Musings on the Dem Delegate Crunch

Obama wins Iowa, Clinton unexpectedly wins New Hampshire. We now have two well-funded candidates. Conventional wisdom and the intrade prediction markets now have her as the favorite to win the nomination.

But is she? Obama’s twin union endorsements in Nevada as well as John Kerry’s signal that traditional Democratic support groups aren’t giving up on him. More important than that, what will become of Edwards’ support? His own rhetoric and issue positions other than healcare mandates suggest that it would move to Obama en masse should he drop out of the race. It’s Hillary who need to find a way to reach 50% primary support nationally. How does she do that? She needs large swaths of the electorate to start abandoning Obama as non-viable, or find a way to at least split Edwards’ delegates with Obama if and when Edwards were to drop out. I’m pretty darn sure she can’t do that without winning California outright.

Here are my predicted scenarios, in order of likelyhood:

1. Obama and Clinton stay neck-and-neck in delegates (splitting Monster Tuesday states), Edwards bows out between Texas and convention, puts Obama slightly over 50%, Obama wins nomination.
2. Obama wins both SC and NV handily, wins by significant margins on Monster Tuesday, Clinton bows out to save face.
3. Obama support continuously erodes, he says something naive or controversial and furthers doubts about his qualifications. Edwards refuses to endorse. Clinton wins big on Monster Tuesday, keeps winning primaries and approaches a majority. Superdelegates move massively into her column and Obama sees the writing on the wall.
4. Obama and Clinton stay neck-and-neck, Edwards drops out and endorses Clinton.
5. Clinton makes gaffe, support declines rapidly and she gets swept on Monster Tuesday.
6. Edwards surges and passes Obama; consolidates anti-Cinton vote and wins.

Apologies to Edwards supporters for saying it’s more likely he’ll endorse Clinton than win outright, but that’s how I see it.

This isn’t 2004, where Kerry jumped to a huge lead and the anti-Kerry vote was completely fractured. Even if Edwards could have denied him a majority of primary delegates, there was no way he could pickup enough support to get to 50% himself.

Upcoming posts

There are a number of topics I mean to address shortly, most notably:

• An immigraton policy that aims to increase Canada’s population to 60 million by 2020;
• A calculus-based approach to optimizing tax brackets;
• An analysis of the radical and innovative idea of replacing income tax with a national sales tax, both for Canada and the US;
• Whether voting is worth it, and under what circumstances.

Stay tuned!

Troop funding showdown

House and Senate Democrats recently passed a bill providing funds for the war in Iraq.  The difference this time is that it contains strong language requiring most troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by July of 2008.  Not surprisingly, Bush has threatened to veto any bill that “tells the terrorists which calendar day to circle” (paraphrased).

 Now, Congress cannot stop Bush from waging war without impeaching him and removing him from office, even if it were 100% Democratic and voted that way.   But Congress controls the budget.   They have essentially said “we’ll give you the money as long as you leave next year”.

On Charities

Let’s say you make a dccent living and have a little cash left over after expenses and investments.  Being a socially conscious person, you want to use it to help the needy.  So what is the best way to spend your money?

a) give it to the United Way; 

b) give it to a beggar on the street;

c) give it to a local after-school program (sports, computers, science, etc.); 

d) help sponsor your work collegue’s kid’s hockey trip to France;

e) overpay your taxes.

A new beginning

Hello all. This personal blog is hereby launched.