Howard Dean this morning told MSNBC that, in the interest of party unity, one of the candidates must drop out by the end of the primary process on June 3. He emphasized that "We really can't have a divided convention."
My message to Howard Dean: June 3 isn't soon enough. The tools exist exist to force a candidate to withdraw now, and they are called Superdelegates. I know, we've all been skeptical about the role of the superdelegates. I've even written a diary about it. But I've come to realize that these so-called "party elders" have a critical role to play -- if they choose to show the backbone necessary to play that role.
There is now enough exit poll data to confirm that the Clintons' malevolent effort to prolong the campaign has been, and likely will continue to be, aided and abetted by Limbaugh-motivated republicans. We simply cannot permit our nomination to be determined as the result of insurgent enemy activity. That is why I believe that the Superdelegates must, for the good and protection of the party and the integrity of our nomination process, step forward now with their public endorsements, thus ending the battle.
During the month of February, while Barack Obama was rolling up win after win, and constructing his now insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, John McCain was finishing off his opposition. By March 4, he still had not yet officially picked up enough pledged delegates to clinch the nomination, but this appeared only a formality.
It was at this point that Limbaugh began to urge his listeners to mess with our primary system by voting in as large numbers as possible for Hillary Clinton. We have all read and heard anecdotal stories about republicans gloating over their plans to do this. (These republicans, of course, are to be distinguished from those who, for whatever reason, found agreeable the message of one or more of our candidates' message, and abandoned their party's primary when the GOP nomination was still competitive, prior to March 4).
I have now gone through the exit polls, state by state. And as much as I am loathe to admit it, since the "Mini Super Tuesday" on March 4, whether led by Limbaugh or not, republicans have jumped with both feet into our nomination process and have had a significant impact. They have swayed the results by enough to keep Hillary Clinton's campaign viable. This has allowed the attacks on Obama from our own side to continue for an additional month. Not only that, but there remains the outside chance, no matter how remote, that she could wrest the nomination from Obama.
Consider this:
Exit polls asked voters in most states whether they would be satisfied with a Clinton nomination, and then broke the numbers down by which answers were coming from Clinton vs Obama voters.
Before March 4, the 2 candidates' voters responded fairly similarly. To the question, "Would you be satisfied with a Clinton nomination," 27.9 percent of all voters answered no. Of the voters who said no, 6.0% had voted nonetheless for Clinton. In response to a similar question about Obama, pre-March 4 voters responded with slightly higher numbers: 28.0% said no, they would not be satisfied with an Obama nomination. Of that universe of voters, 7.3 percent had cast their votes for Obama.
After March 4, the sea changed.
Beginning with the primaries on that day and continuing through Pennsylvania, the Clinton numbers average 29.2/9.8 and the Obama numbers average 30.3/5.3. In other words, the relative undesirability of each candidate went up, but Clinton's undesirability went up among her own voters. Although its somewhat of an apples-oranges comparison, if you show the "own voters" as a percentage of the "total no vote", here is how it breaks down:
Ratio of voters dissatisfied if their own candidate won nomination
Clinton Obama
Before March 4 .215 .260
March 4 to date .337 .176
Another set of data from the exit polls:
In only 12 states did individuals self-identify as Republican in large enough numbers to collect meaningful data as to how those individuals voted. Caucuses and closed primaries accounted for much of this lack of widespread data. However, here are the results for those 12 states where sufficient data does exist. In addition, because the polls separately broke down the voting by the voters' idealogy, I have shown the figures for how "conservatives" voted in each of those states.
%GOP GOP Voting Conservatives
Voters Clinton Obama Clinton Obama
JAN 3 IA 3 10 44 22 21 (Edwards 42)
JAN 26 SC 4 20 37 29 49 (Edwards 21)
FEB 5 AL 5 52 45 42 55
IL 6 36 60 37 58
MO 6 21 75 38 58
FEB 9 LA 5 17 53 31 54
FEB 12 VA 7 23 72 24 73
FEB 19 WI 9 28 72 40 59
MAR 4 OH 9 49 49 48 48
TX 9 46 53 52 45
MAR 11 MS 12 75 25 53 43
In addition, although PA was a closed primary and thus few to no self-identified Republicans, "conservatives" voted for Clinton by 53-47.
Including all other primary states, where voters could be polled on idealogy, and not just party, we see these results:
"Conservative" voters:
% of electorate Clinton Obama Obama + Edwards
Pre-March 4 12.4 42.7 44.7 51.3
March 4 to date 17.5 51.5 45.8
What's clear is that the number of conservatives voting since March 4 has jumped by nearly 50 percent, and the greatest beneficiary of those voters is Hillary Clinton.
Finally, one last set of numbers.
In Pennsylvania only, voters were asked whether they would vote for Clinton or Obama in November, should they win the nomination.
In a Clinton-McCain matchup, 10 percent said they'd vote for McCain, but 31 percent of those were Clinton voters! By contrast, of the "McCain" Voters in a "Obama-McCain" matchup, only 10% had voted for Obama in the primary. If we apply those percentages to the entire PA electorate, 31 percent of 10 percent of the electorate comes to about 71,500 Clinton voters who claimed they would vote against Clinton and for McCain in the fall. Unfaithful Obama voters totalled 34,600. That's a difference of 36,900; if those 36,900 voters had simply not shown up, this would have reduced the Clinton percentage to 53.1 and taken away any talking point that she had a "double digit" win in PA.
My point is that we no longer have the luxury of waiting out the primary process before the remaining superdelegates "trickle" in. The republicans are trying, at best, to sabotage our nominee Barack Obama and leave him as damaged goods. At worst, they are trying to help steal the nomination. By allowing Clinton the air to breath, and to continue to take the campaign to Indiana, then Kentucky and West Virginia, she continues to open the door for these voters to come in and support her and help her build a case for nomination that would not be the will of the democratic party.
It has been said that there are no "undecided" super delegates, just those who are undeclared. Now is the time for these "party elders" to use their considerable influence and, in the best interest of the Democratic Party, step forward, show some political courage to make their public declarations of support for (if the reports are to be believed) Sen. Obama, and end the nomination battle before the republicans get another chance (in the Indiana primary) to muddle things up.