Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

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".

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.