Obama in command of the race
Feb 5th, 2008 | 12 responses
Whatever happens in California and New Mexico at this point, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will come out close to a tie tonight. Add that to the existing 15 delegate lead for Obama up to now and Obama has a small delegate lead out of Super Tuesday. Let’s be honest here. This is a tough spot for Hillary Clinton going forward. Obama will rake in huge bucks the next few days as he did after NH. He’ll have time to campaign in individual states and build support. And the next states are LA, NE, ME, DC, MD, VA, WA and WI. It’s plausible that Obama could win all of those (LA would be closest) and come out with a huge delegate lead going into March 4 and OH and TX. Hillary will need a HUGE win in TX to survive at that point, as OH will be very close (large black population).
The only thing that helps Hillary is superdelegates and the prospect of seating FL and MI. I think FL and MI will only be sat if Hillary is already the nominee. In other words, they won’t really matter.
So that leaves superdelegates. I’ll say this now. If one candidate is leading among pledged primary/caucus delegates and the supers throw the race to the other candidate, the Democratic Party will be effectively destroyed. I think the supers – Congressmen, Governors, etc. – understand this and will support whoever wins the pledged delegates.
Think about the remaining states and see if you can map out a Hillary victory, excluding superdelegates. She has the advantage in Rhode Island, Kentucky, West Virginia and Texas. PA and OH are very close because of the large AA population in both states. Probably Louisiana too. But Obama has a huge advantage in WI, WA, OR, WY, IN, VT, VA, MD, DC, Dems Abroad and SD.
Hillary Clinton needed a decisive win tonight to make Obama’s path impossible. She failed to do that. Looks pretty good for Obama going forward.
One other thing on Obama’s side. He is winning in all sections of the country. He is using a 50-state strategy and that is helping sustain him despite big state victories for Hillary.
Cartoon by RJ Matson, The New York Observer
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12 Responses to “Obama in command of the race”
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Elrod: just posted this in the other thread:
I got off a long shift at work. Let me ask here, as I missed the results. It looks like, according to CNN, that there is a 6 delegate difference between H & O, with Hillary ahead by 100 delegates or so due mostly to Superdelegates who can change their mind.
As I see it, superdelegates can blow w the wind, and thus, we are in a virtual delegate tie, with the rest likely to jump ship if Obama can get a head of steam in states he does well in. It looks like the NE sanctum of Hillary is virtually done.
Is this about right?
Your piece seems to confirm this, right?
I.e.- Hillary put nothing away, and the tide seems to favor Obama now? Correct?
Cosmoetica,
Be wary of the CNN delegate totals at this point because they are incomplete. The math is very tricky, which is why I trust Chuck Todd on this. His math was confirmed by both the Clinton and Obama camps and he has the final delegate total from Super Tuesday alone being somewhere between +4 for Obama and +16 for Obama. Either way, he isn't 100 delegates down.
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptWhatever happens in California and New Mexico at this point, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will come out close to a tie tonight. Add that to the existing 15 delegate lead for Obama up to now and Obama has a small delegate lead out of … Read the rest of this great post here Posted by [...]
Even with the Superdelegates?
If you are dispassionate rather than immoderate (which we see on this site, routinely on the left), Clinton has regained her strength, though this race is far from over and I and others are still hoping that the underdog Obama will be a second New York Giants this year, and take “St. Hillary” out of the race not only this year but potentially forever after. The last person so many Americans want to see in the White House is Hillary Clinton, with Bill Clinton accompanying her as an additional insult and injury.
1. Wait another day or two for the megastates to be fully counted.
2. Clinton in New York and New Jersey — probably was aided by subway voters.
And why isn't Clinton's other hand clutching Obama's face mask while she also is kicking or tripping him?
My concern is that Senator Obama will somehow win the nomination. I, like some others on this thread, see a continuation of the Bush years with someone who can make a pretty speech but doesn't have what it takes to back it up.
We are at a crossroads – economically, with the war, global perception of us (which is perhaps lower than any other time in our history). People can't afford insurance or healthcare, jobs are drying up, and people are losing their homes in record numbers. No amount of speechmaking is going to fix that – someone with determination, strength, conviction and experience will do it.
Please don't just go by what the media says or by the rhetoric you hear. Look at the issues and where the candidates stand on them. Look at their records.
