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McCain's a Lock, so is Obama...

by John F. Tamburo, Editor in Chief, Publisher
Originally Posted: 3/5/2008 11:53:14 AM

John McCain won the Republican nomination last night.  It’s a lock.  He has the delegate count.  Mike Huckabee offered a graceful request to be the Vice Presidential nominee -- oops, withdrawal from the race.  On the other side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton beat Obama in three of four states, including the big ones of Texas and Ohio.  Ohio was a near-landslide.  Yet, for all of that, Mrs. Clinton gained a whopping 15 delegates on Obama, with twelve yet to be pledged as of this writing (and all of those likely to fall to Mr. Obama). Mrs. Clinton’s victories are clearly pyhrric.  She is likely, for her two big-state wins, to come up with a gain of as little as three delegates.  Such is the nature of the Democrat delegate-allocation system.  And, in the end of it all, this means that Barack Obama has locked up the Democrat nomination.

As explained in Slate in an article by John Dickerson, Mrs. Clinton faces the certainty of entering the convention in second place delegate-wise, and in second place for the popular vote.  Although Mrs. Clinton, in a startling display of hubris, spoke today of sharing the ticket with Mr. Obama, she is nowhere near the position of offering the winner of the Democrat popular vote the second position on that ticket.  The superdelegates, who were created expressly to override the will of the extreme-leftist primary voters, have realized that the creation is ineffective.  Why?  The voters themselves.  How many Democrats who voted for Obama will stay home if he is denied the nomination?  Exit polling indicates that strong majorities of Democrats want the superdelegates to vote with the people.  If the superdelegates unanimously vote their home states’ winner, Obama wins the nomination on the first ballot.  This assumes that Mrs. Clinton wins all remaining states with at least 55% of the vote in each state, an impossible thing.  If the superdelegates vote the national vote leader, then Mr. Obama walks away with the nomination, with Michigan or Mississippi likely to case the votes to bring him over 2,025.  Mr. Obama is the nominee.

Do you think that Mr. Obama will stand for Vice President in 2008 and lend his support to a person that will have cheated him out of his rightful victory by gaming the system?  If Florida and Michigan delegates are seated for Mrs. Clinton, then Mr. Obama’s supporters rightfully cry foul.  If superdelegates vote for Mrs. Clinton based on any sort of political pressure, then Mr. Obama’s supporters rightfully cry foul.  Mr. Obama would do right to be outraged, and refuse the Vice Presidential nomination if Mrs. Clinton offers it to him.  The black vote would stay home, seeing Mrs. Clinton’s maneuver as a racist act.  They might not be right, for it will only be an act of sore-losership by the Clintons, one that would have been perpetrated upon anyone of any race or color that stood in the way of Mrs. Clinton’s naked ambition.

Where does this leave John McCain?  Dancing on his desk!  Mr. McCain goes to convention after the Democrats, and can engineer his ticket most effectively.  If Mr. Obama wins, Mr. McCain nominates Sarah Palin as his running mate and splits the female vote with his choice of the country’s most popular governor.  If Mrs. Clinton seizes the nomination, he nominates Michael Steele, J. C. Watts, Lynn Swann, or if he can get her, Condi Rice.  This leaves Mrs. Clinton as the racist who cheated a black man out of the nomination, against Mr. McCain, who will run with a black person at his side, perhaps a black woman.  Mrs. Clinton, wife of "the first black President," will find it nearly impossible to find an "Uncle Tom," a black man who will stand with her as her running mate.  It would be career suicide for anyone.  Such a person would be anathema in the black community.  Even the consummate media whore, Jesse Jackson, would not abandon his loud Obama endorsement for that spot on the ticker.  Therefore, John McCain, with this outright effort by Hillary Clinton to steal the nomination that she thought would be a cakewalk, is in the position of 2008 being his election to lose.  The press has not picked up on this, nor will they sit by while the GOP codifies a strategy that will give them the White House and maybe both houses of Congress under a certified war hero.  The press created their own Frankenstein’s monster by loving John McCain’s "moderate" Senate record, not thinking that Mr. McCain would have to move into Conservative territory to effectively govern.

Barack Obama will be more of a challenge to John McCain than Hillary Clinton.  Were she to have withdrawn on March 4, this election would be Mr. Obama’s to lose.  Provided that Mr. Obama is the nominee, Mr. Obama will nominate a woman, and that woman will not be Hillary Clinton.  He won’t lose voters by making that mistake.  He will pick a female governor.  Who?  Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.  This shores up his ticket with a strong female presence who can unify Hillary’s voters behind his candidacy.

In summary, Hillary can only win if she cheats.  Barack Obama will face John McCain in the fall.  It’s a lock.