Posted on 4/28/2008 2:08:45 PM

Political Betting – Don’t Write Off Clinton Yet

By Charles Jay

This week in betting on politics, the bad news for Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary was that although he was outspending Hillary Clinton by roughly a 3-to-1 margin, Clinton still won in the Keystone State by 9.5 points. The bad news for Clinton is that she did not make up that much ground in delegates, which brings up a problem not with her campaign, but with the system itself. You see, the way delegates are doled out, a system that differs by state, has created the illusion that the senator from New York is doing much worse than she really is.

BetUS Political Betting Odds:

To win the Democratic nomination

BARACK OBAMA -650

HILLARY CLINTON +375

To be elected US President in 2008

HILLARY CLINTON +500

JOHN MCCAIN +140

BARACK OBAMA +105

Here is an excerpt from a Salon.com article by Sean Wilentz that was published BEFORE Clinton's resounding win in Pennsylvania:

"Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats in primary states choose their nominee on the basis of a convoluted system of proportional distribution of delegates that varies from state to state and that obtains in neither congressional nor presidential elections. It is this eccentric system that has given Obama his lead in the delegate count. If the Democrats heeded the 'winner takes all' democracy that prevails in American politics, and that determines the president, Clinton would be comfortably in front. In a popular-vote winner-take-all system, Clinton would now have 1,743 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,257."

He's absolutely right about that. Clinton would be the virtual winner going into the convention if the delegates weren't distributed along those lines. She would only need about a hundred or so votes from the super delegates to make it happen (And we aren't even counting Michigan or Florida in those totals).

As such, the "will of the people," which the pro-Obama media keeps referring to, would truly be a matter of reasonable debate.

But on the surface, that's not the case, because, as Obama's backers would assert, rules are rules. He didn't make the rules he benefited from; those that gave him victories in certain winner-take-all states, while the bigger states, the "swing" states, if you will, in which Clinton out-performed Obama, hurt him very little by giving her comparatively little gains. At the same time, however, the inclusion of super delegates is also part of the rules. And there would appear to be no reason why Clinton should pull out of a primary race before getting an opportunity to lobby those super delegates with the very simple argument that, by virtue of being prejudiced by the existing primary rules, her superiority in the most important states - with the most electoral votes at stake; the states which give her a real shot against John McCain - is more or less mitigated.

That, in and of itself, gives her a very plausible argument, despite what you may hear from several media outlets, including MSNBC, which has vilified Clinton for not pulling out the race already (in particular, Keith Olberman, a former ESPN 'SportsCenter' anchor who now fancies himself a political pundit, has been conducting a shameful campaign to vault Obama and trash Clinton). The fact is, she can legitimately go to the super delegates and make the claim that taking the whole landscape of the electorate into account, she not only would be the winner if things were conducted in a winner-take-all format across the board, but that based on this proposition, she would be the candidate with the best chance to defeat John McCain in November, simply because she can be stronger in those "swing" states (California, New York, Ohio, Texas, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania - we leave out Illinois, of course). If she captures six of those states, as she did, as far as I can tell, against Obama in the primaries, she can win the general election.

I believe that as long as she can keep her head above water, which means for starters she must win in Indiana (she is a -200 favorite in the BetUS political betting odds), she can continue to make this argument with conviction to the super delegates. And she can continue to unnerve the Obama forces, who know deep down that she's making a pretty good point.

What I'm saying here is that I would not underestimate the influence of the "electoral college" argument on the part of Clinton, at least as it applies to the primaries, because the bottom line with the Democrats, a private organization that has every right to make its own decisions on nominations and such, is that it wants to put forward the candidate that has the best chance to get elected, not necessarily the one who is the most "politically correct" or makes some kind of overall "statement." Super delegates have no obligation whatsoever to follow anyone's idea of what the "will of the people" is, but only to follow their own best moral and political instincts (otherwise, why would they exist?). And I will tell you this much - with each day that passes, as long as Obama can't score the knockout blow, Hillary Clinton is alive and kicking in an effort to win this nomination, and actually gathers momentum, to the point where she may actually offer a value of sorts at +375 in the BetUS political betting odds.

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(Charles Jay was the 2004 presidential candidate of the Personal Choice Party, and is also the 2008 nominee. He says he will place odds on himself at the appropriate time. He is currently a contributor to the BetUS Locker Room)