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Wednesday, February 06, 2008

A good night out west for Obama
Posted by Jill | 6:02 AM
It says something very good about this country that Barack Obama had such a strong showing in states where the black vote wasn't a huge factor. Idaho (75%), Kansas (73%), North Dakota (65%), and Utah (57%) all went for Obama by significant margins. Imagine that -- Idaho: the land of the black helicopter/milita/tax protestors went 75% for Obama. Of course, these are the guys who were active during the first Clinton administration and then disappeared the minute a REAL threat to the Constitution took office, so some of this may be attributable to Clinton hatred. But whatever the reason, Barack Obama showed so strongly in those states that the "screw the south, win the west" strategy that many Democrats advocate would be far more likely to come to fruition with Obama as the nominee.

The problem is that the Democratic hackocracy may very well prevent that from happening by the difference in the number of superdelegates. Last night, NJ Sen. Bob Menendez, in true My Party Comes First fashion, tried to avoid the question, but ultimately made clear that his commitment to Hillary Clinton took priority over anything the voters might want.

The media have a vested interest in a Hillary Clinton nomination, for prurient, "great copy" reasons, because she's the more corporate-friendly of the two, and because she's virtually guaranteed to lose to a Republican, especially if that Republican is John McCain. So there was this narrative last night about Hillary Clinton's "upsets" in Massachusetts and California, when Massachusetts had been solidly in Hillary Clinton's camp since the beginning, and pre-Super Tuesday polls for California had been all over the lot. No doubt the simpletons in the media, accustomed as they are to the sheeplike tendencies of Republicans to play Follow the Leader, thought that the Kennedy endorsements would tip Massachusetts over to the Obama camp. But if Republicans are like herding sheep, Democrats are like herding cats, and the Kennedy endorsements added at most a few percentage points to Obama's total.

Joe Sudbay weighs in on what this means for Hillary Clinton:

Obama won 13 states to Clinton's 8 victories (New Mexico is still to be decided). Obama will probably end up winning a few more delegates tonight than Hillary. NBC's Chuck Todd predicted Obama will secure 841 delegates to Clinton's 837 delegates. Almost a split decision, but he's still ahead.

Worse for Hillary, Obama has the momentum, and has for some time. Stretching out the calendar only helps Obama. He has been steadily catching up to Hillary in state after state, poll after poll -- that's why so many of today's states were actually in play tonight, when most weren't just a couple weeks ago. He has more money than Hillary. And after tonight, even more money will pour into the Obama campaign. Obama outraised Clinton by almost 3 to 1 in January. And the upcoming election calendar favors Obama. There are several caucuses this weekend, including Washington and Maine. Next week is the so-called Chesapeake primary (DC, MD and VA). Obama is expected to do well in all of them. Hillary Clinton had some big wins tonight to be sure -- but they were in states she was always expected to win. As Markos noted tonight: "She didn't exceed expectations anywhere. She lost states she led big in just a few weeks ago." (Hillary was recently ahead in Connecticut, Missouri, Georgia, Alabama and Minnesota, and then lost them all today. And she won California and Massachusetts, but she was always ahead in those states (see CA and MA).) And in any case, she failed to deal Obama a knock-out blow. Even worse, she lost to him in terms of the number of states won, and it looks like she may lose to him in terms of total delegates won.

As with every campaign, we have to deal with the reality of where things stand today. But, sometimes it does help to take a step back. Obama was practically unknown as a serious contender a year ago. He was running against the vaunted, inevitable Clinton machine. Last year, it was the conventional wisdom, we all agreed, that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee and the race would be wrapped up on Super Tuesday. That didn't happen. Her aura of invincibility is gone. Her inevitability is gone. She's now having to accept debates on Fox News (something she swore off of last year) in the hopes of generating momentum and getting some free air time (because she can't afford much more paid media). That says she's worried. As did her claim of victory in Florida last week, a non-primary where no one campaigned (well, almost no one) and where there were no delegates at stake.


A situation is evolving in which these two candidates could be neck-and-neck going into the convention -- and a bunch of politicians could tip the balance towards Hillary Clinton. I don't know about your state, but here in New Jersey, home of the hackiest of party hacks, the 12 of 18 superdelegates pledged to Hillary Clinton are apparatchiks like Gov. Jon Corzine, Sen. Robert Menendez, Rep. Robert Andrews, Rep. Frank Pallone, Rep. Bill Pascrell, and DNC state chair Joe Cryan. Only Rep. Steve Rothman is pledged to Barack Obama. So unless something unusual happens before the convention, we may very well have a situation in which party hacks decide the nominee even more than usual.

If the voters choose Hillary Clinton, that's one thing. But given the transformational nature of this year's Democratic campaign, to have the Old White Men of the party decide the nominee would leave a bad taste in the mouths of many Democratic voters. Let's just hope it doesn't come to that. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to monitor whether the media coverage of these candidates changes over the next few weeks before the next primaries.

Overall, though, this was a huge night for Barack Obama. That he won so many states not usually associated with black voters should dispel the "Can he get white voters?" concerns. That his victories took place all over the country indicate that he's a true national candidate.

(Note: The New York Times has a great results map here.)

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1 Comments:
Blogger Bob said...
The primary is a pleasant surprise. A year ago it figured to be a repeat of '04 when the bigshots shose Kerry early on & ran Dean out of the contest. The feeling was that only Gore could give Hillary a race.
2/6/08, 4:19 PM  
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