make-believe.org

Firewall Tuesday

A lot of people have been asking me what's going to happen, whether Hillary has a chance. I find it difficult to refuse any opportunity to pontificate, but this time an illustration does the job:

Image courtesy of pollster.com. Weighs about a kilowordage.

Quite separately, what do I hope will happen? I quite like old Hillary, and there's a part of my brain that's clamouring for the mercy rule. She doesn't deserve to slog out a hopeless cause, so a quick kill would be a great relief. That happens if Obama takes OH and TX, which I think he will.

The moderate in me favours the scenario where Hillary takes OH and RI, but not TX or VT. That pushes the contest forward, though the result is effectively certain — see Figure 1.

But of course I'm a hopeless radical, and therefore I'm unable to resist the longshot scenario where HRC takes OH by 5, and TX by 1 or 2 (with RI giving her a treble; tiny VT being out of the question). Because while things are starting to get vicious, this contest is only working in the Democratic Party's favour. Nobody gives a shit what John Mac is doing right now — there's a great festival of health care and informed foreign policy debate going on. Would that it might continue.

Joseph | 3 Mar 2008 | 1 comment