Wednesday, February 13, 2008

About Last Night

Barack Obama’s Potomomac Primary romp last night got a lot of people a lot of excited. There are two big questions: 1) is the excitement warranted? and 2) what the excitement itself resonate in this election? The victories were all expected, but the margins were immense, with Obama winning every demographic except white women. Ignoring the obvious place for a jungle fever reference, let’s look at this carefully. Obama found electorates well in tune with him in Maryland and Virginia upscale whites combined with large African-American voting blocs (which he is now carrying 8-1). Getting over 60% is still impressive and the delegate total is mounting. So the excitement might be a little overblown, but the results were exciting for Obama, for he now leads by over 100 elected delegates, maybe as many as 130. The Clinton campaign itself has said that it is almost impossible to catch Obama in that number and has now started talking about how Super Delegates should be included in all counts, even though they aren’t bound at all. Look for them to start adding in Michigsn and Florida delegates soon, since the numbers look bad as they are. As for the popular vote thus far, Obama leads that by about 800,000. If he finishes the primary season leading in both, it will be very hard for the SDs to reverse the results.
As for the resonance – look for SDs to be very careful before endorsing Clinton from this point. It is quite possible that the electorate is starting to accept the concept of President Obama, that victory after victory is starting to create a bandwagon effect. That is why Clinton has started to spend money in Wisconsin – a 60% victory there could just render March 4th meaningless. As big as winning all the major states but Obama’s own would be, losing this many others, along with the pledged delegate count, might render it moot. Things are not looking good for Clinton at the moment, as momentum can be a bitch to overcome this late.

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Speaking about last night, the Senate voted on the new eavesdropping bill, passing the version the Bush Administration wanted, with immunity for the telcoms who collaborated with the fascists. Of course, it is expected that Republicans would go along with it. That only 29 Democrats would go along with the noble filibuster attempts of Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold is sad.

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