Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Throughout this race the Clinton campaign has maintained that the superdelegates should use their own judgment in deciding which candidate to back. Clinton has maintained that superdelegates are not beholden to the will of the people. Her thuggish backers have even tried to blackmail Speaker Pelosi and the DCCC - superdelegates - into backing Senator Clinton.

I agree. I think the superdelegates should decide this race. And they should decide it in favor of the candidate who is likely to actually win the presidency - Barack Obama.

As has been noted many times, Hillary Clinton cannot win the nomination. However, it appears that as long as there is a mathematical possibility that Clinton can get to the required number of delegates (2024), she will not drop out of the race. Therefore, the only way to end this race before it does further damage to the eventual Democratic nominee is for Barack Obama to get to the magic 2024 number. This is where the superdelegates have a role to play to prove to us un-super voters that they deserve their electoral capes.

Currently, the race stands at approximately 1412 pledged delegates for Barack Obama and 1251 pledged delegates for Hillary Clinton. With committed superdelegates factored in, Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton 1627 to 1497. Ten races remain with the following delegate counts:

If we project out the remaining 10 races all the way to the last primary on June 3rd, giving Hillary Clinton hefty winning margins in Pennsylvania, Guam, West Virginia and Kentucky, at the end of all the primaries Barack Obama will likely lead Hillary Clinton 1889 delegates to 1801 delegates as shown in the table below:

There are currently 333 uncommitted superdelegates. To clinch the nomination, Barack Obama will need 135 uncommitted superdelegates to back him, that is 40% of the uncommited superdelegates. In other words, if at the end of the primaries on June 3rd 135 additional superdelegates commit to Barack Obama, this race is officially over.

To decisively end the race after the May 6th primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, Obama would have to pick up 226 superdelegates as shown in the table below:

However, it is quite plausible that after the remaining big states have voted by May 6th, having the extra 135 superdelegates will be more than sufficient. The writing will be written boldly on the wall, and even the most fervent funders of Hillary Clinton’s campaign will not want to throw away money on such a lost cause.

So, the magic number of superdelegates is probably around 135 for Barack Obama. If by May 6th he has reached this magic number, expect Hillary Clinton to concede soon thereafter.

Already the superdelegate endorsements for Barack Obama are rolling in, with Governor Bill Richardson, Senator Bob Casey, and Senator Amy Klobuchar adding to Obama’s total. There is now news that all 7 members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation are poised to endorse Barack Obama. The superdelegates are beginning to exercise that judgment Clinton keeps reminded them of. The final verdict is likely to come on or around May 6th.

Dith Pran, who survived the Killing Fields of Cambodia, has died today at the age of 65. Dith Pran was Sydney Schanberg’s photographer and journalistic partner in Cambodia. When Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, Schanberg was expelled from the country. Schanberg arranged for Dith Pran’s wife and children to be evacuated to the United States, but Pran stayed behind.

Dith Pran lived through the madness that the Khmer Rouge brought upon the Cambodian people - a forced de-education of the population and a genocide that took two million lives, one third of the country’s population. He escaped to Thailand in 1979 after the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia. Since coming to the United States after his escape, Dith Pran had worked tirelessly to spread awareness of the Cambodian genocide.

Dith Pran’s work remains unfinished. He worked to end the horrors he had suffered and witnessed.

Now, he rests.  Rest in peace.

Tonight on CNN’s Larry King Live James Carville continued his attack on Governor Bill Richardson. He called Richardson "disloyal" for endorsing Barack Obama. And he named names. When asked to explain he said that he would provide initials of people who had told him that Richardson agreed to endorse Hillary Clinton. Then, inexplicably, he named three names - not initials - of people who supposedly had been assured by Richardson that he supported Hillary Clinton. Two of the names he rattled off were Haim Saban and Alan Patricof.

If the names sound familiar, they should. Saban and Patricof were two of the big Hillary Clinton donors who yesterday sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threatening to cut off funds to the DCCC unless Madame Speaker reconsidered her stance on superdelegates. They demanded that Nancy Pelosi withdraw her opinion that the superdelegates should not vote against the will of the people. It was political blackmail of the most arrogant kind.

It is notable that not only Carville, but Hillary Clinton’s biggest financial backers, are also going after Bill Richardson so hard. It is also notable that Carville is continuing to repeat his attacks on Richardson. It is perhaps a sign of how much the Richardson endorsement has hurt the Clinton campaign. The fear must be that other superdelegates are ready to follow Richardson’s lead and endorse Obama. The public attacks on Richardson may be a shot across the bow of any superdelegates ready to jump ship to Obama. Carville’s act of desperation suggests that the fear of being abandoned by superdelegates is not just theoretical, but real.

However, it may already be too late. Carville’s latest television meltdown, along with the Clinton donors’ ill-advised public shakedown attempt, demonstrates how much the Clinton campaign has lost the plot. James Carville, once formidable in the 1990s, now just looks bitter and desperate. He has clearly jumped the shark. And so has Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic nomination.

Expect some more prominent superdelegate endorsements for Obama in the near future.

