So now that the North Carolina and Indiana primaries are over — ending in split decision wins — who are the winners and losers in Tuesday’s primaries? Is it just Senator Barack Obama (who won North Carolina) or Senator Hillary Clinton (who narrowly won Indiana)?
Is it that clearcut? Here’s our take:
WINNERS:
Senator Barack Obama for winning a victory in North Carolina that went beyond the conventional media wisdom that was building — that he could lose there.
Senator Hillary Clinton for surviving by winning Indiana and keeping her candidacy alive, although some insist it is now on life support..and the batteries are almost dead.
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh for his reprehensible “Operation Chaos” campaign to convince voters to use their precious right to vote to sandbag another party that appears to have worked in Indiana. Data suggests it had an impact.
Zogby polling for its final poll on North Carolina. Matt Drudge who yes indeed did call it earlier in the day (and we had our doubts about that report…).
LOSERS:
Senator Barack Obama for not being able to end Clinton’s candidacy with two solid wins (this could change if the final Indiana vote changes).
Senator Hillary Clinton for not just losing to Obama in North Carolina while aides talked about her gathering momentum, but for starting out Campaign 2008 with a good chunk of black voter support and ending the night with shockingly low black voter support (remember that at the beginning of the campaign Obama had a problem getting African Americans to vote for him and against a Clinton).
The Limbaugh “dittoheads” who felt the precious vote for which so many have died should be tossed away to sabotage another political party, as if democracy in a time of national crisis were some cutesy game (and we add in this category any Democrats who also played the same game crossing over in Republican primaries).
THE BIGGEST LOSERS:
The Superdelegates who will either have to act soon…or later…to put an end to the contest and face the possibility that, no matter what they decide, half of the committed Democrats won’t vote for the candidate they opposed (which some feel means they should be committed).
Political pandering: By most accounts of the talking heads and experts, Clinton’s embracing of the gas holiday tax and dismissive comment that she didn’t have to listen to economists didn’t do her much good and probably hurt her.
To read some excellent analytical live blogging on the night’s voting GO HERE.
What happens next? The media and weblogs are filled with tidbits about a night that could have been a “game changer,” but not what Clinton had in mind.
UPDATE: An interesting post from Talk Left’s Big Tent Democrat (one of the best pro-Clinton bloggers on the Internet) on what Clinton should do next:
My own view is she should run her campaign against John McCain. She will win West Virginia and Kentucky by huge margins.
She might even challenge Obama in Oregon.
What she should not do, imo, is run against Barack Obama. If there is a path to the nomination for her, and I doubt there is, it won’t come from attacking Obama now.
Some additional tidbits and excerpts:
—The Politico: Clinton cancels morning shows:
Tim Russert, a colleague reports, just said that Hillary Clinton canceled her scheduled appearances on the morning shows tomorrow.
It’s a sign of weakness she can ill afford at a moment when questions about whether she can continue are mounting.
—The New Republic’s The Plank: Does Hillary Know It’s Over?
Hillary began her (somewhat premature) Indiana “victory” speech on an up note, throwing an old Obama quote about how Indiana would be a PA/NC/IN tiebreaker back in his face. But since then she’s sounded a little dispirited to me. When she delivered a line about the primary race is “so close,” her heart really didn’t seem in it to me–it reminded me of her weak delivery of that “change you can Xerox” debate line she seemed embarrassed to utter. And talking about the future contests in West Virginia and Kentucky, she sounded very rote as she read from a script. It sounded more like she was talking about a trip to the dentist’s office.
I may be imagining all this, it’s easy to project based on what you suspect is happening. But Ben Smith notices something similar.
—Boston Globe: Obama Victory Gets Him Back To Basic Strengths
His solid victory in the North Carolina primary – combined with a close finish against Hillary Clinton in Indiana – helped him blunt the impact of Clinton’s recent wins in Ohio and Pennsylvania and overcome the first serious misstep of his campaign.
”The size of Obama’s margin in North Carolina speaks to his ability to put behind him the controversy over [his former pastor] Rev. Jeremiah Wright, at least for the primaries,” said Wayne Lesperance, a political scientist at New England College in Henniker, N.H., as the results came in. ”Right now, it looks like they split the states, but the overall margin goes to Obama.”
For Obama, North Carolina gave him a chance to re-create the electoral coalition that made him a political force in the first place.
