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Is Hillary Clinton Poised For Comeback In Ohio And Texas Primaries?

March 3rd, 2008
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

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Is Hillary Clinton poised for a dramatic comeback in the Ohio and Texas Democratic Presidential nomination primaries? That seems to be the undercurrent in some emerging media narrative and conventional wisdom on Crucial Tuesday eve.

Campaign media narratives often follow a pattern: the candidate doesn’t have a chance, the candidate wins, the candidate is now front-runner, the candidate stumbles, the candidate is toast, the candidate makes a comeback, now the candidate now has a chance (and forget about all the previous writing about the candidate not having a chance).

Now, on the eve of the pivotal Ohio and Texas primaries, the conventional wisdom seems to be tip toeing to a consensus that yet another “upset” could be in the offing…that the Hillary Clinton political obituaries might need to be deep sixed.

But it isn’t just happenstance.

In fact, a variety of polls and analyses seem to suggest that some things have happened over the past few days:

(1) Senator Hillary Clinton’s negative ads and reinvigorated campaign seem to have worked in changing some tracking polls. Just look at the latest collection of Ohio and Texas polls on Pollster.com and you can see it’s one huge nail biter. (Clinton has also started to narrow the gap nationally.)

(2) She seems to have stemmed Senator Barack Obama’s “surge” in Texas.

(3) She seems to be poised to win in Ohio (although again polls vary).

(4) She and her managers are vowing to fight all the way to the convention.

Polls do vary but the general mood in the media and on many weblogs is that Tuesday night could be Upset City once again. Does that mean it’s going to be Upset City? As we’ve seen, this is the year of the defiance Of conventional Wisdom.

But very few of the day’s events were positive barn-burners for Obama:

–Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been urging his listeners in Texas to cross over and vote for Hillary Clinton. Sean Hannity has also raised this idea. The idea: prolong the Democratic slugfest and weaken the Democrats by having Republicans vote in Democratic primary vote for Clinton specifically so it stops Obama. Similarly, there has been talk over the past few weeks that some Republicans would vote for Obama figuring McCain could defeat him more easily than Clinton. But the Limbaugh appeal is overt and blatant (so overt and blatant that Bill O’Reilly gingerly distanced himself from it on his show today).

Can it really happen? Reason Magazine sees signs that Limbaugh again seems to be indeed getting his troops in line — and Obama could feel it:

A bit earlier today I talked to Onzelo Markum, a Texas Republican strategist who’s working on the Chris Peden campaign, and he had a few caveats about how GOP voters might be breaking. One positive factor for Peden, he suggested, was that some voters were marking ballots for Ron Paul in the presidential race and choosing Peden in the House race. But another factor was really hurting Peden.

“One thing we’re hearing that we really didn’t expect is people going and voting in the Democratic primary for Hillary Clinton,” Markum said. “They come up to me and they say McCain can beat Hillary, but he can’t beat Obama. It’s fueled by guys like Rush Limbaugh, by Ann Coulter, who’re telling them to keep Hillary in this race, and that trickles down to Republicans going into those voting booths who can’t vote in our election. These were some voters we were counting on, so that’s thrown a bit of a kink in our extrapolations.”

(5) Obama had a bad day with the press in a day marked by a contentious press conference. NBC:
Led by the Chicago press corps that has covered Obama for years, the candidate today faced a barrage of questions in what turned out to be a contentious news conference.

Questions centered on why his campaign had denied that a meeting occurred between his chief economic advisor and Canadian officials as well as questions on his relationship with Tony Rezko, a Chicago land developer and fast food magnate, now on trial for corruption charges.

Not a good way to go into Crucial Tuesday.

–Now the Obama camp is setting the bar very high as to what Clinton can claim as a big victory. Last week the Clinton campaign set the bar very high on what it insisted could qualify as a real Obama primary victory. That came when the conventional wisdom was that Obama was surging in Texas and making inroads in Ohio.

Yet, what will really matter in the end will be the political “ground wars” waged by each campaign in Texas and Ohio. This battle generally won’t be played out on the pages of newspapers or on blog pages. The news stories, video clips, “live” campaign speech broadcasts on cable show the tip of the iceberg.

The campaign with the biggest, baddest iceberg underneath the surface on primary election day wins.

And tone? If the tone of the candidates is used to judge where they are on Crucial Tuesday eve, Clinton seems near joyous — and Obama seems a bit skittish and on the defensive.

But all news stories and blog posts — including this one — have a short shelf life once the votes come in.

Meanwhile, Clinton made a comment that is sure to come back and haunt her. If the campaign was already bitter, THIS COMMENT is likely to make her task of mending fences with those in the Democratic party who don’t support her a lot more difficult.

UPDATE: Commentary:

So if she should win Texas and Ohio there will be a gasp from the media (not to mention some of those superdelegates) who will then have to discard the Obama-mania, invincibility argument and absorb the new storyline: she’s baaaaaack. True, she won’t reach 2025 delegates by June, but the fact remains–neither will he. Momentum, press spin and the appearance that Obama can not take a punch will weigh heavily on those superdelegates. Oh, and with a little help from Governor Crist (hmm, who’s he trying to help?) the race could be extended by a do-over in Florida.

Now if she loses Ohio and Texas? Even the most die hard supporters won’t be able to come up with a scenario to rescue her.



This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Newsweek Blogitics, Primaries, Ohio, Texas, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, 2008 Elections, Polls, Democrats, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 6 Comments

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    I'm an advocate of not calling the cards before they're counted. The media has been proclaiming the death of Clinton's campaign for two weeks. Yet, don't forget Mike Huckabee. If it wasn't for his big comeback on Super Tuesday, Romney might still be in the race.
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    Well organized post - thank you - and I'm happier being a Hillary Clinton supporter (but NOT Obama-hater). I feel that Obama has been getting a pass on substantial things, not plagiarism which got a lot of play but truly wasn't a big deal. ETC.

    Temple, polstate.com (fellow member of that Government Relations blog network thingy). ..
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    I concur with Templestark...an excellent representation of a tangled skein of events, Joe.

    I suspect the single biggest reason for the shift was that Clinton's complaint re: SNL about bias finally registered last week. You could track the increasing number of articles daily reflecting on the charges...and then finally a national airing of the Chicago media's knowledge of Obama re. Rezko etc.

    But if Clinton comes back...what a fantastic story!!! She, not her husband, will be the REAL "Comeback Kid"! Demonstrating once and for all that with a Clinton - as with all Undead - you can't just drive a stake through their hearts and expect them to die...you also have to cut off the head, sprinkle holy water and garlic, and burn the body politic to ash.

    I sincerely hope she pulls it out. Clinton v. McCain would be a decent contest between two warhorses...and a Clinton presidency would be on solid foundations. As the Chicago stories emerge, Obama is looking to be more and more of an Empty Suit peddling a magical expiation of America's Original Sin of slavery and racism.
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    Bu Joe got it right - there is a long way to go.

    Clinton is still in a tight spot after Tuesday, IMO.

    If she 'loses', the pressure brought to bare on her to drop out will be enormous. But the overall race will still be too close, and I cannot see her doing that. At the least, she would wait until the convention so she and her team could be power brokers.

    If she 'wins', it could re-ignite the Obama support. His support is young and personality-based. Those types tend to not vote if they perceive their guy is in good shape, then rally strongly if they feel he is threatened.

    This is also assuming that under all circumstances, the vote is overall close. either side getting a huge win (very unlikely) would change the calculus.
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    News reports have Richardson and Rendell hedging their bets in support of Billary, let's wait and see.
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    "a magical expiation of America's Original Sin of slavery and racism"

    Oh, no. Noooooooooooooooooooo. Much as the radical lunatic fringe is nuts about that issue, no.

    You see, courtesy of political correctness, we've already Been There, Done That:

    Ken Burns's "Baseball," almost principally instead about the evil, sinful USA and Jackie Robinson As Jesus (horribly overdone enough, but the whole production complete with a bonus: liberal northeastern dinosaurs like Mario Cuomo and Doris Kearns Goodwin as general-purpose baseball "authorities" [*** GAG ***])
 
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