Democratic Senator Barack Obama has defeated Senator Hillary Clinton in the Mississippi primary — and although this is already being billed as giving Obama “Big Mo” once again, polls showed he has been almost universally favored to win that state for months:
Democrat Barack Obama easily beat rival Hillary Clinton in Mississippi on Tuesday, giving him new momentum in their heated presidential fight as they head to the next showdown in Pennsylvania in six weeks.
Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, rode a wave of heavy black support to victory and extended his lead over Clinton in pledged delegates to the August nominating convention. The Illinois senator also won on Saturday in Wyoming.
Clinton revived her hopes in the Democratic race last week by beating Obama in primaries in Ohio and Texas, prolonging their bitter Democratic fight for the right to face Republican John McCain in November’s presidential election.
“What we have tried to do is steadily make sure that in each state we are making the case about the need for change in this country, and obviously the people of Mississippi responded,” Obama said in an interview on CNN.
The Boston Globe had a different take on it:
Senator Barack Obama notched another victory over Senator Hillary Clinton in today’s Mississippi Democratic primary, further demonstrating his appeal in the Deep South but adding fuel to Clinton’s argument that his success in the nomination race is built tenuously on states where Democrats face dim prospects in November.
Obama, in one of the most racially polarized contests yet, was handily defeating Clinton 55 percent to 43 percent with about a third of precincts reporting tonight, picking up most of the 33 delegates at stake and expanding his overall delegate lead of more than 100. Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, campaigned vigorously in Mississippi, but Obama’s win was widely expected.
Tellingly, neither candidate was anywhere near Mississippi while voters went to the polls. Both were campaigning in Pennsylvania, whose April 22 primary is the next big prize in their protracted and increasingly bitter battle and where recent polls have shown Clinton leading by between four to 19 percentage points.
Obama’s win in Mississippi, together with his 24-percentage-point victory in Wyoming’s caucuses on Saturday, are his latest triumphs in smaller states that, if history is any guide, will be irrelevant to Democrats in the general election: Mississippi has not voted for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976; Lyndon Johnson, in 1964, was the last Democrat to win Wyoming.
So Obama gets some more delegates. And even though he was expected to win this one, in what clearly turned out to be voting along racial lines, the bottom line is that with the additional delegates and media coverage, it does enhance Obama’s image as the frontrunner.
The next REALLY big prize: Pennsylvania in April.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.