Fri May 09, 2008
Hillary Clinton's latest pitch to superdelegates comes in the form of a Power Point presentation (h/t TPM) the Clinton campaign has sent to all Democratic members of the House to make the case that she, not Senator Obama, would be the candidate with the real coattails down ticket in November. Conventional wisdom is that Obama's the one with the coattails, I guess since Republicans would supposedly be more motivated to turn out by a Clinton candidacy than an Obama candidacy, but the presentation makes a good case that since she has won more competitive House districts than Obama and has attracted more rural, latino and elderly voters, all of whom are key in battleground congressional districts, she would actually not only win these districts but her presence at the top of the ticket would be good for Democrats running for re-election and, presumably, for challengers running in tough districts in November.
One does suspect, though, that this pitch is a little too little and comes a little too late. The superdelegate slide toward Obama continues apace, even prompting ABC News to announce today that by their count, Senator Obama has taken over the superdelegate lead from Senator Clinton. DemConWatch has a slightly different count, showing Clinton still up by 2.5 superdelegates, but the rate at which Obama has closed that gap is alarming, as is the list of supers who've switched from Clinton to Obama since February:
May 9 - Rep. Donald Payne (NJ)
May 7 - DNC Jennifer McClellan (VA)
May 1 - DNC Joe Andrew (IN)
Feb 27 - Rep. John Lewis (GA)
Feb 27 - DNC Senfronia Thompson (TX)
Feb 20 - DNC Dana Redd (NJ)
Feb 15 - DNC Sarah Swisher (IA)
Feb 14 - DNC Christine "Roz" Samuels (NJ)
Feb 14- Rep. David Scott (GA)
All of which speaks to how crucial Tuesday's result was. Hillary Clinton not only needed to keep Obama from gaining in the pledged delegate and popular vote counts, but she also needed to halt the slide of supers to Obama and to give those who've yet to declare their support pause and a reason to shift to her in dramatic numbers. That just didn't happen. So now, with this new PowerPoint presentation, Clinton is trying to minimize the Obama superdelegate declaration rate so she can finish this race out in June. But that's not all that's going on here. I don't think we've seen more compelling documentation to date for the case for putting Hillary Clinton on the ticket with Barack Obama. I mean, honestly, anyone who thinks she'd be a liability to the ticket is living in a fantasy world, as is anyone who thinks that there's someone better for Obama to pick when it comes to forming a winning ticket. Sure there are reasons not to pick Hillary Clinton for VP, but they pale in comparison to the benefits that would be reaped by both an Obama candidacy as well as by Democrats downticket all over the country if voters had Obama/Clinton at the top of the ticket.
