5:05 AM in Abu Dhabi and CNN has just called the Pennsylvania primary race for Sen. Hillary Clinton.
This is great news. For Sen. John McCain.
She's never getting out. Hillary will not leave the race tonight. She will not leave the race before the convention in August. She may not leave the race ever.
Here's my new fondest hope:
- Clinton and Obama go to the convention with neither - including the super delegates - having a majority to claim the nomination.
- The issue of seating the delegates from Florida and Michigan delegates will not have been resolved.
- The "L-word" - Lawsuit - will be in the news every day with each side threatening to take the result in Denver to court.
- The race between Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama has become so nasty that their negatives are driven through the roof and the general electorate doesn't like either one of them.
- While Clinton and Obama continue to slime each other, McCain continues to look and sound Presidential.
- The "C-word" - Change - election Democrats have been touting, implodes and John McCain becomes the "C-word" - Consensus - candidate.
I ran though some of this - especially the lawsuit idea - with Judge Andrew Napolitano on his Fox radio show, Brian & the Judge. He immediately pointed out that the US Supreme Court isn't in session during August and September. "They don't come back until the first Monday in October" he reminded me.
In truth, it is impossible to believe that the Dems won't come out of Denver with a nominee. But it is very, VERY possible that they come out of Denver with a nominee who is out-and-out detested by the supporters of which ever candidate comes out the loser.
The Pennsylvania exit poll numbers I found most interesting last night tracked a Gallup poll from several weeks ago - that is the relatively huge numbers of Obama and Clinton supporters who told the pollsters they would not vote for the other candidate in November; they will stay home or vote for McCain. From the AP:
The animosity between the two camps led more than one in seven Obama supporters to say they would vote for Republican John McCain if Clinton were the nominee. Even more Clinton supporters, one in four, said they would defect.
At shortly after 7 AM in Abu Dhabi, the CNN ticker just clicked over to the double-digite percentage point lead (55% - 45% with about 84% of the votes counted) that the Clinton camp was looking for while Obama was speaking through the top of the hour to make certain he was still on when local newscasts began. "In White, blue-collar rural Pennsylvania," CNN's John King just said, "Hillary Clinton is getting 75% of the vote."
This is an issue which will not go unnoticed by the super delegates as they try to figure out how to avoid that nightmare situation I described above.
Hill-are-EE; Hill-are-EE!
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