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« Recount Law In Missouri | Main | Where The Republican Race Is Now » Feb., 5: What Does It Mean?06 Feb 2008 02:40 am Comments (22)
Ambers-- How many Californians voted early? I'm interested in why Obama's closing weekend, which seemed awfully good, did not bring him closer. Early voting seems to be an obvious factor. How big of a factor? 
Time for Hillary to bend over and grap her cankles.
One more question, Ambers, instead of a comment. Why were the exit polls -- and I mean the adjusted exit polls, not the raw ones -- so far off in Massachusetts and New Jersey?
Let's see if we can figure this out together. Suppose, as it currently appears, Obama wins more states and more delegates in by far the most favorable situation Clinton will enjoy during the entire process (most of her best states happening all at once on the same night). What does that mean? Seems pretty obvious to me.
i'm wondering if, after this very big "tie," there will be any big endorsements coming out for Obama from folks feeling more "liberated." Also, i presume Clinton is going to go negative in a big way. she pretty much has to in these upcoming and unfavorable states, right? Minnesota came up huge for Obama. congrats to us. Time to brag a little: My precinct (of which I was captain): 500 Obama to 128 Clinton. -James
When we get to know him, we really like him....
They say 20% of voters in CA vote early. A lot of people who I know voted for Clinton and then regretted it after the South Carolina campaign.
From here on out it's going to be about who has/had the momentum going into last night and who has the most money pouring in. It's Obama in both instances. Like heather said, people actually do like him after they disregard the "empty suit" smears and listen to what he says and how he says it. In a way, Super Tuesday came a little too early, especially in California. Why do so many people vote early there? WTF?
It's time to call bullshit on superdelegates in the Democratic party. It should be all about the actual delegates based on voting. No candidate who can't win a majority of pledged delegates deserves to be the nominee. If the Clintons somehow slime through on 1) superdelegates, or 2) counting Michigan and Florida, it will be a wound to the Democratic party that may take a generation to overcome.
The money gap will probably start to show as we get to late Feb, early March as well. Obama can bleed the Clinton campaign to death.
What did 18 to 24 turnout look like last night? It seems to me that they will be key to both Ohio and Texas? I'm thinking that Obama's chances are underrated in both states, but especially in Texas.
A great night for Obama. It's hard to remember, but SC was only 10 days ago. When Obama blew out Clinton in SC, no one would have said Obama was going to sweep the majority of states, and especially not the whitest states in the country. He has the best February he can hope for now -- states with large affulent white populations, black voters, and few latinos -- these demographics favor him in VA, DC, MD, LA, WA and NE. If he can match the organization effort he did for super tuesday, he could sweep all those. That's some serious momentum. Other than TX, there really aren't anymore Latino strongholds. There will be a real battle in OH, but there is tons of time between now and HRC always has fight left in her, but with Obama flush with cash and her inevitability cloak gone, this race could really start to shift. Sure, Obama would have loved NJ, CA, MA -- but that would have been a knock out blow for HRC. Instead, he got progress shrugging off the "black candidate" label by a broadly based appeal. All this talk about the Kennedy endorsement not being worth anything is nonsense. A candidate does not close an 11 point national gap in 10 days without anything short of a seachange in national perception, which in this case was being anointed (or at least permitted to be) an heir to Camelot. Bottom line, HRC's numbers have only gone down since 2007 (other than the NH polling snafu), and Obama's have only gone up.
Obama wins 2/5 with (definitely) more states and (probably) more delegates. That's huge. His campaign simply did a better job with the rules -- beat her like a drum in caucus states, which inflates his delegate margin in smaller states. From now: 1) HRC's burn rate is the big question, isn't it? She "only" raised $13M (and we still don't know how much of that is money allocated for the primary) and the burn rate had to be more in January. She entered the month with $17M cash on hand. It isn't out of the realm of possibility to say she's down to $10M or less cash on hand with a hemmoraging budget. 2) Where does HRC *go* from here, anyway? What state in the next two weeks does she try? And isn't the fact that Obama will compete in all of the next eight states and HRC has to figure out where she will actually tell us something? Bottom line: in pledged count, it is very possible that Obama could take a 100 delegate lead in non-super delegates *before* Ohio/Texas. 3) Endorsements. Gore and Edwards can put the nail in HRC's campaign. Momentum, money and delegates are all with Obama. The terrain favors Obama. How is Obama not a winner right now? Honest to God, I look at this and I don't know how Hillary can alter the playing field.
Chris, clearly you have failed to absorb the fact that Hillary would be READY ON DAY ONE whereas Obama would be singing kumbaya while plotting to destroy America's children.
Good point, J.B. on the funding gap. There are rumors the Clintons have funded recently from their own wealth (Mitt Romney anyone?). It also tracks with the HRC debate offer/demand -- debates are free national TV time.
The Field is a great site. Check out his analysis: http://ruralvotes.com/thefield/?p=509 I think it's a good night for Obama too; Clinton's tough though. A knockout blow keeps seeming in Obama's reach...and then he just can't quite close. If he'd gotten California or New Jersey, she'd be dead in the water, I think...but it didn't happen. I actually don't think it's the case that a Clinton win powered by superdelegates will tear the party apart. It's easy to forget when (like me) you wouldn't vote for Clinton under any circumstances, but the vast majority of Democrats like both candidates. Clinton's lead in the popular vote is very narrow, but it's there at the moment, and she could make a strong (and I believe reasonable) argument that it gives her a mandate for the nomination even if she's behind in earned delegates. Furthermore, whoever wins is going to get very strong support from the other candidate. I very much doubt there'll be a shared ticket, but Obama would certainly campaign hard for Clinton, and vice versa. I doubt Clinton will go negative in any serious way. It didn't work well for her in South Carolina, and if anything lessons like that tend to make her overcompensate. (Her "any debate - any debate at all stance" at the moment being a case in point.) Texas seems like a pretty large prize, and it seems like exactly the sort of state in which Clinton will do well. Another element in the mix may be that, with the Republican nomination over, independents may tend to vote Democratic, which might help Obama. (An insight from the Field again.)
As a resident of Texas, what Feb 5th means to me that for the first time in 32 years of voting, I'll have the chance to vote in a primary that means something - hell, I might even get to see Hillary and Obama in person within 10 miles of my house. (Voting as a Democrat in Texas is a lot like buying a lottery ticket - it can't hurt, but it usually doesn't help a helluva lot either.) What's even more remarkable - and this applies to non-Texans too - is that I'll be pulling the lever (or punching the card) for a candidate who speaks to my most deeply-held beliefs in a way that few have since I became interested in politics, yet, if he doesn't get the nomination, I'll be quite happy to punch the card for Hillary in the general. And not just because she'll assure that the next Supreme Court vacancies aren't filled by right-wing ideologues (which is reason enough!Repeat after me, "which is reason enough!"), but because she'll still be the best nominee we've had since 1992, and maybe even better than her husband. (I think Obama will be better, but Hillary may be damn good.) This is not due to her experience as first lady, but rather her experience running against two very good candidates in a very competitive primary season. In the last two elections, the Republicans ran against the liberal bogeyman instead of the actual candidates on offer (Gore and Kerry). This was far easier than it should have been because Gore and Kerry (particularly the latter) ran themeless campaigns, and failed to define themselves or their vision with sufficient clarity to rebut the Republican attacks. If Hillary had sailed through Iowa and NH and been crowned the winner, we would have been on the same path, particularly since Hillary 1.0 (pre-finding her voice) was running on the Kerry template - try to be as inoffensive as possible and hope that people will fill in the blank spots by thinking about how health insurance (and school uniforms and midnight basketball) and how badly the Republicans have screwed things up. But she wasn't crowned, and in being forced to duke it out in the primaries, she's been forced to stake out clear positions and also reveal a little of herself as a human being. I predict that if Hillary is the nominee, we'll still hear a lot of crap from the noise machine (this is the safe part of the prediction!), but it will sound stale and repetitive, and won't stick near as easily as it would have if the old "robotic", "calculating", "cautious" and "triangulating" Hillary 1.0 were running. Put another way, the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" has two very formidable candidates, made stronger by grueling, but mostly constructive primary campaigns. Although I agree with Obama that "there's nothing false about hope", it's also true that we Dems, particularly us old farts who voted for Carter (twice!), have seen our hopes dashed many, many times. This may be another one of those times, made all the more jarring because our hopes are so high. Nevertheless, there are powerful currents working in our favor, not the least of which is a lengthy, hard-fought primary season.
I think that Obama is in very good shape, considering where he was until fairly recently. However, I have yet to see a concerted strategy for him to appeal to women and hispanics. Particularly with women, he needs to do advertising focusing on his record on reproductive rights. This will show this is important to him. Also, Clinton has been using late lit drops on the "present" votes on choice and Obama has not taken that issue head on.
It means I have a reason to show up at the polls on February 12.
Obama will have a real problem in Ohio, where the popular white Democratic governor, Ted Strickland, is firmly in the Clinton camp: Bill recently added $225,000 to Strickland's campaign coffers.
Re: Early California Voting Regarding early voting in California, there are several sources pointing to a percentage amounting to 50% of CA votes cast by mail. Seems to me California was not too accurate a predictor of Obama's recent momentum surge. On the other hand, I was impressed that Obama closed the gap, where some polls had him down by 30 points in January, which means many Feb 5 voters probably went to Obama. Obama's sweep of the midwest was particularly impressive because it demonstrated his broad appeal. Even though Clinton's campaign will be spinning their wheels to capitalize on CA, NY, NJ, and MA wins - those states will go blue in the fall anyway, whether or not she is the nominee. Moreover, she did not prove that she can compete in Small Town America. Rather it was a reflection of outright Clinton rejection with huge landslide victories in Minnesota, Illinois, Kansas, Idaho, and Georgia.
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1) Obama wins more states, and more red states. Does give Obama an advantage for the remaining superdelegates? Probably.
2) Obama does better with white voters than expected, especially men. And the exit polls don't even include the very white caucus states where Obama cleaned up.
3) Most of HIlary's good states are now behind her and she has opened up no substantial margin among pledged delegates.
Posted by RKA | February 6, 2008 7:56 AM