Obama's surge extends down the Potomac (Update: Obama ahead no matter how you slice it -- MI and FL)

[ProSense]

*** Staying on the statistical front: Check out these cumulative vote totals for primaries and caucuses to date:

States Awarding Delegates
..................Total Vote..........%
Obama.........9,373,334.........50%
Clinton.........8,674,779.........46%
Others............726,095..........4%

With Florida
Total Vote %
Obama.........9,942,375.........49%
Clinton.........9,531,987.........46%
Others............984,236..........4%

With Florida and Michigan
Total Vote %
Obama.........9,942,375.........47%
Clinton.........9,860,138.........47%
Others.........1,249,922..........6%

*** Follow the leader: So no matter how you slice the total popular vote, Obama is the leader. He's at 50% in states that have awarded delegates; he's at 49% and leads Clinton by 3 points in states where both their names were on the ballot, and his lead is big enough that he leads even when you factor in Michigan where Obama's name wasn't on the ballot. Why does this popular vote total matter? Because it's yet another important talking point when wooing superdelegates. How many supers will be comfortable voting against the candidate who's leading in the pledged delegate count and the total vote count?

link

Obama's surge extends down the Potomac

Shattering key demographic barriers, Barack Obama wins again by decisive margins. Will Hillary Clinton come out of a tailspin before it's too late?

By Walter Shapiro

Feb. 13, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- Yawn. Stretch. Nod. Maybe I could close my eyes for a second here at the keyboard. Oh right, a new Democratic election night. With the same inevitable result: Three more landslides for Barack Obama, this time down the Potomac River, from Maryland through the District of Columbia and into Virginia. How boring. That gives Obama seven straight victories in the past week and the unquestioned lead in elected convention delegates.

In his victory speech Tuesday night in Wisconsin -- the site of a Feb. 19 primary that (surprise) Obama is favored to win -- he declared, "The politics of hope does not mean hoping things come easy." But these days, Obama -- the candidate, the symbol and the movement -- is campaigning on Easy Street.

The Virginia-is-for-lovers results were particularly persuasive as the state hearted Obama by a margin of 64-to-35 percent. According to the exit polls, he won 55 percent of white men and narrowly won the overall white vote. That went along with his staggering 88 percent showing among African-Americans.

When the same pattern repeated itself in Maryland -- where the polls closed 90 minutes late because of treacherous weather -- it should have quieted the refrain that Obama only does well among white voters with a blue-ribbon education and a blue-chip stock portfolio. In Virginia, Obama in fact carried every single educational and income category by a hefty margin. The only exception in Maryland was that Obama lost that sliver of the electorate who earn over $200,000 a year -- a group rarely considered part of the hardcore Democratic base.

Here in Washington, Obama coasted home by such a lopsided (better than 3-to-1) margin that it would have been easy to assume that his opponent was the hapless Mike Gravel -- and not Hillary Clinton, the most famous woman politician in the world.

Tuesday night's results will launch a Talmudic discussion among pundits about whether Obama should be crowned the party's front-runner or merely considered to be ahead by a nose as the protracted race enters the far turn. But the easiest measure is the barroom test: See if you can find a single person (other than maybe someone back from an off-the-grid trek in Nepal) who would take a bet on Hillary Clinton at even money.

If there is any lesson from Campaign 2008, it is to beware of the folly of premature certainty. Clinton, who hopes to rally in the March 4 mega-primaries in Texas and Ohio, unquestionably still has a pathway to the nomination. But she is losing altitude at an alarming rate and, if the decline continues much longer, she will risk colliding with rooftops.

Clinton, who in recent weeks has been more accessible to the public than Obama, spent Monday afternoon answering questions in a Political Science 101 class at the University of Virginia. Asked about her recent string of defeats, the New York senator replied, "If you look at states that I have won, they are states that we have to win ... Obviously they include New York, New Jersey, Florida, Michigan, California and Arizona."

That shaky argument (the Michigan and Florida results are not recognized by the Democratic Party) died for good Tuesday. Maryland, which last went Republican for president in 1988, is a state that bleeds Democratic blue. And Virginia -- a once conservative bastion that has elected two Democratic governors and a senator in this decade -- is the kind of emblematic swing state that the party has to carry if it ever is going to graduate from the Electoral College.

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[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Kick

thanks for the information.

[ProSense]

2. Putting to bed the fallacy of Florida

Clinton, meanwhile, has sought to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the process by which pledged delegates are chosen, arguing that caucuses aren’t true reflections of the will of the people, and that the exclusion of Florida and Michigan voters because of a dispute over the primary calendar taints the official tallies.

But Obama’s lead in pledged delegates widened Tuesday night to more than 100, even by conservative estimates, and there’s no indication that it will narrow before March.

