No Huffington Post:

“After the confetti is swept and the champagne bottles are tossed a more sober reality will take hold. Not just that her net gain of delegates this week will be, at most, in the single digits. But worse. There is no plausible scenario in which Clinton can win the nomination. At least not democratically.

Seven more weeks of campaign slog through Wyoming, Mississippi and into Pennsylvania. And then maybe tack on six more weeks, if you can believe it, into Indiana , West Virginia, and a handful of other states and into Puerto Rico on the 7th of June, quite literally into D-Day. Whatever the outcome, even if Clinton wins all 16 remaining contests -and some of them by veritable landslides, she will still be dozens of elected delegates behind Barack Obama.

She will not be the winner because she will have not won the majority of elected Democratic delegates. Clinton will be exactly where she was the night before Ohio and Texas: in second place and with no way to become the nominee unless enough unelected Superdelegates defy the popular will of the electorate and throw her the nomination (or unless you somehow believe that she can every coming primary with a 20 point margin).“

Kevin Drum contra o voto útil (comentando a fratricida campanha democrata de 1968):

“In other words, this was the mother of all ugly, party-destroying campaigns. No other primary campaign in recent memory from either party has come within a million light years of being as fratricidal and ruinous. But what happened? In the end, Humphrey (N.H. - candidato democrata) lost the popular vote to Nixon (N.H. - candidato republicano) by less than 1%. A swing of about a hundred thousand votes in California would have thrown the election into the House of Representatives.

If long, bitter, primary campaigns really destroy parties, then Humphrey should have lost the 1968 election by about 50 points. “Bitter” isn’t even within an order of magnitude of describing what happened that year. And yet, even against that blood-soaked background, Humphrey barely lost.“

Daniel Drezner tem uma peça acachapante sobre como a “identity politics” que grassa sobre a disputa democrata pode levar água ao moinho republicano:

“This leads to a central irony about this campaign. I don’t doubt that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have suffered a multitude of small slights in their professional and personal lives because of their gender or race. However, if you think about this as a contest to see who has suffered the greatest because of their identity, it’s not even close. The candidate who has suffered the most in his lifetime is…. John McCain. As an individual, he has paid a much higher price for his identity as an officer in the United States military than Obama or Cinton has individually paid for their race or gender. And there’s simply no way to spin it otherwise. (grifo meu)

As a collective entity, of course, African-Americans and women have white males beat on the suffering front. It is interesting, however, that the avatars of identity get all jumbled up once we look at the candidates’ individual biographies.“

O Idelber, na sua excelente cobertura da eleição lá no Biscoito, informa sobre um golpe baixíssimo da campanha de Clinton que também carrega água para o moinho republicano:

“4.Obama tem que aprender a dar umas caneladas. Não precisa abdicar de seus princípios éticos, mas algum tipo de reação mais dura aos ataques negativos ele terá que elaborar. Nesta semana, Hillary chegou a declarar: eu trago uma experiência de vida; John McCain traz uma experiência de vida; Barack Obama faz discursos. Imagine quantas vezes os republicanos vão tocar esse clip na eleição geral, caso se confirme a candidatura de Obama.“