Cancelled
Posted on May 20th, 2008 by Daniel Larison
The meme we have been seeing for some time has reappeared: Oregon “cancels out” Kentucky or is “almost a mirror image.” Yes, 16 point margins are almost exactly like 35 point margins, especially when you double them. Clinton is likely to come out of the evening with 150,000 more votes and over a dozen more delegates than her opponent, but those have evidently been “cancelled out,” too.
This is an interesting position for Obama supporters to take, given their candidate’s claim to the majority of pledged delegates. It turns out that his majority must actually be ”cancelled out” by Hillary’s minority.
Filed under: politics
Why should anyone, let alone Obama supporters, pretend there was a level playing field going into tonight? If you are down 10-7 entering the 9th inning and the losing team scores two runs and the winning team scores one run, one can reasonably claim it doesn’t matter except for the gamblers.
Dream on, mathematically challenged one. Game is over, Hillary fought a close battle, and lost. Superdelegates are not rallying to help the old girl. Why can’t you figure this one out?
I take “cancel out” as, at worst, an inexact choice of words. Obama’s 16 point win in Oregon doesn’t really erase Clinton’s 35 point win, but he also doesn’t need to. He has won more contests than she has and came in with a lead. M. Z. Forrest is right: he didn’t need to beat Clinton in the 9th inning; he just needed to hold his lead. Which he has done. I don’t know why you insist that he needs to win on style points in addition to actual points. Clinton is a very good candidate and there’s no shame in winning a close match against a tough opponent.