Over the last several weeks, we’ve seen a few items explaining just how difficult it would be for Hillary Clinton to catch up to Barack Obama, but Ezra reminds us today that “the math is harder for Clinton to make up with every passing day.”
There simply aren’t enough contests remaining for Clinton to close the gap among pledged delegates, and Obama’s lead is also out of reach: “If you add Florida, where neither campaigned, she’s still 300,000 votes behind. If you cheat and add Michigan, where Obama wasn’t on the ballot, and you give him the ‘uncommitted’ voters (as some Clintonites have suggested), she’s still 188,000 votes behind. If you do all of that, and then Clinton wins every remaining contest by 10 points, according to Rick Hertzberg’s calculations, she’ll still be 160,000 votes behind. And that doesn’t even include Obama’s caucusgoers [in Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington state], who aren’t in the straight popular votes tally. Point being: She’s not making up the popular vote either.”
So, what does this tell us? That Clinton needs to win over about two-thirds of the remaining uncommitted superdelegates, which would be quite a challenge.
I’m struck, however, by the fact that Clinton doesn’t seem to be targeting superdelegates much at all. To be sure, the remaining superdelegates who are on the fence are no doubt the target of an intense lobbying campaign from the Clinton (and Obama) team. But what I’m talking about is the public face of Team Clinton — shouldn’t they be doing more to impress the very small target audience that could give Clinton the boost she needs?
There have been two weeks since the Pennsylvania primary. The first week, Clinton was fairly aggressive in claiming that she now has the popular vote lead. That might work on a lay audience that’s unsure of the details, but superdelegates tend to be pretty well-informed insiders who are not easily taken in by dubious talking points. Clinton was pushing an argument that was very unlikely to work on those she needs to win over.
This past week, Clinton was extremely aggressive in pushing for a “gas-tax holiday,” blasting anyone who dared to take reality seriously as an over-educated elitist who’d been bought off by Big Oil. Again, superdelegates surely saw through this rather pathetic pandering, which, again, seems counterintuitive — Clinton’s argument seems aimed at low-information voters, when she should be aiming for high-information voters.
Shouldn’t she?
Michael Crowley noted this afternoon:
On MSNBC John Harwood just asked Harold Ickes how Hillary’s gas tax gimmick (my word not his) “is playing with your real audience, the superdelegates.” I’ve heard this line before: That the gas tax holiday isn’t just bad policy, it’s bad politics insofar as superdelegates see it as a cynical pander that turns them off to Hillary.
Maybe. But at the end of the day, I think Hillary’s goal, when it comes to winning that improbable supermajority of undeclared superdelegates, is simple: She needs to convince them that she is more electable than Obama. And the best way for her to do that is to win states, win votes, and lift her standing in the polls — to establish a narrative that she’s gaining strength and momentum, and that Obama is turning out to be a flawed national candidate. Gas tax pandering is a means to that end, and that end supersedes everything. The race will not ultimately be decided on policy grounds.
I think that’s absolutely right. Clinton has been playing some very frustrating cards lately, but her strategy isn’t dumb. Her specific message is targeted at rank-and-file voters, not superdelegates. But after that message has worked, Clinton can take her broader message to the party insiders (elites?) who have her fate in their hands.
Step One: win over voters with sketchy arguments. Step Two: win over superdelegates by pointing to Step One.