The Daily Background

Here’s Liss (who has been defending Clinton against sexism consistently throughout the campaign), sounding very reasonable at Shakesville:

Clinton Conceding?
[…]
Lots of debate. No definitive answers at the moment.

Except, perhaps, that Hillary Clinton will not be the Democratic nominee. For reasons having much less to do with votes or superdelegates or rules or bylaws or any other tangible bits of the electoral process than one might think. For reasons that are not singularly her responsibility, nor ours, nor the Obama campaign’s, nor the media’s, nor the Democratic Party’s; there is plenty of responsibility to go around, and there are no angels among us. That much seems pretty clear at the moment.

Also clear: That John McCain is still a belligerent, no-knowing, lobbied-up asshole who needs to be kept as far away from the White House as possible. And that President Obama’s first order of Oval Office business should be sending McCain on a manned mission to Mars.

Here’s Jeralyn (a steadfast Clinton supporter) at TalkLeft sounding… slightly less reasonable:

Votes are cast at the convention in August. Superdelegates can change their mind any time before then. If this went to an open convention, even pledged delegates would be released from their pledge after the first vote.

This does not mean it’s going to the convention. It means that until one candidate drops out, there can be no winner because the number of delegates that candidate has can change any time until the convention.

Until and unless Hillary Clinton publicly suspends or ends her campaign and concedes that Obama is the nominee, there is no nominee. There is only a statement that if current delegate positions at this moment were frozen in time until August he would be the nominee.

If and when Hillary makes that determination, then Obama will be the nominee. At that point TalkLeft will congratulate him and offer him our support. We’re not there yet.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog