What we learned from March 4th

I think we learned quite a bit yesterday, most of not very good for Obama supporters.

1. Most importantly, we learned that Obama does have issues in the largest states. On Super Tuesday, it looked like that was the case because he didn't have much time to campaign. But the last two weeks were tailor-made for him. Campaigning full time, making up the ground in the polls, etc. But at the end of the day, he still lost Ohio by 10 - and he continued to overpoll in the exits. That's a concern going forward. I suspect his GOTV effort doesn't work nearly as well with the huge states, and of course, he can't visit every part of these states. It's also interesting that he wins the urban areas in these states, whereas he tends to be strong in rural areas in other states. Whatever it is, he needs to figure out how to deal with that problem.

2. This race doesn't look to be over anytime soon. Based on the delegate numbers, I think March 4 + Wyoming + Mississippi will be a wash. But regardless, Clinton did enough to legitimately stay in the race. Which means we have, at a very minimum, 6 weeks to go. But it's not likely to end after PA either. If she stays in that long, there's no point in not staying in longer, unless she gets blown out in PA, which is highly unlikely. If anything, she'll win that and then lose NC and other states in the week or two after. And again, it will be a delegate wash, but enough to keep her in. If she tries to seat MI/FL or have a new contest there. If they do have a new contest, it's likely in May, and she has to stay in through that. I'm not sure where the endgame is here. More analysis of the delegate race in my next post in this thread.

3. What on earth is going on with his media silence on the part of Obama's campaign? This was weird last week. Unless there is some kind of hidden strategy (which makes no sense, given that he lost yesterday and extended the race at least 6 weeks), he needs to fire his media people. They completely let Hillary control the shaping of the story the last few days. That needs to end. On a similar note, this whole "it's inevitable" thing didn't work for Hillary and it's not going to work for Obama. He needs to fight for votes and fight for wins, not just say "it doesn't matter how it plays out, we'll still win". That might be true, but it's not going to get voters out.

4. Hillary's campaign didn't have any organization in post-Super-Tuesday states. It will be interesting to see if Obama's has any in post-March-4th states. He's kind of acted like it would be over after yesterday, so I wonder how much they invested going forward. His period of having organizational advantages may be over.

5. Bizarre stat of the day from Ohio: (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21226001)



Couple of things are interesting here. We know some black voters are voting for Obama because he's black. And we know some non-black voters would vote against him because he's black. But what is amazing is that 20% of these people were willing to say race was important to them, and the majority were of the latter kind. While you have to expect there will be some of these, I'm amazed that many would admit it.

 

The delegate math going forward. I'm using RealClearPolitics as my base source for numbers.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_delegate_count.html

I'm going to start from the fact that after Wyoming and Mississippi, at worst, Obama should have about a 130 pledged delegate lead (I'll get to superdelegates below).

Remaining states: PA, NC, IN, WV, OR, KY, MT, SD, Puerto Rico, and Guam

States that should clearly favor Obama: NC, OR, SD, MT - 198 delegates

States that should clearly favor Hillary: PA, KY - 209 delegates

Frankly, I have no idea about the others - 159 delegates

Let's assume momentum strongly swings to her, and he wins his states 55-45, she wins her states 60-40, and she wins the unknowns 55-45. Barring a massive scandal, I think that's the absolute (and unrealistic) peak of what she could accomplish.

Obama states: net loss for Hillary of 20
Hillary states: net gain of 42
Other states: net gain of 16

That cuts the lead from 130 to 92.

Now, we have two factors left: superdelegates and FL/MI. She currently holds a 40 superdelegate advantage, with 352 remaining. So to accomplish this without FL/MI, she would have to either switch current SDs or win the remaining SDs 202-150. The problem here is that most of her core supporters are already on board. Since Super Tuesday, she's gained (I believe) 4 superdelegates while he has gained about 60. And her strategy of alienating small states and red states doesn't help. He's generally considered better for down-ticket Red State Dems since the GOP (who has turnout problems) will come out to vote against Hillary, which is why all those superdels seem to be favoring him. So making up 50 superdelegates will be difficult, at best.

What changes this all, though, is FL/MI. I think if they do a re-vote, Hillary has a huge advantage in FL because of their respective attitudes towards it the last month, and the fact that there's a psychological thing about voting the same as you did a month ago. Michigan is a bit different - "uncommitted" got something like 40% of the vote, and I think Obama could get close to a tie in Michigan, but who knows.

It will be interesting to see how far the party lets this go. Bill Richardson came out a few days ago and said whoever was leading after yesterday should be the nominee. Dean said yesterday that MI/FL would not be seated as-is under any circumstance. The one thing we know is that Clinton's best case scenario doesn't have her winning until June, or maybe the convention since SuperDels can keep switching. We'll see if the party starts putting pressure on her to give in before that.

 

Hillary-Obama could work, but Obama would have to adopt Clintonian politics, which is basically what he's running against. I don't know which would win out between ambition and throwing away your whole "change" motto.

Obama-Hillary is harder for me to see, because everything he is running on is about getting away from that type of politics. I think it completely destroys his message if she's on the ticket. And he loses some of the moderates that he otherwise gets, because it shows his whole "new style of politics" as a sham.

I do wonder if the party will try to force this solution down their throats, though.

 

Iowa, New Hampshire, Virginia (expected to be in play this year), Wisconsin, Colorado, and Missouri would tend to disagree as far as battleground states go.

He does have trouble with large states - he seems to be better in person than on TV - and with the knock-out punch (the arrogance issue, in my opinion).

 

Definitely - this is an area I should have included. He needs to find a way to reach this group better than he has. He made some inroads in AZ/NM, but it seems to have gone away in Texas. I wasn't a fan of the idea of Richardson as a VP nominee because I'm not sure how an all-non-white ticket would play, but he would certainly address the hispanic voter issue quickly & easily.

 

Obviously, NH should not have been included there.

 

So which states are you referring to? She's only won one contested "big" battleground state - Ohio. That's your sample? Colorado and Wisconsin combined have as many EC votes as Ohio.

 

So you're counting one state that she won, one that wasn't a sanctioned contest, and one that hasn't voted yet and where the latest polls show he trails by about 4-6 points. That's your evidence. Not surprising, coming from you.

 

Obama would win Pennsylvania in a general election. Ohio as well. Florida, probably not. Your point stands nowhere.