Perception of Electability At Stake For Obama In Coming Primaries

GoldieAZ49

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Sun Mar-30-08 06:40 PM
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Perception of Electability At Stake For Obama In Coming Primaries

Great perspective of the primary, why it is far from over and why the O camp is whistling in the dark over "Math".

Super Delegates will have to listen to Clinton, based on the results of the remaining contests, and Obama knows it.

Interesting comparision to Harold Ford Jr as well. Read the full article for that.

This is going to be the best convention in decades!!! Do da do da!!

Some highlights:

Obama's dragging himself to fundraisers, however, is more surprising--and revealing. Despite what various pundits say about the race--that Clinton has almost no chance to win--the Obama Campaign must be looking down the road through a different scope. Obama must be estimating that his 30-plus million in the bank is not going to be enough. Internet fundraising from small donors is not going to re-supply him for a coming fight of the magnitude for which his campaign is bracing.

...

The second significant event, related to the first, is that Clinton has signaled her intention to fight Obama hard for North Carolina on May 6 by sending in Ace Young, who crafted her victories in California and Texas. The conventional wisdom has been that North Carolina, because of its large black population, is Obama's. A month ago, Obama led Clinton there in the polls by 14 points. By last Friday, however, his lead had dropped to a single point. His fall in North Carolina would seem to be a result of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy. Clearly, this is Clinton's golden opportunity. For the first time since her humiliation in South Carolina, she will be able to contest seriously a Southern state, and if she wins--as well she might--she will change the dynamic of the race. If she wins Indiana the same day--another more and more likely victory--she will be able to keep that momentum going for a week until West Virginia, which she also should win, and then another week to victory in Kentucky, which will offset her likely loss of Oregon the same day
...

Of the last ten Democratic contests, therefore, Obama may win only the three in the continental West: Oregon and then Montana and South Dakota on June 3. As his nearer goal, Obama absolutely must keep his loss in Pennsylvania less than twenty points. If he cannot, the margin will signal the kind of collapse in white support that Clinton experienced with African-Americans in South Carolina. Either scenario--a sweeping defeat in Pennsylvania or a slow bleed through the last ten contests--will plant the question of electability in the minds of some Super Delegates. For the reality is that Barack Obama cannot win the national election in November without the faith and enthusiasm of a good chunk of white middle class and lower class America.

...

While Barack Obama has acquired baggage, Hillary Clinton has finally got a narrative--and for her this is a very good thing, far outweighing any consequences of losing the possibility of revotes in Michigan and Florida, or of losing this or that endorsement, in an election where endorsements have not meant much. Voters firmly rejected her first queenly claims to the nomination--that she deserved it, that she was the inevitable winner--and punished her for the presumption. But now, almost despite herself, and certainly despite the royal style of her campaign, she presents a consistent persona of the hard-knock candidate, both giving and receiving blows, who refuses to lay down and die. There's a grudging respect for her now in middle America and, more importantly, a growing sense that as a nation we are so screwed--damned if we stay in Iraq, damned if we don't; the government needs to spend big on health care and education and infrastructure and rebuilding the military at the same time it needs to rein in the deficit--that it well may take a tough-as-nails, Washington-bitten, willing to get-down-and-dirty closer like Hillary Clinton to hack a path through the swamp.

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Adding to the possibility of success for an Electability strategy are two recent polls on how Democrats would like to see Super Delegates make up their minds. In a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll of March 14-16, 49% of respondents said that the Super Delegates should choose "the best candidate;" 27% said the Super Ds should heed the race results in their own state; 19% said that the Super Ds should make a decision based on all primaries and caucuses combined. In a Newsweek poll taken March 5-6, 43% of respondents said that the trailing candidate should concede and 42% said that the Super Delegates should determine the winner. Unless these percentages change over the next few months, they undercut the belief that Super Delegates shouldn't feel free to choose on the basis of Electability over other (even though quantifiable) criteria

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/perception-of-electabilit_b_93207.html