Some might say Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has moved the proverbial goalposts so often in this primary season they must be on their ninth or tenth football field.
MSNBC host Keith Olbermann expects some new “metrics for what actually defines winning” to emerge from Team Clinton come Wednesday morning, especially if Barack Obama can top her in Indiana and North Carolina Tuesday night.
“We decided to prepare for tomorrows potential new re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-definition by compiling the guidelines offered so far,” Olbermann said on Monday’s show. “By the time we finished, it seems the only yardstick they had not yet offered was ‘Ladies First.’”
Olbermann traces the efforts from Clinton, her husband, their aides and campaign surrogates to de-legitimize nearly every state Obama has won: South Carolina doesn’t count because Jesse Jackson won there, caucuses don’t count because they’re dominated by activists, red states don’t count because they won’t vote for a Democrat in the general election, et cetera. Don’t even get them started on Florida and Michigan.
The spin didn’t stop with the states, Olbermann says. Clinton’s team has argued that votes from college educated liberals, independents, young voters, party elites and others don’t count for various reasons, the host says. What a coincidence that those groups all prefer Obama.
“When you boil it all down in determining the Democratic party’s nominee,” Olbermann says. “Only one vote really matters: The 50-something, conservative, registered Democrat, who’s not independent, but not a part of the base, and skipped college…. Who votes on domestic issues — but not in a primary or caucus — in a big state, that doesn’t border in Illinois, that has elected female governors and members of Congress, but didn’t vote Republican in 2004, won’t vote Republican in 2008, and didn’t vote for Jesse Jackson in 1984 or 1988. During an all-day vote, except for the hours between 7 and 7:15 p.m.”
The most important criteria, if Clinton is to have a real shot at the nomination, though comes down to this, he says:
“Oh, and they don’t object to their vote being overruled by superdelegates.”
This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast May 5, 2008.
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