The states of the Eastern Seaboard lack the easy regional identity of the liberal Northeast or the Deep South or the independent West, but they combine all those elements in a way that fits Obama’s political demographics to perfection: a broad coalition combining large black populations, upscale white high-tech workers, religious rural voters, and idealistic college students.
Hillary Rodham Clinton lost her last best chance to score an upset on Barack Obama’s turf Tuesday, putting the Democratic Illinois senator a step closer to becoming the country’s first black presidential nominee.
Obama was the long-standing favorite in North Carolina, and he won there with the overwhelming support of black voters despite an intense effort by Clinton to turn the state around.
“Senator Clinton did not get out of the night what she needed,” said North Carolina Rep. Brad Miller, an undecided superdelegate. “To use a basketball analogy, she traded baskets. And she needed to do much better than that this late in the contest with her down 150 or 160 pledged delegates.”
Obama’s victory was tempered by the fact that Clinton beat him handily among white voters, extending her argument to superdelegates who will decide the nomination that she will be the stronger general-election candidate.
So far, she’s been losing that argument.
—The New York Times says Clinton’s options are diminishing:
Despite narrowly winning Indiana, while losing North Carolina, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not fundamentally improve her chances of securing the Democratic presidential nomination. If anything, Mrs. Clinton’s hopes for overtaking Senator Barack Obama dwindled further on Tuesday night.
For Mr. Obama, the outcome came after a brutal period in which he was on the defensive over the inflammatory comments of his former pastor. That he was able to hold his own under those circumstances should allow him to make a case that he has proved his resilience in the face of questions about race, patriotism and political mettle — the very kinds of issues that the Clinton campaign has suggested would leave him vulnerable in the general election.
Beating Mr. Obama in Indiana, a state he had once been confident of winning, was an achievement for Mrs. Clinton. But it was hardly the kind of strong victory she posted in Pennsylvania and Ohio. And when paired with his comfortable victory in North Carolina — which Mr. Obama pointedly described in his victory speech as “a big state, a swing state” — it hardly seemed enough for Mrs. Clinton to convince so-called uncommitted superdelegates to rally around her candidacy.
—The Politico’s Roger Simon contends Clinton is desperate for a super turn around:
Hillary Clinton’s strategy for winning the Democratic nomination is now a fond wish wrapped in a desperate hope.
Her fond wish is to seat the pledged delegates from the rogue states of Michigan and Florida in a way that is advantageous her and damaging to Barack Obama.
Her desperate hope is then to persuade the superdelegates to overturn the will of the pledged delegates and make her the Democratic nominee.
To achieve this, she needs momentum, spin and fear.
Her momentum was dealt a setback Tuesday night when she lost North Carolina, a large state that she had said was going to be a “game changer.” (It may turn out to be, but not in the way she had hoped.)
Read it all (about the spin and fear) but at the end he says this:
She has options, but only if she manages her endgame carefully.
If she becomes known as the candidate who was willing to destroy her party in order to gain the nomination, she is likely to lose not just the nomination but also her political future.
HERE’S A CROSS-SECTION OF WEBLOG OPINION ON THE TWO RACES:
–-Glenn Reynolds, on data indicating the Democrats are badly split:
Obama supporters really don’t like Clinton, and vice versa. Some of that will fade by election day, of course. But how much?
UPDATE: Dems must be worried, because Obama just addressed this question in his speech.
…Will Obama fix this? So far I’ve seen a lot of talk about unity, but not much actual effort to compromise with people who aren’t already in his camp.
I know, I know. Hillary’s victory speech in Indiana tonight was not a concession speech. She vowed to keep fighting on. Florida and Michigan and all that.
But it sure sounded, and looked, and felt like a concession speech. The thank-yous. Bill crying (at least it looked like it from certain shots). The resigned tone. She certainly didn’t sound like someone who was fighting any longer.
…… But on the other hand, Rachel Maddow — who is often right about these things — thinks the speech actually lays out a scorched-earth approach to the remnant of the campaign, particularly laying out the Florida-Michigan issue.
