The big winner last night was unquestionably John McCain, who not only clinched the Republican presidential nomination, but now gets to watch for weeks and possibly months as his rivals take the tens of millions of dollars they could have spent attacking him and instead burn through it attacking each other.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton needed to win both of the big states to keep her campaign viable in the short-term, and she did, racking up a big win in Ohio, a narrow win in Texas, and a massive win in Rhode Island. Barack Obama carried the state of Vermont by what seems at first blush a whopping 60-38 margin, but is actually a bit of an underperformance for him, as he was looking to take 64 percent of the vote and split the delegates 10-5 rather than 9-6.
How did Clinton reverse the trends that had carried Obama to 11 straight victories and major inroads among her core of support? Through a ruthlessly aggressive, multilateral "kitchen-sink" strategy of attacking Obama from both the left (on health care and trade) and the right (on national security). Simultaneously, the Clinton campaign worked the press into believing that their coverage — which had given almost no attention to Ron Burkle, Norman Hsu, Frank Giustra, Hillary Clinton's refusal to turn over her tax returns, Bill Clinton's refusal to disclose the donors to his foundation, their pardoning of unrepentant criminals and terrorists as payback or political gamesmanship, etc. — had somehow been unfair to Hillary Clinton.
But what ultimately tripped up Obama was his horrendous weekend before the election, when news broke that his chief economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, had hinted to a Canadian consular official that Obama was merely employing protectionist rhetoric to win votes in Ohio, but was in no way threatening withdrawal from NAFTA. The story turned out to be considerably murkier than that — contrary to the original reports, the meeting took place at the consulate in Chicago under informal terms (not the embassy in Washington), it was Canadian officials who reached out to Goolsbee (rather than the other way around), Goolsbee's actual message to Canada wasn't noticeably inconsistent from what Obama had been saying in the campaign, and it appears that a political operative in the Conservative Party leaked news of the meeting — but the damage was done. Obama's campaign initially denied any such meeting had taken place, and hurt their candidate's credibility on an issue of primary concern to the working-class Democrats Obama had to win over. The Texas polling averages depicted at right tell the story: a precipitous Obama rise followed by a sharp fall at just the wrong time. If the election had been on Friday, he would have carried Texas and ended the race.
However, it remains to be seen if Clinton's wins were better than pyrrhic. As elections guru Chuck Todd explains, Vermont and Rhode Island will be a wash in terms of net delegates, Ohio will yield somewhere around 5-10 net delegates for Clinton, but Texas will yield a similar 5-10 net delegates for Obama. The reason for this seeming anomaly in Texas is that the statewide primary is essentially a meaningless straw poll. What counts in the Lone Star state is winning state senate districts, where delegates are allocated relative to the Democratic vote in 2004 and 2006 in each district. The most pro-Democratic districts of Texas — the African-American communities of Houston and Dallas, and the white liberal communities of Austin and the the Dallas and Houston exurbs — overlap Obama's core constituency. Combine that with his likely victory in the Texas caucus, in which one third of the state's delegates are allocated, and the Texas result turns out to be favorable for Obama.
So the expectations and spin games now take over in a big way. Just a few weeks ago, numerous Clinton apparachiks were promising an even or very close race in pledged delegates, with Clinton possibly ahead after March 4. Instead, Obama came in to last night with a margin of about 150 pledged delegates, left with virtually the same margin, and may even have extended his lead. Any Clinton gains on the night are also likely to be quickly wiped out in the Wyoming caucuses Saturday and the Mississippi primary Tuesday. That would mean Clinton will have to win approximately 65% of all remaining pledged delegates after Tuesday, and to do so, would have to win every outstanding contest by an even more preposterous margin to overcome the leveling effect of the Democratic party's proportional allocation system.
In other words, in terms of delegate math, Clinton is more or less drawing dead. To win the nomination she would have to damage Obama so profoundly that the Democratic superdelegates feel compelled to overturn the results of the contest for elected delegates. Compared to what's likely to come out of the Clinton campaign as the race shifts to Pennsylvania, the last couple of weeks will look like a game of croquet.
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