination. As is becoming more and more clear, the only way Clinton can beat Obama at this point is (1) either to draw an inside straight or (2) cheat. And, sadly, we are seeing more signs of the latter than the former.

With the massive wins over the weekend and yesterday, Obama now has more than 100 pledged delegates than Clinton. Because of the proportional allocation of delegates, the remaining states (a number of which favor Obama), and the various rules for various states, Clinton is going to need to win 60%+ of the vote in PA, OH, and TX to have any chance to pass Obama in this count, and I just don't see that happening. In fact, the TX rules for delegate allocation mean that if the election is even close (say 55/45 or less), the delegates will be essentially 50/50.

If Clinton doesn't win both OH and TX, this is over, and she better move aside gracefully. In fact, Obama can pick one of the two to focus on since he really only needs one of them. (I would think TX would be the one.) And if she narrowly wins both, I'm not really sure she is greatly helped although it would turn PA into a war. And that would mean from March 4 until April 22, all eyes would turn to the Keystone state.

My fear is the Clinton's repeated emphasis on seating FL and MI's delegates. This disgusts me to no end. The candidates were told that these states would not have delegates because the states refused to follow the DNC's mandate not to hold their primaries before 2/5. So no candidates campaigned in those states and Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot in MI. So if Obama is ahead in pledged delegates and the overall vote (excluding MI and FL although he is ahead at the moment even if they are included), and the DNC agrees to seat those state's delegations to put Hillary ahead, that will be the end for me.

Imagine if after the Yankees had beaten the Red Sox in game 7 of the 2003 ALCS (2004 never happened), major league baseball said that the Red Sox would go to the World Series because they had beaten the Yankees in 2 spring training games (and in one of which the Yankees had been told not to show up at, so they actually beat a semi-pro team from the area), what would the reaction be? New York would errupt. What would the difference be with what Team Clinton is trying to do here? So I lay down the gauntlet, if Clinton uses MI/FL or superdelegates or some other shenanigans to deny Obama the nomination, I will vote for McCain. (To be clear, I am not saying that there is no scenario in which Clinton could "legitimately" win the nomination, just that what they are trying to do seem pretty illegitimate because the legitimate avenues keep getting closed off.)