I have looked long and hard at the issues, and I support Senator Clinton totally, not because she is a woman or a Clinton but for what she has said and done. I am not a typical Clinton supporter either – I was a Republican (albeit liberal) for most of my life until the George W. Bush entered the White House.
I am disturbed by the way things are shaping up in this campaign – first, by what I see as empty “change, change, change” propaganda (with nothing substantive to back it up) and then by the demographics of the vote. Why are black voters supposedly (according to the media) only voting for Senator Obama? Bill Clinton was a champion for all races, as Senator Clinton has been. This apparent “black voting for black” voting bothers me as much as it would whites voting for someone who is white because of their race.
We must all act now to make sure Senator Clinton makes it into the White House. We need her and, more importantly, our children need her for a bright future.
“I, like some others on this thread, see a continuation of the Bush years with someone who can make a pretty speech but doesn't have what it takes to back it up.”
I think this is a very unfair characterization of Senator Obama. Yes, he is perhaps the best orator to enter politics in a generation, but that does not mean he is one-dimensional. Obama has organized a campaign that is doing what many thought was impossible – effectively challenging the Clintons – and he has done it by executing a blueprint that he laid out months ago – no money from lobbyists, huge grassroots support, and an appeal to a broad base of supporters. On foreign policy, as a state senator he recognized that a war with Iraq would reveal sectarian divisions before most of us knew what a Sunni or a Shia was. One of his signatures pieces of legislation in the Senate helped to make government more transparent, a centerpiece of his vision of reducing corporate influence on politics. He clearly has talent as a politician that extends well beyond giving speeches.
Most of the criticisms of Obama seem to be based on the fact that the Clintons are a known quantity, and not that Obama is unready to be President. If Hillary is elected her administration will be very similar to Bill Clinton's, and that is probably reassuring to many; with Obama there is no guarantee what he will do. However, based on his record there doesn't seem to be any reason to suspect his administration would be less effective than Clinton's, and given his ability to draw support beyond hardcore Democrats there is reason for optimism that he would be able to do many things that Clinton could not. Health care, social security reform, medicare reform, and Iraq cannot be effectively addressed by the 51-49 majority that Hillary Clinton would bring to the White House – big changes require large coalitions, and only Obama has demonstrated the ability to build enough support to make those changes.
#1 — at least Obama can make a pretty speech.
#2 — Obama is a typical Blue Nation major-metro machine politician. He's rated actually even more liberal than Hillary Clinton. However, he will be inexperienced and a relative unknown if he wins and takes office in 2009. There's no telling at this time to what degree he'll seek lefty goals. It's simply going to be intriuging if he wins and we learn who he brings into power with him. Will it be a newer (and many hope) younger group, even if naive activists, or will it be retreads from as far back as the Carter era (as with the earlier Clinton years once the activists originally brought in left after repudiation by the public in 1994)? The Dem and GOP contemporary administrations have been typically relying on long-established retreads from earlier administrations and long-term DC fixtures (ugh).
#3 — Elrod: Were you aware that even in your home, a red state, the Democrats got more total votes than the Republicans? Consider how things are that way in other states as well. This really isn't being reported too well by the national-level media; this points to anti-GOP results in 2008 being even more definitive than in 2006. Consider not only Tennessee but other typically-red states (even if hardly monolithically so — as you know already about Virginia, for example). The Dem turnout should be fantastically high this November. Not so sure about the GOP.
TENNESSEE: “On the Democrat side, a total of 613,680 votes were cast. … On the Republican side, total votes were 558,321. … the turnout far surpasses Tennessee’s previous presidential primary record of about 830,000, set in 1988. That’s when Al Gore Jr., then a Tennessee senator, was among candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.”
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/feb/06/record…
“Elrod: Were you aware that even in your home, a red state, the Democrats got more total votes than the Republicans? Consider how things are that way in other states as well. This really isn't being reported too well by the national-level media; this points to anti-GOP results in 2008 being even more definitive than in 2006. Consider not only Tennessee but other typically-red states (even if hardly monolithically so — as you know already about Virginia, for example). The Dem turnout should be fantastically high this November. Not so sure about the GOP.”
But as we learned in 2000, your vote doesn't necessarily go to your candidate.