All My Candidates Are In Texas

Three polls out from Texas today with wildly different results, which is right in line with the wide variance in polling this year. Rasmussen has Clinton up by 19 and ARG has Obama up by 6. ARG has been terrible this election cycle.

The one that interests me, however, is this one commissioned by the Texas Credit Union League. It has Clinton up 49-41, which sounds about right (maybe a little low), but it reiterates that Obama has some natural, built-in advantages with the delegate count:

Even though Clinton leads by 8 points in polling statewide, based upon the following sub-samples, Obama would still come out with a delegate lead.

And that's just among delegates allocated by the primary, not our additional caucus process which Obama has proven deft at winning delegates through.

I'm not kidding, follow me below...

"Clinton also enjoys majority support in the South (57%) and Western (61%) regions of the state, and edges ahead in the Eastern part of the state 46% to 40%. Obama is beating Clinton 53% to 32% in the Central region and leads 49% to 44% in the Houston area. The Dallas Fort-Worth region is tied within margin of error (Clinton 42%, Obama 41%)."

Which means that Clinton actually needs something like a blowout to get the delegate split she needs in Texas. All of which is to say that Mark Penn is an idiot when he claims that "Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania ... have 492 delegates - 64 percent of the remaining delegates Hillary Clinton needs to win the nomination," because she's not going to win those states by a 100-0 count.

In a somewhat related note, Markos agrees with me that the whole superdelegate thing is way overblown. The nominee is going to win this on the ground and at the polls, and either of them can right now. I also agree with this:

What's most interesting to me about this whole affair, however, is that the Clintonistas would even suggest the use of super delegates to subvert the will of the Democratic Party electorate. It betrays a lack of confidence in their candidate's electoral viability, even with a calendar that will become far more favorable to her in March, while seemingly confirming every right-wing charge that the Clintons place winning above all else, including principle.

That they would even suggest a tactic that would sunder the Democratic Party, kicking off a vicious and destructive civil war, tells me that like Bill in the 90s, when our majorities in Congress and all around the country were decimated and the party's base left to wither and die, Hillary will put her own interests above those of their party. And to me, there's no greater sin in Democratic politics than that.

So the Clinton campaign has graduated from saying that certain states don't matter, to saying certain voters don't matter, to now saying that the Democratic Party electorate doesn't matter.