The last primary results are in and the last state to vote, Montana (which closed its polls one hour after South Dakota and so deserves credit for being the last) is the state that pushed Barack Obama over the top and gave him the delegates needed for the nomination. As a former resident of the Big Sky state I'm glad that Montana put him over the top.
Hillary Clinton ran a great campaign, but it's time for her to put action behind her pledge to 'work to unify the party.' She said she won't make a decision tonight, but he's now got enough delegates that when the roll call is called in Denver he will end up on top. She has the right to continue to challenge, but I'd only point out that the last four nominees who had convention fights (Humphrey in 1968, McGovern in 1972 and Carter in 1980 for the Democrats, and Ford in 1976 for the Republicans) all lost the following general election. And were that to happen then any ideas that Hillary had about running in 2012 would probably be about as good as Ted Kennedy's of running in 1984 were after a lot of people blamed him for Carter's loss in November. Yeah, I know-- Ronald Reagan fought Ford at the 1976 Republican convention but it didn't hurt him in 1980. However the difference was that in 1976 neither Ford nor Reagan entered the convention with a majority of delegates; there were some legitimate unocmmitted delegates to fight over. True, this year the Democrats have 'superdelegates' who can change their mind, but that is the point-- they would have to change it. Hillary has already made every argument she can think of and they are still for Obama. So it's unlikely they will change now.
But regardless, the night clearly belongs to Obama. He made a great speech, and is clearly ready to go after John McCain.
That was a great speech Obama gave last night - especially compared to that snooze fest given my McSame down in Louisiana. Obama showed he was ready, willing and able to go after McCain in a way he never went after his Democratic opponents.
ReplyDeleteGood post, especially the part about why Hillary should just quit now. Quick fact check though-did Montana have enough delegates to put him over the threshold or was it the sudden stream of superdelegates that came his way on Tuesday? Although surely, Motana's voters and the suprdelegates each influnced the other.
ReplyDeletezach:
ReplyDeleteMontana alone would not have put him over. However the supers came over before the Montana result came in, so it was in fact that result that put him over the top (whether the timing as the day went on was just luck, or whether it was orchestrated with the knowlege that he had Montana in the bag, in the end it was Montana that put him over the top.)