Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Breaking — BMG News calls Ohio for Hillary [update: CNN has joined us]

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Continuing our tradition of calling races before it’s responsible to do so, BMG News has declared Senator Hillary Clinton the winner of the Ohio primary.  Results as of right now (35% reporting):

✔Clinton 432,065 (57%)

Obama 312,049 (41%)

UPDATE: CNN has followed our lead, calling Ohio for Hillary.  I like this being first business!  đŸ˜€

Texas, however, is still way too close to call.  Even for me.

UPDATE: Texas is unbelievably close.  As of now (about 10:30 pm, 20% reporting):

Obama 694,726 49%

Clinton 686,218 49%

About 1.5 million votes counted, and only 8,000 votes separate the candidates.  If it stays that close … dare I say “recount”?

FURTHER UPDATE (11 pm): Hillary has opened up a lead of about 20,000 votes in Texas, with a third of the vote counted.  Still very close, but she’s been catching up all night and has now jumped ahead, which suggests that the late-deciders are trended strongly toward Hillary (remember the thousands of early voters in TX — Obama’s early lead was due to them, because they showed up on the boards right away, and his lead has been eroding all night).  Could be a good night for Hillary.

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Comments

  1. I’m calling Mississippi for Obama and McCain right now.

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    p>And what the bloody hell is wrong with Texan Democrats??  After this election season, they’re still surprised by massive turnout at their caucuses?  Maybe they don’t have the Innernet or the teevee.  I have to say that there seems to be a close relationship between horribly organized caucuses (Nevada/Texas) and a Democratic Party that repeatedly falls short of what it should be achieving.

  3. If she hasn’t won Texas by now, she hasn’t scored the required Texas-Ohio knock out punch to justify continuing her campaign. If all the numbers stay the same as they are now — and anecdotal reports suggest Obama will once again beat Clinton in the Texas caucuses where the people who really care vote — Obama will finish the night with more votes and more delegates after months of campaigning. That’s a victory, and Senator Clinton should respect it for the good of the party, and a successful November result for the Democrats.  

      • What more counting do you need?

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        p>The fact that Senator Clinton failed to score the “knockout punch” that she needed in Texas seems pretty clear. Her double-digit pre-primary campaign lead in national polls has been reversed and now Obama leads in most, maybe all, recent nationwide polls. Obama also polls better against McCain. He is outraising her in money by almost 2-1. Is it likely that she will have more delegates than Obama by the time of the Convention? Would it be advisable for the SuperDelegates to throw the nomination to her even if Obama has more Democratic votes? If no, then the sooner she withdraws gracefully the better for the Party. The point of this contest is not to win the nomination, it is to beat McCain.

          • Obama’s money is holy and smells like perfume…like the money that the Three Kings gave Baby Jesus.

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            p>Hillary’s money is printed on dried skin from cute deer like Bambi and smells like kerosene and durian.  It’s eeeeeviiil!

            • ok, that was a good one.. lolol  but you neglected to add that hillary’s money makes the baby jesus cry. đŸ˜€

              • I thought this stat from the Texas exit poll was really interesting:

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                p>

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                p>Obama gets the really religious and the “never go” crowd.  Clinton gets the in-betweeners.  Don’t know what to make of that, but it’s interesting.

                • Talk about not knowing the candidates.  That a majority of non-churchgoers could go for Obama says volumes about how little is generally known about him.

                • and my choices for President are always between degrees of churchiness, never a clear choice of churchiness or not (Reagan & Nixon were probably the least churchy, though Nixon did make Kissinger kneel down and pray with him before he resigned). Of my non-atheistic choices at present, Obama is my clear choice to lead this country.  The other choice is that equally religious Methodist, who made it clear in interview on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network of the importance of Jesus in her life.  Oh, yeah, there is that other guy, that profane and cranky anti-Mike Huckabee Arizonan whom I call the anti-Choice, for reasons more than one.

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                  p>But I also agree with Laurel about Obama’s support with the religious, as indicative of African American support.

                • the “more than weekly” difference looks real.  but the margins are so close in the other categories that i doubt they are statistically different.

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                  p>african americans are reputed to be major church-goers.  if that is correct, the fact that he routinely gets 85+% of the vote may largely explain the “more than weekly” number.

        • Why on earth would Hillary withdraw…if she won Rhode Island, Ohio, and possibly Texas, after being outspent by almost 2-1?  Obviously, Democrats all over the country are starting to rethink this race…and rethink Obama…dream on, Bob.

          • I mean, it’s an argument, and a variation of this may even ultimately be the winning argument, as it were, but mostly it’s amusing and a good way to provoke discussion, which it seems to have done. đŸ™‚

    • The “required Texas-Ohio knock out punch” is required only by the likes of Chris Matthews.  IMHO, if she loses both TX and OH (which she won’t, apparently), it would be over.  But if she wins OH and basically ties TX, why not stay in through PA, which should be a good state for her, especially if there’s the possibility of a do-over in FL and/or MI (also good states for her).

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      p>Neither candidate can possibly amass 2,025 delegates by the convention.  It really is going to come down to the superdelegates.  And the numbers of pledged delegates separating the two are really quite small.  With a Clinton win in OH, and especially if TX is at least close, I don’t see there being a groundswell for Clinton to leave the race.

      • That one stung. Comparing me to He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named was a low blow. OK, let her stay in, I accept everyone’s arguments. My provocative little trial balloon got shot down. Sniff.

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        p>Maybe FL will decide the whole election again.

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        p>I do stand by my statement about the direction of the campaign. Clinton started with a huge lead and lost it — why? Because she hasn’t run a very good campaign, and because her message isn’t appealing to a big chunk of the Democratic electorate. That’s a problem.

