Another Day, Another Way…

The Clinton campaign is testing out trial balloons for the media and the super delegates.  Her campaign has already conceded that she will not be able to catch up to Obama in pledged delegates.  The chances of her overtaking Obama in the popular voted tally diminished greatly last week in the refusal of the state legislatures of Michigan and Florida to re-do their elections.  Clinton has only won 14 contests in 12 states while Obama has won 30 contests in 29 states.  Knowing that she can not win with regular math, the Clinton campaign has come up with a new strategy to woo the super delegates…the Electoral College.

The idea is that Clinton has won the states with higher Electoral College vote totals and this makes her the better choice for Democrats in November.  There are two problems with this theory:

1) The Democrats always win NY, PA, and CA.  These states are firmly in the blue state column.  Kerry and Gore won those states in 2004 and 2000 but still lost the general election to Bush.  The states that Democrats need to win in November are in the Southeast and Midwest where Obama has won overwhelmingly.

2) This strategy flies in the face of remarks made by Senator Clinton shortly after the loss of Al Gore in the 2000 election when she said, “I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.”  Very interesting how time and circumstances changes an opinion.

In case the Electoral College argument does not work out for them.  I have come up with three more possible strategies to share with the media and the Clinton campaign which they may use to try to sway the nomination in their favor.

• The Geographic (Majority of America) Strategy:

            Clinton can claim that she has won the majority of the political subdivisions (counties) across the country.  This negates the urban areas, and their populations,  who gave Obama his popular vote edge.

• The Sea to Shining Sea Strategy:

            Clinton can claim that her victories go from coast to coast from Massachusetts to California.  Of course, she would have to wait until May 20 to win Kentucky to make this strategy work. 

• The Unfairness of Leap Year Strategy:

            Clinton can claim that Leap Year was not supposed to happen this year after all.  The extra day in February gave Obama an unfair competitive advantage.  In the interest of fairness, Obama should give back one day in February…perhaps February 9^th or 12^th.  If that happens, Obama’s lead is cut in half and Clinton has a shot of overtaking his delegate lead.

Again, the above three strategies are offered in the spirit of cooperation.  Although each of these ideas is theoretically possible and perhaps even probable in their usage, my hope is that they will not be used.  The credibility of a presidential campaign may rest on the decision to make a personal sacrifice for the sake of the common good, an Obama victory in the general election.

Technorati Tags: