Counting delegates: Keeping the Obama-Clinton race in perspective

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There doesn't seem to be much more to say heading into tomorrow's votes in Ohio and Texas (as well as Vermont and Rhode Island, of course). I'll do a bit of a round-up later on tonight, but here's TNR's Jonathan Chait with some perspective:

With the Clinton campaign now saying they will stay in the race even if they lose delegates in Texas, it's worth putting into perspective just how difficult it would be for them to close Barack Obama's lead in pledged delegates. For Clinton to pull ahead, she will need to win 57% of the remaining pledged delegates. To keep that number from rising even higher, they of course need to win 57% of the delegates on Tuesday, which would mean getting at least 213 delegates to Obama's 161 -- a 52 delegate advantage. If they net anything below 52 delegates, they fall even further behind. This is the key number to keep in mind when watching the election returns.

And, of course, even netting 52 delegates is hardly a big win. The Clinton campaign picked Texas and Ohio as its battleground because those states are particularly Clinton-friendly. The remaining primary states include several -- like Mississippi, Oregon, and North Carolina -- where Obama is likely to rack up major wins. That means that Clinton needs to gain well over 57% of the delegates in the states that are better for her. The only way she could possibly do this would be to utterly destroy Obama's reputation, make him a radioactive figure, like Al Sharpton. This also seems like an extreme longshot, though the Clinton campaign appears to be attempting to pull it off with its flurry of attacks.

Now, in Clinton's favor, she doesn't necessarily need to win pledged delegates. I think if she comes close, and has the momentum, she could possibly win it with superdelegates without too much blood on the convention floor. But Clinton needs to dramatically reduce Obama's lead in pledged delegates. If she only wins narrowly Tuesday, even the goal of getting close in pledged delegates will become more remote, and her continuing candidacy will be impossibe to justify for anybody who has the Democratic Party's interests at heart.

Read that last sentence again. And again.

It is likely that, at best, she will win narrowly tomorrow, perhaps by a few points in Ohio and by a point or two in Texas. (She'll lose Vermont, but she'll win Rhode Island.) In terms of delegates, not much will change.

Still, victories in Ohio and Texas would be huge. Obama has won 11 contests in a row -- and everything since Super Tuesday -- but the media, which are already turning on Obama, are looking for a new story, a new chapter, a new narrative. The one about Obama's rise and seeming invincibility has grown stale. They want sensationalism, and Clinton victories would have the smell of sensation about them. Clinton the Comeback Kid, and all that nonsense.

But they would only seem like sensations because of ever-changing expectations -- and expectations are very much what these races are all about.

Put tomorrow's contests in context: Clinton was, not so long ago, the decisive frontrunner. The race was hers to lose. Doubting Obama, like many others, I thought her eventual victory was pretty much a sure thing. Obama might win Iowa and perhaps even South Carolina, but Clinton would win New Hampshire and pull ahead for good on Super Tuesday. And that would be that. But, well, a funny thing happened on the way to the nomination. Obama rose to the occasion and proved to be one of the one of the most impressive political figures of our time. All in a span of a few weeks. The potential was always there, but he seemed to find his voice, and his mission, and, well, he just caught fire. I endorsed him just before Super Tuesday, but even then it wasn't clear just how impressive his run would be. He became not just the frontrunner after Super Tuesday but the head of a movement that has engaged Americans in a way that I didn't think possible. Clinton has repeatedly belittled him and his campaign -- as well as, by implication, his supporters -- but he is a man of outstanding style and substance. His supporters know it. I know it. And I am excited about what I have come to call his capacity for greatness in the White House. Millions of Americans are behind him, and believe in him, as do millions of us non-Americans around the world.

But back to the race: Obama pulled even on Super Tuesday and ahead in the contests that followed. In response, Clinton (or her campaign) has repeated shifted the goalposts (as they say). While Obama was winning contests around the country in states as diverse as Washington and Virginia, Nebraska and Maine, Hawaii and Louisiana, Clinton was waging a divisive scorched-earth camapign against Obama, hurling accusations and smears with reckless abandon -- and talking up Ohio and Texas, which would relaunch her campaign once again. She was losing and losing, and not even admitting it, but these two key states would turn be the turning point. And she was well ahead in the polls in both states. In early-February, she was up by about 20 points in Ohio, according to some polls. In Texas, she was up by almost 10 points, according to some polls. And now? Again, she is ahead by a few points in Ohio and more or less even with Obama in Texas. Given this context, it is Obama who has done dramatically well -- and who, even with close losses tomorrow, would continue to be moving in the right direction, that is, up. And yet, given how well he has done, close losses will look like huge victories for Clinton. This is what the media will tell us. The truth is otherwise.

For Clinton, it's now all about Ohio and Texas -- and, should she win tomorrow, Pennsylvania. These are big states, to be sure, but the other states count, too. Whatever happens tomorrow, Obama should win Wyoming on Saturday and Mississippi next Tuesday. Pennsylvania follows over a month later, on April 22. So much could happen before its primary, but let's assume that it's also close. Indiana (May 6) and West Virginia (May 13) could be tough for Obama, but he should do well in North Carolina (May 6), the biggest state after Pennsylvania, as well as in Kentucky and Oregon on May 20, Montana and South Dakota on June 3, and even in Puerto Rico on June 7, the final contest.

In other words, whatever the Clinton spin, it isn't all about Ohio and Texas. It's about all 50 states, and Guam and Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Democrats Abroad. Every vote counts, every delegate counts -- and, on both counts, Obama has done remarkably well. Just look back at our table -- in case you've forgotten (and the media have), check out those massive and decisive post-Super Tuesday victories for Obama: 37 points in Washington, 29 points in Virginia, 17 points in Wisconsin, etc., etc. Clinton was supposed to have had the nomination wrapped up before those contests. And she was supposed to have won states like Virginia and Wisconsin. Instead, Obama pulled ahead and just kept on winning and winning. He may soon be a victim of unrealistically lofty expetactions, driven both by the media and the Clinton campaign (which hopes to benefit, in Bush-like fashion, from surpassing appalling low expectations), but, in context, it is Obama, and not Clinton, who will have surpassed all those early expectations.

Keep all this in mind when you watch the returns tomorrow -- and when the pro-Clinton spin comes spewing out of a scorched-earth campaign that keeps changing the rules to accommodate its losing ways.