Today marks 37 years of independence for a tiny country I love, a country that gave me birth before it was itself born, a country founded on the belief that freedom is precious and worth dying for, a country of brave martyrs and brave survivors, a country of unfulfilled promises called Bangladesh.

Thirty seven years ago today the Pakistan army and their Islamist allies launched a campaign of genocide against 75 million of its own citizens. The army was intent on massacring into submission 75 million Bengalis who had committed a singularly unforgivable crime. Months earlier the Bengalis had gone to the polls and voted for a candidate of their choice to become the next Prime Minister of Pakistan. The Pakistan army responded to the vote with a genocide. In the name of "God and a united Pakistan" the killing began.

In the end, the Pakistan army failed in its purpose. Nine months later, an army that had engaged in the killing of millions of its citizens surrendered in humiliation to the Indian army and Bangladeshi freedom fighters. An army that was so adept in machine gunning unarmed civilians proved to be no match for men and women who could shoot back.

A new nation was born. But at great cost. Up to three million Bengalis were killed in nine months of genocide. Two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand Bengali women were raped. Ten million refugees had fled to India. Cities were devastated, villages had been razed, and the new country’s intellectual class had been massacred in a last minute frenzy of madness.

I was a child during the genocide of Bangladesh. I am one of the lucky ones - I survived. But I have been haunted all my life by memories of those who did not. I am haunted by watching the hopes of those who fought so bravely for the ideals of democracy, for freedom to speak without fear of persecution, for freedom from relgious bigotry, for freedom from poverty, dashed repeatedly over the last three decades. I have watched the Islamists who were apparently defeated in 1971 come creeping back into the Bangladeshi political mainstream. I have watched the cottage industry of genocide denial grow in Bangladesh. I have watched as family members of the millions killed have pleaded in vain for some measure of justice. I have watched known genocide perpetrators live as free men in Bangladesh, in the United States and United Kingdom. I have been again and again let down by successive American governments that pay lip service against genocide after the fact but do nothing to prevent them. I have had to witness the top American diplomat in Bangladesh have tea with a leading Islamist and known perpetrator of genocide.

I have grown weary and my hair is graying. The child that lived through the genocide is now a grown man. In the years to come, the generation that lived through the genocide will be gone forever. Gone will be the eyewitnesses to one of history’s most brutal killing sprees.

So we collect our stories and collect every fragment of documentation we can find. We want to leave for our children the memory of what our fathers and mothers fought and died for. We want to leave for the world the memory of a genocide that the world should never forget.

Today my good friend and fellow blogger Rezwan has launched a website to collect what needs to be collected. Bangladesh Genocide Archive has been launched as a platform to collect together in one place on the Internet the available documentation on the genocide perpetrated on the people of Bangladesh in 1971. For our children and for the world.

The news reports

BBC News video

CBS news story.

ABC news story.

Associated Press story.

The Tall Tale

I wrote earlier this week that I did not believe Hillary Clinton was lying about her experience in Bosnia. Instead, I questioned her perception of the event. While others may have found the trip to be safe, she may have had a heightened threat perception. Today Newsweek adds another wrinkle to this theory in an article on Hillary Clinton’s Bosnia trip. Newsweek demonstrates that Hillary Clinton’s tale of Tuzla has grown in the telling. Each new retelling has been embellished further, until it has now become a story with fictional sniper fire and fictional ducking and covering. Her threat perception has grown as she has gotten further in time from her trip to Bosnia, and closer in time to the Democratic National Convention.

Looking through the First Lady’s remarks on her visit to the base in Tuzla, with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow, one finds a first hand recollection of the threat she was facing in Tuzla. In remarks at Dover Air Force base in 1999, Hillary Clinton recalled her visit to Tuzla. She said:

"You know, I went to Bosnia shortly after the peace accords were signed, when it was safe enough to go to our base in Tuzla, but not very safe to go anywhere else."

Somehow, over time, the "safe" trip to Tuzla has grown into a war story where Hillary Clinton is braving sniper fire to prove her foreign policy bona fides. It is as if the facts were being fixed around her campaign created myth of "experience".

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."  - Hillary Clinton, Remarks at George Washington University, March 17, 2008

"Now let me tell you what I can remember, OK — because what I was told was that we had to land a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire. So I misspoke — I didn’t say that in my book or other times but if I said something that made it seem as though there was actual fire — that’s not what I was told. I was told we had to land a certain way, we had to have our bulletproof stuff on because of the threat of sniper fire. I was also told that the greeting ceremony had been moved away from the tarmac but that there was this 8-year-old girl and, I can’t, I can’t rush by her, I’ve got to at least greet her — so I greeted her, I took her stuff and then I left, Now that’s my memory of it." - Hillary Clinton, interview with Daily News editorial board, March 24, 2008

 But don’t worry, she is ready to answer phone calls at 3 a.m.

