I'm thinking they have both won their respective parties.....

[patgund]

The more I'm thinking about it, the more I'm starting to realize something.

Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton have both won their respective parties nominations.

Sen. Obama is clearly winning the nomination as the choice for the Democratic National Committee, showing how well the Gov. Howard Dean 50 state strategy programme has worked for the DNC and their policies.

Sen. Clinton is clearly winning the nomination as the choice for the Democratic Leadership Council, continuing the policies of the DLC, Terry McAuliffe, and other "New Democrats". (Indeed, Sen. Clinton's campaign is operating as a virtual "Shadow DNC", with as few ties to the Dean-led DNC as they possibly can. And she has already said the DNC's rules are not her campaign rules.)

If Sen. Obama wins the nomination and the General Election, it will be a significant defeat against the DLC, damaging their best chance for a resurgence of their power and hinder their efforts to control the DNC. More "New Democrats" would follow Sen. Kerry and Gov. Richardson out of the New Democrat camp as well. The best chance they would have to regain power would be lost.

If Sen. Clinton won the nomination and lost the General Election, it would also significantly damage or ruin the DLC.

However, the DLC could regain power under the following two circumstances.

If Sen. Clinton wins the nomination and the General Election, it would be a stunning coup for the DLC. The Dean-led DNC would be damaged or destroyed. The 50-state strategy would be cast aside in favour of the DLC's limited "safe state" policies. (I suspect a quid-pro-pro arrangement would be given the Democratic parties in Florida and Michigan giving them additional influence in the DLC-controlled DNC.)

If Sen. Obama wins the nomination and loses the General Election, then the DLC is positioned for a take-over of the DNC as well, sadly "tsk-tsking" and using the defeat to exercise DLC control yet again. Expect states to be marginalized or ignored again in favour of the "third way" policies of the New Democrats.

So basically we have two parties calling themselves Democrats. The primaries and elections will show which party wins control of the DNC - the "Democrats from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" like Gov, Dean, or the "GOP-Lite" New Democrats like Carville or McAuliffe. It's not in the DLC's interest to see an Obama win or a Clinton loss - which means if Sen. Obama gets the nomination, you will see the DLC talking heads acting like a de-facto third party to undercut the DNC and Sen. Obama, the better to position a DLC choice for 2012. And if Sen. Clinton gets the nomination, there will be pressure to bring all Democrats in line under DLC control.

So in retrospect, it may be more accurate to say that we're not looking at a choice between people in the same party, but two parties both trying to get the rights to call themselves the "Democratic Party"

Comments

[jeran.livejournal.com]

Well, I think Clinton winning the nomination is fast becoming a slim possibility. By CNN's count right now, Obama is only 72 pledged delegates short of beating Clinton's total delegate count. The majority of his superdelegates would have to switch alignment for Clinton to take the nomination.

I think if the DLC gets a win in the primaries, they're going to lose the election. The public doesn't want the GOP, lite or otherwise.

[morgan-gw.livejournal.com]

Hence, the reason Clinton's been my least-favorite potential nominee all along :-/. I won't need to hold my nose as hard to vote for her as I would have for, say, Lieberman, but at this point I really wish she'd just look at reality (she's behind in elected deligates, money, and several other metrics -- can't find the references just now) and concede.

It's also sad to see her (or at least her campaign) melting down. Someone really needs to ducttape Mark Penn's mouth shut.

Sigh. I hate politics :-(.

[tongodeon.livejournal.com]

This is very interesting stuff. I mentioned your post over here. (http://tongodeon.livejournal.com/716371.html)