Open Super Tuesday II thread

Me, I’m just going to watch some episodes of House on the DVR for the next few hours, but the rest of you feel free to comment away on tonights primary results. I can’t resist one thought, however. Howard Fineman blogs “Win or lose, pressure on Clinton to exit will mount” over at Newsweek: It’s ...

By Daniel W. Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

March 5, 2008, 1:22 AM

Me, I'm just going to watch some episodes of House on the DVR for the next few hours, but the rest of you feel free to comment away on tonights primary results. I can't resist one thought, however. Howard Fineman blogs "Win or lose, pressure on Clinton to exit will mount" over at Newsweek: It's no longer a question of what Hillary herself thinks?she wants to stay for the duration, a close friend of hers tells me?but whether and when the leaders of the Democratic Party unite, publicly and privately, to tell her to get out if she wants to have a future leadership role in her own party. As my colleague Jon Alter convincing showed today?calculator in hand-there is just no way, barring some kind of cataclysmic event, that Clinton can overtake Sen. Barack Obama in pledged delegates. Obama won't have enough of them to clinch the nomination on that basis alone, but she can't catch him.... [I]f Clinton continues to the next stage-if the results tonight allow her to fend off those telling her to quit?the next round is going to be a lot nastier. It's going to get into Obama's South Side Chicago roots; into some of the wilder statements of his longtime minister, Jeremiah Wright; and into the not-so-sly raising of doubts about Obama's religious beliefs. Does Hillary really want to go there? Maybe not, which is why I think some of her own supporters (and maybe even some of her own campaign aides) would just as soon that this thing end tonight.Here's the thing, though -- I think the mainstream media has underestimated the number of core Hillary supporters who would be unbelievably pissed by the optics of the Democratic "establishment" -- read, mostly men -- telling Hillary that her time on the stage has ended. Trust me, these people do exist, and they exist in significant numbers. So my prediction is that any kind of stage-managed effort by the Democratic Party leadership to nudge Hillary Clinton aside will end in disaster. Either Clinton will refuse the overtures, declaring herself to be a "fighter" for the upteenth time -- or she will step aside in such a way that it costs Obama significant slices of the Democratic demographic come November. UPDATE: Wow, CNN's numbers are screwy on Texas. As of 8:45, Obama and Clinton combined have nearly 800,000 votes, with less than one percent reporting. Unless the illegal immigration and ballot fraud problems are a lot worse than I thought, those vote counts are way too high.

Me, I’m just going to watch some episodes of House on the DVR for the next few hours, but the rest of you feel free to comment away on tonights primary results. I can’t resist one thought, however. Howard Fineman blogs “Win or lose, pressure on Clinton to exit will mount” over at Newsweek:

It’s no longer a question of what Hillary herself thinks?she wants to stay for the duration, a close friend of hers tells me?but whether and when the leaders of the Democratic Party unite, publicly and privately, to tell her to get out if she wants to have a future leadership role in her own party. As my colleague Jon Alter convincing showed today?calculator in hand-there is just no way, barring some kind of cataclysmic event, that Clinton can overtake Sen. Barack Obama in pledged delegates. Obama won’t have enough of them to clinch the nomination on that basis alone, but she can’t catch him…. [I]f Clinton continues to the next stage-if the results tonight allow her to fend off those telling her to quit?the next round is going to be a lot nastier. It’s going to get into Obama’s South Side Chicago roots; into some of the wilder statements of his longtime minister, Jeremiah Wright; and into the not-so-sly raising of doubts about Obama’s religious beliefs. Does Hillary really want to go there? Maybe not, which is why I think some of her own supporters (and maybe even some of her own campaign aides) would just as soon that this thing end tonight.

Here’s the thing, though — I think the mainstream media has underestimated the number of core Hillary supporters who would be unbelievably pissed by the optics of the Democratic “establishment” — read, mostly men — telling Hillary that her time on the stage has ended. Trust me, these people do exist, and they exist in significant numbers. So my prediction is that any kind of stage-managed effort by the Democratic Party leadership to nudge Hillary Clinton aside will end in disaster. Either Clinton will refuse the overtures, declaring herself to be a “fighter” for the upteenth time — or she will step aside in such a way that it costs Obama significant slices of the Democratic demographic come November. UPDATE: Wow, CNN’s numbers are screwy on Texas. As of 8:45, Obama and Clinton combined have nearly 800,000 votes, with less than one percent reporting. Unless the illegal immigration and ballot fraud problems are a lot worse than I thought, those vote counts are way too high.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

Tag: Politics