Last night, Fox News had at the bottom of the screen, “CLINTON, ROMNEY WIN MICHIGAN.” And I was a little irked by that, even though Fox was just stating the facts. Because Mitt Romney’s win was a true, hard-fought victory against a motivated opponent riding a wave of momentum; Hillary Clinton, literally, didn’t even have to show up to collect her “win.”
And I thought that 55 percent of the vote up against “Uncommitted,” Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel was a pretty lousy performance.
Well, CNN noticed “roughly 70 percent of Michigan’s African-American voters — a group that makes up a quarter of Michigan’s Democratic electorate — did not cast their votes for Clinton, choosing the “uncommitted” option instead,” and judging by Memeorandum, it’s a hot topic today.
It ought to be. The results in Michigan are terribly ominous news for Hillary Clinton. And yet her campaign manager is touting the win and offering pablum like, ”Tonight, Michigan Democrats spoke loudly for a new beginning.”
Which option on the ballot was for an old beginning?
UPDATE: Lefty blogger Chris Bowers does some number crunching and calculates that “if the same universe of individuals who turned out on election day could have voted for any candidate instead of the choices that were available to them, 45% would vote for Clinton, 37% for Obama, and 12% for Edwards.”
By my calculations, that would give 70 delegates to Clinton, 58 to Obama, and 19 for Edwards. My earlier calculation, here, is 87 (or thereabouts, depending on how they deal with fractions of a percent) delegates will go to Hillary, 63 will be uncommitted, and 6 will go to Kucinich — presuming the DNC folds and seats the Michigan delegates.