Wednesday, March 05, 2008

It ain't over...

By Carl

...'til the
pant-suited lady sings... which would be pretty scary, I think!

“No candidate in recent history — Democratic or Republican — has won the White House without winning the Ohio primary,” Mrs. Clinton, of New York, said at a rally in Columbus, Ohio. “We all know that if we want a Democratic president, we need a Democratic nominee who can win Democratic states just like Ohio.”

It doesn't sound like she's even warming up her voice yet.

Interesting possibilities arise out of last night's V,O,T,R primary: Vermont, Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island.

For one thing, Hillary swept all of Ohio except for the isolated counties containing large urban areas like Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and Cleveland. A startling observation for Obama is that he didn't carry the surrounding suburbs of those cities. That would concern me because he's never had that problem in other big-ticket states. Indeed, in Texas, he carried the suburbs of Dallas, Houston, and Austin. Curiously, he didn't carry San Antonio. We might chalk that up to that city being more conservative than the other three.

Clinton's electoral map is starting to show great strength in the Southwest and Northeast. This is comforting news for her should she continue on to the convention and be within striking distance of Obama at that point: she can make a very strong case that she will win in states that Democrats must win in order to win the elecdtion, where Obama's strengths are in states that normally won't vote Democratic if you held a gun to the voters' heads.

Should a brokered ticket be necessary, meaning Obama and Clinton agree to both appear on the ticket, this might be enough for her to win the top spot.

While Pennsylvania is the next truly key battleground state, should Clinton prevail there, which seems likely now given that nearly all the counties surrounding it have gone into the Clinton column, the next race of interest after that would be Oregon on May 20, which could prove to be the stopper for either Obama or Clinton.

North Carolina on the 6th of May should be an easy Obama victory, but look for Bill Clinton to pull the same moral victory there that he did in Alabama: Obama won that state by 14% points in the popular vote, but the Big Dog's campaigning made the delegate race a 27-25 split.

Apart from Mississippi and Wyoming, there are no more primaries this month. Obama should do well in both of those states, but keep an eye on Wyoming in terms of the Afghanistan oversight issue.

One side note to the Obombers who believe Hillary's done for: we all castigated Al Gore for giving up too easily. Maybe you guys should cut her some slack. She has a point about her candidacy being viable, still.

(Cross-posted to
Simply Left Behind.)

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4 Comments:

  • I thought about you when this news came in. It is a whole new day, huh?

    By Blogger Carol Gee, at 11:55 AM  

  • Thing is though, barring a catastrophe, any Democrat should win CA, NY, etc.

    By Blogger J, at 12:47 PM  

  • The thing I love is how easily Clinton dismisses "minor" states such as Iowa and Missouri, statesthat really help swing an election either way, or Democratic gimmes such as Connecticut. They like to dismiss Obama's victory in "minor states" such as Wisconsin and Virginia, which shows a real chance at switching from a longtime red state to a blue one. She counts Texas, which she barely won but which hasn't voted for a Democrat in the presidential election since Jimmy Carter in 1976. She's also proud of her win in Oklahoma, which hasn't voted for a Democrat in the general election since 1964. Though so contests have been open primaries, these are still primaries, not general elections, and because someone wins a Democratic primary that makes her no more likely for her to win Texas in the fall than it does that McCain will win New York in the fall, even though he won that primary. She may be right about no president in recent memory being elected without winning the Ohio primary (I can't find any sources to prove or disprove that claim), but if she's the nominee vs. McCain, that record will hold true since he won the GOP primary and will likely win Ohio and the election. If at the end of the contest, Obama has the most states, the most votes and the most elected delegates and the Clintons try to steal the election through chicanery, Hillary would turn out to be even more like Dubya than I ever thought she was.

    By Blogger Edward Copeland, at 10:59 PM  

  • Ed,

    If you analyze Obama's victories in those "little" states county by county as I have done, he won in districts that are going to vote Democratic anyway, meaning the state is still lost.

    Hillary, on the other hand, at least wins in counties that she could be competitive for Republican votes in.

    So she likely keeps the Democratic strongholds, plus she picks up enough Republican support to win the state.

    Obama wins the strongholds, and not much else.

    Either of them appear pretty strong in electoral votes, to be sure, but truly, in a dirty campaign, we can expect Obama to curl up into his shell, just as he's done in the face of the Clinton onslaught, which has been very mild.

    Remember the Swift Boat Veterans? You ain't seen nothing yet if Obama is the candidate.

    By Blogger Carl, at 4:40 PM  

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