Clinton gets bragging rights for Indiana. But it’s basically a tie. Overall, counting both states, Clinton won 1,273,696 votes; and Obama won 1,528,897. It was a 55 – 45 percent win for Obama in the popular vote. And it’s now basically impossible for her to make a popular vote argument, even with Florida and Michigan. After the last month of unremitting Freak Show attacks, that’s a remarkable show of strength and resilience. Obama’s delegate lead grows. He will have the majority of the popular vote. He has far more money and far more donors. The logic of Clinton’s remaining in the race dwindles to the point of vanishing altogether.
Know hope.
Incidentally, Karl Rove said on Fox News, “I think there’s a Democratic nominee now”. Expect the RNC to open fire against Obama. Pretty soon, they won’t have Clinton to carry their water for them anymore.
Slate’s keeping an eye on RCP’s running popular-vote totals and notes that not only will Obama widen his delegate margin tonight, he’ll erase the PV gains she made in Pennsylvania. In fact, as of this moment, even if Florida and Michigan are counted RCP gives her a popular vote lead of just 3,000+ votes — a margin of less than one-tenth of one percent. And that’s assuming that the popular vote totals from the caucuses in Iowa, Washington, Maine, and Nevada (which weren’t reported) aren’t counted at all. If you estimate for those states, he ends up with a lead of more than 100,000.
Which means she has nothing left to commend her to the supers except an electability argument unsupported by a single key metric or even circumstantial evidence that Pastorgate has done Obama grievous damage at the polls. Are they going to take the nomination from the first serious black candidate for president without any compelling data to hang their decision on? Not a chance. It’s over. Let’s move on.
—Jonathan Singer on Clinton’s Indiana speech:
I have to say, I don’t think this leaves any doubt that if Obama does win this nomination, that Hillary Clinton would accept the VP slot. Am I reading too much into this?
Obama claimed Indiana would be the tie-breaker.
Hillary won it.
Hello West Virginia!
Today you’ll see superdelegates start coming out in force for Obama, with a dozen or so in the next week.
Hillary will probably quit going negative, and in an ironic twist, will stay in the race because she doesn’t want to make Obama look bad by dropping out and him possibly losing Kentucky and West Virginia without her in the race.
Today she’ll be meeting with her closest advisers planning her exit strategy. She will most likely stay in the race through May 20 or June 3, but will start winding down and start uniting the party.
She no longer has an argument to use with superdelegates. In fact, in recent months, she found her stride and was on her game, while Obama had the worst two months of his campaign. She couldn’t close the deal when Obama was down and when she had the momentum.
—The Huffington Post’s Dylan Loewe:
What began as a night that could have delivered a devastating psychological blow to the Obama campaign has ended with an extraordinary win for Barack Obama, leaving him comfortably poised to ascend to the nomination. Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton easily in North Carolina and, in a true squeaker, lost narrowly in Indiana, a result the Clinton campaign will be unable to overcome.
Expectations had cratered for Obama approaching the evening, shifting the likelihood of a large victory in North Carolina to merely the hope for a small one. In Indiana, what began as a potential victory for Obama ended with a Clinton victory assumed. And yet, expectations were shattered; Obama’s North Carolina victory was decisive, his victory speech transcendent, and his loss in Indiana so close, it hardly feels like a loss.
Clinton’s pretty much done. She needed a split decision to go on, and a pair of wins to be a credible nominee. That isn’t what happened. And post-Wright, Obama can credibly say that he’s thoroughly “vetted” and has overcome the worst that can be thrown at him.
Yes, she’ll win West Virginia, but that just doesn’t matter. Obama achieved almost everything he could have hoped for tonight, and broke her short streak.
..She’s probably frantically calling superdelegates pleading her case, but I imagine she’s getting one response: “end it before you ruin your Senatorial career.” It was a hell of a run, but the Change guy won.
Here’s what now seems obvious: African-American voters killed the Clinton candidacy. It is a fitting end to the Clintons’ campaign and an almost Shakespearean coda to their career. The Clintons were exposed in their long-running exploitation and reliance on minority votes. No group was more loyal to them than African-Americans; and in the end, like everyone else, African-Americans realized that the Clintons are frauds, disloyal to the core, cynical to their finger-tips, and finally, finally, returned the favor.
….This will be history’s verdict: in the end, the Clintons were defeated not by Republicans, but by African-American Democrats. How wonderful. How poignant. In the end, the karma gets you. Maybe it had to be this way. But this final coup de grace against these awful, hollow, cynical people is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
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.