A memo, inadvertently sent by the Obama campaign to Bloomberg, correctly predicted the outcome of Tuesday's primary in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont. The numbers nearly matched the outcomes perfectly. This internal memo, written on Feb. 3, goes on to predict Obama losing Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia, while he picks up Indiana, Mississippi and Wyoming among others. Tim Russert revealed the memo and the numbers on MSNBC's Morning Joe program.
In the end, the memo predicts that Obama will have a delegate advantage of 1806 to 1789. This scenario does not include Michigan and Florida which the DNC nulled due to moving up their primaries.
Two things anger me. First, and quite personally, I watched the two young Obama workers who stayed at our house for the past 20 days work their butts off when the gurus had already marked off Ohio to the Clinton camp back in early February. Why did they need to work so hard, so many long hours, when the campaign operatives knew it was futile? Two over-60 volunteer workers fell yesterday on the ice, including my wife who spent 3 hours in the ER getting an X-ray and a cast on her foot! How painfully futile.
The second point of contention is that if this scenario is correct, the two camps will go marching along separately and hostile to each other into the summer. No doubt the Clinton camp will demand that her 'victories' in Florida and Michigan be counted, setting the stage for a very divisive convention fight.
Will the two camps merge thereafter? I doubt it and here's why: the demographics of the two camps are in conflict. Black Americans see Obama as their hope of reclaiming the dignity that has eluded them as a race throughout the sad history of their time in America. Historic civil rights activist and Georgia Congressman John Lewis, upon switching to Obama, said, Something's happening in America, something some of us did not see coming. Barack Obama has tapped into something that is extraordinary." I believe he meant that a black man has the potential of rising to the highest office of the land.
The second demographic group that will be disillusioned if Clinton grabs the nomination through shenanigans will the the young voters who were attracted to the process through Obama's message of hope and change. If they see the dirty old political maneuverings operating to snag the nomination away from Obama, they will be turned off in the fall and may, in fact, become the cynical American who says, 'Why vote, my vote doesn't matter anyway?'
I see the so-called 'Clinton Political Machine' gearing up even more now that she has scored those victories Tuesday. We will be seeing more sleazy ads like the red phone at 3 AM. Divisive politics is their game. I'm afraid that she is on a slippery slope that only heads downward, taking lots of Democrats with her.
It is the process that is at stake from here on. Will a well-oiled political machine once again derail a more idealistic, more grassroots movement? I am afraid it will and the race card is not out of the question at all.
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