As American citizens and voters, are we assumed too stupid to do fifth grade math?
But I don't really quarrel with everyone's choice to round up eight and change, or even nine and low change to ten, that's one big reason our jobs are being shipped overseas: we don't know or care about math, or any kind of education; we are what we are.
The margin was pretty consistently 9% all evening but we kept seeing reported flipflops between eight and ten, with ten being the reported number as I speak and for the last few hours.
Mrs. Clinton (sincere congrats!) won the PA primary by eight or nine points (8.5% reported by the PA DOS at 11:30 p.m. PDT with 98.91% of the total in; I'm going to bed too). End of story. Except that the story had previously been defined as "double digits," so we're being asked to accept eight or nine points as "ten" and that's what's being reported on all the late news.
"Double digits" had became a mantra in the context of a 20 point initial Clinton advantage, which dipped as Mr. Obama earned national stature to 16-18 points. The issue then became, as the PA campaign began, could Mrs. Clinton improve upon or at least hold onto that 16-20 point lead. The shorthand for this modest definition of success became the oft-cited benchmark of "double digits," clearly meaning significant double digits. Nobody felt, going in, that a ten point win would be anything positive for Mrs. Clinton.
Nor would it have been (or is, if the final fine tuning of the last 1% happens to round it up to ten).
But there is a reality: she failed to hang on to most of her lead, maintaining only eight or nine of her initial 20-18-16 point advantage thus gaining no significant improvement in her insurmountable deficit in elected delegates. Yet that disappointing performance has somehow inspired talk this evening of "new math," and the suicide of the Democratic party continues apace.
Is there adult supervision of this Party anywhere in sight?
BTW, special congrats also to those Obama supporters in PA who chose not to venture out today at all, or to find the right polling location despite the misdirection, or to wait for the polling machines to be fixed. A couple of thousand or so of you and the diversionary issue of a "double digit" win for Clinton would be off the media table. Sleep well. Hopefully none of your children will die in the eventual War with Iran.