Last week Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen wrote in The Politico that people who think that Hillary Clinton can still win the Democratic nomination "are living on another planet." Yet today on CNN, the mid-day anchor referred to Barack Obama’s lead in delegates as "razor thin". Giving CNN and other media the benefit of the doubt, it is worth examining how Hillary Clinton can catch up to Barack Obama and claim the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

According to CNN’s count Barack Obama currently leads Hillary Clinton in pledged delegates won by a margin of 171 delegates. Barack Obama has 1413 delegates to Hillary Clinton’s 1242. There are 10 primaries remaining. Barack Obama has built his delegate lead steadily since the primaries and caucuses began in Iowa on January 3rd. The graph below shows how each candidate has collected their delegates since the contest began [click image to enlarge]:

The graph below shows how Obama’s delegate lead over Clinton has grown over time [click image to enlarge]:

The graph below shows the popular vote counts and Barack Obama’s lead over time [click image to enlarge]:

Barack Obama has steadily increased and now holds approximately a 700,000 vote lead over Hillary Clinton in the primaries contested so far. The graph above does not take into account the delegate counts from the caucuses. In a contest for delegates that comprises both primaries and caucuses, the popular vote count is a flawed measure of the will of the people since it unfairly penalizes states that have held caucuses. Nonetheless, I have provided the data for completeness.

The ten contests that remain have a total of 566 delegates up for grabs distributed as follows:

Of the ten primaries remaining, Hillary Clinton is favored to win in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. Barack Obama is favored to win in Guam, North Carolina, Oregon, Montana and South Dakota. Indiana is considered a toss-up slightly favoring Hillary Clinton. In raw numbers, Hillary Clinton would have to win 369 out of the remaining 566 delegates to edge out Barack Obama in the delegate count. That is, Hillary Clinton would have to win slightly over 65% of the remaining delegates. The only contests so far where Clinton has garnered over 65% of the delegates are American Samoa, where she got 2 out of the 3 delegates, and Arkansas, where she was First Lady.

However, Hillary Clinton is not likely to win the states Barack Obama is favored in. Being conservative, if we assume she ties Obama in these states and territories (Guam, North Carolina, Oregon, Montana and South Dakota), they will each get 101 delegates, leaving 364 delegates up for grabs in the remaining states.  Hillary Clinton would have to win 268 out of the remaining 364 delegates to overcome Obama’s delegate lead. That is, Hillary Clinton would have to win slightly over 73% of the delegates in Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. The only contest so far where Clinton has garnered more than 73% of the delegates is Arkansas. In her "triumph" in Ohio, she garnered 53% of the delegates. In other words, to win 73% of the delegates, she would have to beat Barack Obama by around 46 points in each of these states (assuming the delegate percentages will roughly track the popular vote margins in these states). To put things in perspective, according to the polls she currently leads Barack Obama by about 14 points in Pennsylvania (51.2% to 37.5%). She would have to more than triple her lead to 46 points to garner the margin of victory she needs in Pennsylvania. A victory in Pennsylvania of less than 46 points will seriously hurt her chances of overcoming Barack Obama’s "razor thin" delegate lead.

Hillary Clinton’s path to the nomination becomes even more remote if Barack Obama actually wins any of the states he is favored to win. However, since this post is an exploration of Clinton’s path to the nomination I will leave the less rosy scenarios as an exercise for the reader.

As this post demonstrates, Hillary Clinton definitely has a chance to become the nominee of the Democratic party. The anchors on CNN are correct. It is not impossible for her to win. To win, however, given the proportional delegate system in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton would have to do significantly better in the remaining states than Ronald Reagan did in his landslide victory over Walter Mondale in 1984. If she pulls off this historic (and to some observers, other-wordly) feat, she will have earned the bragging rights of being called a true Reagan Democrat.

 [Click to download the source data for the graphs in this post]

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The Washington Post has exposed Hillary Clinton’s little fib about her Bosnia trip. Hillary Clinton told her audience earlier this week that her trip to Bosnia was dangerous. She said:

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

The problem of course is what she said happened never happened. The Washington Post dug up pictures and video from the greeting ceremony in Bosnia. Sinbad was there, an 8 year old girl was there, Hillary Clinton was there. However, there was no running with heads down and there was no sniper fire.

Many have questioned Hillary Clinton’s credibility based on this account. I, however, question her threat perception.

I have no reason to believe that Hillary Clinton is lying. It may just be that her recollection of the events in Bosnia are different than the actual facts. She may have perceived a greater threat than actually existed. Perhaps she feared sniper fire and that fear has made her forget that indeed there was a greeting ceremony. She may have a heightened sense of threat perception. She may perceive threats as much worse than they actually are.

It may be the same kind of heightened and exaggerated threat perception that led her to vote for the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. She was susceptible to the propaganda that led the drum beat to war. It may have led her to the one percent doctrine, where possibility becomes probability. It is a view of the world where all risks take on equal likelihood of occurring. It is a view of the world that leads to overreaction - a trait that is dangerous in the hands of the person in charge of the world’s most powerful fighting force. To wit, George W Bush.

As I survey the behavior of the Hillary Clinton campaign during the primaries, I also see evidence of overreaction to perceived threats. For example, Hillary Clinton’s outburst over the Obama campaign mailers questioning her stand on healthcare and NAFTA. Taken together, it is a pattern of behavior that is alarming.

Of course I could be wrong. It is possible that Hillary Clinton was simply lying about her Bosnia trip.