There are 573 delegates up for grabs between March 4 and April 22. For Clinton to even things up, she needs to get 345 of those 573 delegates, or 60 percent – the sort of margin she won in her home state of New York.

Obama’s dramatic victories Tuesday also put him ahead in the count of pledged delegates even if Florida, whose delegates have not been recognized by the Democratic National Committee, was permitted to seat a delegation.

And his victories put him ahead even in counts that include superdelegates.

Obama’s wins were his sixth, seventh, and eighth in a row, and even as Clinton looks forward to March 4, his campaign is looking with relish on Wisconsin and his home state of Hawaii, which vote a week from today.

His widening coalition is becoming part of his message: He won a majority of Latino votes – which had been Clinton’s bulwark elsewhere – in Virginia and Maryland.

He won a majority of white men in both states, and won the support of groups across the economic spectrum, while drawing stunning majorities of support from African-American voters – as high as 90% of their support in Virginia, according to exit polls.

The wide margins – he won with 64% of the vote in Virginia, and appeared headed for victory on a similar scale in Maryland– seemed to answer the Clinton campaign’s arguments that he has not won primaries in large states.

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[papau]

4. No question if he splits Ohio/Texas, the nomination is his - but if he doesn't Hill is correct

[ProSense]

5. Not about if, we're dealing with the present! n/t

[papau]

3. Walter is no friend of the left - and his idea that Virginia's DC beltway caused results are proof

of anything - while approve by the Clinton haters at MSNBC - do not ring true to me.

[ProSense]

6. Shapiro didn't invent information, these are the facts. n/t

[RiverStone]

7. Thanks Pro! Please keep posting this stuff - great news!!!

:hi:

K&R

[ProSense]

8. Thanks!

:hi:

[Moh96]

9. thank you very much for that

[ProSense]

10. Clinton's edge slips with whites, women

Clinton's edge slips with whites, women

By ALAN FRAM and TREVOR TOMPSON, Associated Press Writers 21 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton's crushing losses in Maryland and Virginia highlight an erosion in what had been solid advantages among women, whites and older and working-class voters.

While this week's results can be explained by those states' relatively large numbers of blacks and well-educated residents — who tend to be Barack Obama supporters — her presidential campaign could be doomed if the trends continue.

Clinton is holding onto some of her supporters who are largely defined by race and often by level of education, such as low-income white workers and older white women, exit polls of voters show. She's been losing other blocs, again stamped by personal characteristics, such as blacks, men and young people both black and white, and better-educated whites.

The latest defeats have slowed the one-time favorite's political momentum at a bad time. With Obama winning eight straight contests and easily outdistancing her in money raising, she must now endure three weeks until primaries in Texas and Ohio that she hopes will resurrect her campaign.

Clinton's losses have also enabled Obama to take a slight lead in their crucial fight for convention delegates. With 2,025 needed to clinch the nomination at the party's Denver gathering in August, Obama has 1,275 delegates to Clinton's 1,220, according to the latest count by The Associated Press.

Before this year's presidential contests began, Obama was running consistently behind his rival in the polls. The Illinois senator was mostly attracting upper-echelon whites, young people and about half of black voters — resembling the coalitions that sealed defeat for past non-establishment Democratic candidates such as Gary Hart and Bill Bradley.

Things have changed since the voting has started, especially after bitter exchanges during the Clinton-Obama contest in South Carolina highlighted their racial differences and, subsequently, former Sen. John Edwards exited the race.

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[K Gardner]

11. I'm not at all certain how "people" can keep arguing against insurmountable evidence like this that

Obama is ahead, that he is winning all across the country in diverse regions and demographics, and that he is poised to take the nomination by popular demand and vote. Thanks for posting.

[ProSense]

12. Obama's crowds are awesome for so early

Obama's crowds are awesome for so early

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama is attracting jaw-dropping crowds at stop after stop. Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton would be thrilled with her own big turnouts except that his are so much bigger.

Political insiders are unsure what to make of it all: No one has seen these kinds of crowds so long before Election Day.

Do to-the-rafters audiences in the primaries mean Obama will win the Democratic nomination? Or do they simply represent highly motivated fans who eventually could yield to a quieter but larger number of voters for Clinton? Or for the Republican nominee in November?

While some major Republican candidates were struggling to draw 800 people just before the Feb. 5 primaries, Obama spoke before 54,000 on a three-stop Saturday. That was approaching the population of Wilmington, Del., where he drew 20,000 the next day, Super Bowl Sunday.

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[madfloridian]

13. Good! I had not realized that. Having cable problems and TV is useless.

If you want to appreciate the utter worthlessness of TV, just go without internet for most of 24 hours.

[ProSense]

14. NYT (cheats) includes MI and FL as state won by Hillary; Obama still leads