“I’d love to carry Texas, but it’s usually not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee. Florida and Michigan are.” Uh, Texas doesn’t matter? And, just like that, Sen. Clinton dispels all the warm fuzzies she attempted to earn with her reverse Muskie nostalgia moment last night. Sadly, it seems the evidence of a “reality check” among Sen Clinton and her campaign was misleading, and they’re instead indulging in the “false hope” they can still steal this thing, vis a vis Michigan and Florida.
Well, if these (admittedly anecdotal) peeks at the Texas ground game are any indication, one can see why that screw-Texas spin is already starting to kick up now. First, Sen. Obama’s team, by way of dKos: “Today I talked to a reporter working on a piece on the Obama movement, who had just returned from Texas to see the Obama ground game close up. I asked if it lived up to the hype. He said that he had gone down there cynical, not expecting much, but had been utterly blown away…[H]is volunteer-driven ground game is blowing whatever meager operation Clinton has completely out of the water.” Update: Here’s another positive testimonial about Obama’s TX organization.
And for Clinton? Read this sad tale: “Although the Clinton Campaign has been telling the press that they have the ground operations to pull off a win in Texas, those ground operations have not been in evidence when I’ve traveled to small towns to see how Bill Clinton is doing on the Texas stump. Wednesday evening in Victoria, down in the southeastern part of the state, incipient chaos threatened to overwhelm the ‘Early Vote’ Rally precisely because there was no ground operation…’It’s a clusterf**k! Just a clusterf**k!’ the Corpus Christi producer for a local news affiliate shouts into his cell phone.“
Update: A Clinton endorser in the Rio Grande Valley confirms trouble in Texas: “I made a commitment to Hillary Clinton and I must maintain it. I gave my word. However, as an observer, it appears to be increasingly evident who is going to win.“
Update 2: Someone with Texas skillz has made a revised delegate projection for the Lone Star State based on recent polling. It’s not good for Sen. Clinton.
Do they just not know how to count? I got bored at work and gamed this out, and basically if they don’t get a significant delegate margin in Texas, they’re toast. They could win Ohio and Penn 60-40 and still be down 100+ delegates if the rest of the states go pretty much to form(and I’m being pretty generous to her in those projections.) Florida only gives them +38. I’m not sure on Michigan with a lot of the slate being uncommitted, but I just don’t think there’s any way they’ll be able to justify seating them when he wasn’t even on the ballot there. Even if they do, she’d still have to convince a +60 or so majority of the superdelegates to tear the party apart for her. Not happening. If they haven’t committed to her yet after all of this lobbying, they’re waiting to ratify the winner or to vote with their state or district. And they’re not idiots, they can see the polls vs. McCain and the coattails in purple and red districts.
Yeah, I think the hope among Team Clinton is that the supers can’t do math. I don’t think that’s going to pan out for them.