State of the Race

Okay, it's a day later, and the DNC Rules committee's decision should be sinking in. That committee, much to the chagrin of the Clinton camp, welcomed Florida and Michigan back, with a penalty. They gave Hillary Clinton her voting margin in Florida, but recognized that Michigan was a different case. They accepted the Michigan compromise, which essentially gave Hillary 10 more delegates than Obama, and then cut it in half. At the end of the day, she got a net gain of 24 delegates over Obama. Of course that didn't sit well with the Clinton clan, which wanted Obama to get nothing. Once again, Clinton's hypocrisy was overwhelming. The question is, what will she do now?

Today, of course, Hillary won that major swing state of Puerto Rico, gaining a huge majority of the pro-statehood crowd. But the turn out was light and the stakes minimal. She'll claim a big victory, but Puerto Rico is irrelevant as far as November goes. Why did she win? Pretty simple -- name recognition. This is a community that likely pays little attention to mainline politics, but has fond memories of Bill Clinton. When you don't know the other guy, you vote for the one you know. So, Hillary won. I doubt that Super delegates will put much stock in it's vote.

More important is how things finish out in South Dakota and Montana. If Obama wins both, as expected, we will likely see a majority of Super Delegates make their positions known (as many of them have said they would do) and we'll see where things stand. If, as I expect the lions share go to Obama, Clinton will have little support for continuing on to the convention.

Now, what about the angry Clinton folks. Will they go for McCain? Since most are women, will they support a candidate, even as a protest vote, who would choose judges and Supreme Court justices that would rule against them? I doubt it -- but we'll have to wait until November. Yes, some may stay home. But both Obama and McCain have problems to deal with, and November is really a long way off -- as long as things get pulled together quickly.

November is really in the hands of Hillary Clinton. She can take the Democrats down to defeat by playing martyr, or she can join with Obama and win this thing. It's her choice.