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It's almost a certainty at this point that there will be no democrat nominee when the convention starts, since regardless of the outcome of all remaining primaries/caucuses it doesn't appear likely that either candidate will get a majority without taking the superdelegates into account. There are only 611 non-superdelegates total in the remaining contests, and nobody is likely to get more than 60% of those. That's only 367 delegates, with Obama currently needing just over 500 to have a lock on the nomination.

The wins by both Hillary and Barack on Tuesday weren't by huge margins, so their delegate count isn't significantly changed. The upcoming contests also aren't likely to be settled by huge margins. So get ready for the mud slinging, name calling, and various other negative campaign tactics to really heat up.

Even if Florida and Michigan get rescheduled for a do-over, it still probably won't matter. Clinton would have to win both by a large enough margin to offset the likely margin of victory for Obama in those states where he's favored. Except for Pennsylvania and North Carolina, there are only a few smaller states left. And Obama is favored in North Carolina.

Both parties have historically fared poorly in the general election when they've had a brokered convention. And consider that Obama has the edge in regular delegates right now, and probably will going into the convention. If Clinton ends up the nominee based solely on the superdelegate votes with Obama having won more regular delegates, expect a lot of democrat voters to stay home in November. I can see the vast majority of Clinton supporters voting for Obama if he's the nominee, but can't see the vast majority of Obama supporters voting for Clinton. A lot of them are people who are only involved in the process because of him.

The last time the parties had brokered conventions was 1952. It's no coincidence that there hasn't been one since then, as public reaction to the televised political fighting leading up to the balloting in the republican convention that year (Eisenhower vs Taft) was hugely negative. Eisenhower still won the general election, but the democrat convention that year was also contentious. And unlike the republicans, their balloting took multiple rounds before a candidate was decided upon. If it ends up being a brawl at the democrat convention this year, expect every second of it to be aired by the media.

GodaiMH wrote:

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Where's Joe DiMaggio's when you need him?

Joltin' Joe has left and gone away, nine years ago

If there's really this burning desire for change out there, we've certainly picked an odd way to show it. For the democrats, Kennedy was substantive change as was Johnson after him. For the republicans, Reagan was substantive change. That's about it for presidents in the past 50 years. The republican win in Congress in 1994 was substantive change, at least until Bush became president and the republicans became a lot more like the big spending democrats from before 1994. Putting a different face on the same policies and platform isn't a change.

We're clearly willing to accept the appearance of change rather than the real thing. Here are the differences between the candidates and their parties' leadership:

John McCain - Disagrees with party leadership no more or less than other republicans, but vocal when he does so it makes news. Only courts evangelical Christians out of necessity.
Hillary Clinton - None. Bill Clinton 2.0 without the charisma.
Barack Obama - 99% the same as Hillary Clinton in what he wants to do, other than minor details in how it would be implemented.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The differences from what we've seen before from both parties are all apperance and personality. The only functional change Obama represents is a switch to a democrat administration, which quite honestly Clinton would represent just as well. Seeing what Congress has accomplished (or more accurately, hasn't accomplished) in the year plus since the democrats took over, I really wonder what in the world is wrong with that party. When the republicans took over Congress in 1994, they spent the next six years changing the course of a relatively popular democrat administration from left to centrist. Compared to that, the democrats have been completely ineffective against one of the most unpopular presidents in history. It'd be a laugh riot, if it wasn't so serious.

After Obama's crybaby act following Clinton's primary wins in Texas and Ohio, I really wonder if he's got what it takes to run a competitive campaign against a republican. The last person who should be complaining about negative media coverage is Obama, considering all the free passes the media folks have given him. We know Obama looks presidential compared to Clinton. The question is, will he look presidential compared to McCain? That's where I've always had serious misgivings, and the big reason why I really don't know if I'll end up voting for Obama in November. Trust isn't enough for me if the man can't act and look presidential in the face of adversity, which he didn't after Tuesday. And that was minor compared to what a president will have to face.

ac tactics wrote:

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about not backing down for the good of the party. isent that how bill won? the other republican canidate (nater i think) broke ties with the republican party and ran independant. he split the rublican vote, and bill won.

Nader ran in the last two elections, as the Green Party candidate in 2000 and Reform Party in 2004. He was a Democrat. You're thinking about Ross Perot, who ran in 1992 mainly because of personal reasons. He's a billionaire who disliked then-President Bush enough to spend a lot of his own money to try to ruin Bush's reelection bid. Perot was pretty popular for a while and led in several polls over both Clinton and Bush, until he dropped out of the race in July 1992 and then got back in a few weeks later. The general supposition is that Perot didn't really want the job but just wanted to spoil it for Bush, so dropped out when it looked as if he had a real chance at winning. Then he got back in to keep up the pressure on Bush.

But Perot's presence in both the 1992 and 1996 race didn't make much difference. Exit polling in both years seemed to indicate that his supporters drew pretty evenly from Democrats, Republicans and independents. Bush likely would have won more states in 1992 and therefore had more electoral votes without Perot in the picture, but Clinton would still have won the presidency.