        • about the Matthews thing.  That really was unfair.  I didn’t actually mean to compare you to him, but that’s kinda how it came out.  Sorry….

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          p>Wouldn’t that be amazing — if it all comes down to FL.  Some kind of rip in the time-space continuum is sure to follow, no?

          <

          p>You’re right about the Clinton campaign.  They’ve made a lot of mistakes — chief among them underestimating how successful campaigns like Obama’s can be.  They obviously learned nothing from what happened in 2006 right here in MA.  Hillary probably can’t retool her campaign strategists right now without making it look like a bloodbath, so she’s stuck with Mark Penn et al. for a while.  But maybe she can find people who know what they’re doing and quietly pay more attention to them.

          • I just wish someone could find the door to the control panel on the back of that man’s head and punch in the deactivation code. Truly, a wretched example of American journalism.

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            p>Anyway, as to Senator Clinton’s campaign, MY GOD! They put the press in the toilet. In the toilet. I mean it’s either complete organizational incompetence or pettiness of the most juvenile, unprofessional sort. Every working political journalist in the country has seen that picture by now, and the implication hasn’t escaped one of them. These are the people the campaign relies on to get its message across. As to the message, would it kill them to talk about unity, about hope, about a better America. But they have conceded all of that to Obama. All they’ve got is experience, health care, and an old guy in a crumpled suit in New York City who works part time for the campaign, bills millions, and helps Yahoo! and other big corporations the rest of the time. That is not the way to win, and her incredible collapse (compared to where she started) is stark evidence of the poor effort mounted by her campaign so far. They couldn’t even get their filings in PA done right.

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            p>I give the Senator herself enormous credit for many things — acquitting herself very well indeed in the debates, stopping the rubbish pouring out of former President Clinton, and presenting a truly impressive blend of toughness, intelligence, knowledge and charisma — but she has not run a good campaign.

            • the accomplishments in your last paragraph do suggest that, in some respects at least, she has run a good campaign.  Shutting up Bill alone is really quite something — has any other human ever accomplished that?  Which is not to say that her campaign can’t, and shouldn’t, be a whole lot better — it can, and it should.

        • The Obama memo that was accidentally leaked to the press after Super Tuesday has proven quite accurate in predicting the outcome.  It correctly predicted that she would win RI, Ohio, and Texas.  

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          p>It predicted the outcome of the races accurately, erring only in Maine, which they incorrectly predicted would go to Clinton. Obama’s camp predicted that Clinton wins Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and Kentucky; Obama wins Vermont, Mississippi, Indiana, North Carolina, Oregon, Montana, Wisconsin, and South Dakota.

          <

          p>The Obama campaign has based their campaign on these assumptions, and according to their predictions, by the convention, Obama ends up with more delegates.

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          p>As a prognosticator, I’d take Axelrod over Penn in a heartbeat.

          • It doesn’t, he doesn’t have enough.  

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            p>Let’s see what three wins in a row does for the Clinton campaign.

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            p>At this point, I don’t see a ticket without both of these candidates, pick your own order, but with this may people turning out to vote and how close this is, how can either one be left out?  I didn’t think that would be a good idea earlier, but at this point I don’t see how this can be avoided.

    • And what about respecting the 67% of Democrats who say they want Hillary to stay in the race if she wins EITHER Ohio or Texas? Does their opinion not count as much as yours?

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      p>Also, are you suggesting people who vote in primaries don’t care and that only caucuses count?

    • and leading in PA.  Not a chance, we have an opportunity to get the best candidate to be the Democratic nominee and you want her to stop her campaign.  I have a good majority of the Democrats with me, two thirds think she should continue even if she loses Texas (which she won’t) she’s going to win Texas. Let the best candidate win, and let the people decide.

    • He’s peaked and it’s all downhill from here.  People looked at him as a frontrunner and don’t really buy it.

  8. Hillary seems to have won he battleground states that will matter in November: MI, FL, OH, TN, and of course big states like NY, NJ and MA….A Dem will not win Kansas in November or Alaska…..Does this matter? I wouls say it does…

    • As put forward in her speech. She also included FL in her list of the states that she has carried, which seems disingenuous to me.

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      p>In a general sense, this argument boils down to a question of cross-over, as it were: will Team Clinton support Team Obama if he wins the nomination; and will Team Obama vote for Team Clinton if she is the nominee? The fact that Obama has won in Red States and Blue States, whereas Clinton’s strength is in Blue States, suggests to me that of the two Obama is more likely to garner support from a broader fraction of the electorate, so I’m not sure this argument works, but then again I also think Obama is more likely to beat McCain, and most generally what the heck do I know anyway? Not much: I’ll answer it for you đŸ˜‰  

      • 1.6 million Democratic votes in FLA and she won. She is winning Texas. She kicked ass in Ohio and RI. If I remember correctly, wasn’t the Clinton campaign on the ropes? Her last day? The blue state strategy isn’t an old one – win the blue states and one red state -say ARK, and we have President Hillary Clinton.  

      • He’s not a Blue State candidate, which was pretty much the original objection/problem we had with him.

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        p>Once you let go of the fairy tale that he’s going to actually change the R/D split in the country, the rest of the rationalizations for him fade.  Well, it leaves the resentment basis of his candidacy.

      • If I remeber correctly and I am lazy right now and do not want to fact check….but weren’t Kansas’s or Alaska’s Dem numbers low? Meaning the Dem numbers are low and the Republican are sure to win thos states due to their vast majorities? I think her argument makes sense….She has the states that will put her over the top in November…..

        • where the majority of dems went for obama.  but dems make up a small fraction of voters in that state, so where does that get us in november?  nowhere.

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