Obama on the Threshold

Barack Obama moved closer to the Democratic nomination for president today with a substantial victory in the Wisconsin primary. He should further extend his delegate lead when results from the Hawaii caucuses come in. It isn't over yet, but the fat lady is running through her warmup exercises.

It seems more and more as though Hillary Clinton's coalition is starting to come apart. She barely won among women. She lost among whites. Her deficit among men continues to widen. Obama split the vote among working class whites. It's getting past demographics and looks a lot more like an incoming tide; all groups are moving toward Obama.

The math says Clinton must win 58% of the remaining pledged delegates, and that's a tall order. Given that some upcoming states give Obama a clear advantage (Wyoming, Mississippi, North Carolina for instance) that means Clinton will need to take 60-40 splits at least in her projected big three of Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. This kind of scenario grows more remote by the day.
Obama now leads by about 140 pledged delegates. Clinton leads by about 70 among superdelegates who have declared a preference. If Obama winds up ahead in pledged delegates after all states have voted, as seems extremely likely, it will be nearly impossible for the superdelegates to overturn that verdict. Remember that most of them are elected officials who would have to face the anger of the voters for doing so. And about 400 of them are still sitting on the fence. They'll go for whomever is ahead come convention time.

The only other wild cards in the mix are Florida and Michigan. Both would have to come up with a new selection process for seating their delegations. The case could be made to seat Florida's delegation as is, since Obama was on the ballot. The Obama side would oppose that, since no one was allowed to campaign (and since he lost by 50-30.) Michigan would be even more problematical, since Obama was not even on the ballot there. I have heard that holding new elections in the two states would cost $10 million. That is money the state parties do not have. It would be cheaper to hold caucuses, but given Obama's strong past results in caucuses you could expect the Clinton side to oppose that vigorously. This is a drama that will play out as Clinton's position becomes ever more precarious, but the results on March 4 will do much to decide the issue.

Even the Clinton campaign has said they will need to carry Texas and Ohio handily. If they do not it will be the final evidence that her star is falling and Obama's rising. The superdelegates, under the public encouragement of party elders such as Al Gore, will move to embrace the primary leader, and Barack Obama will proceed to the nomination. Hillary Clinton's once seemingly inevitable nomination will have been upset by Obama's message of change.

This is all rather ironic. After all, Hillary Clinton has been an agent of change her entire public life. But Obama's campaign has been too good and too attuned to this year's message. Her emphasis on experience allowed Obama to take the change mantle. He stuck to that message through thick and thin and now he is reaping the rewards. It is really not that Clinton has lost the confidence of Democratic voters. She remains popular with them. She draws crowds of 5,000 to 6,000 people, high by primary standards, and four to five times what John McCain draws. She got more votes in Wisconsin by herself than the entire Republican field. But Obama pulls in 10,000 to 20,000 at his events and outpolled her 58-41.

Her last chance may be an Obama blunder of epic proportions in Thursday's debate. Don't count on it. McCain has already begun previewing his general election strategy, referring to his great experience and chiding the opposing party for being "eloquent but empty." We see what the experience and skepticism of idealism strategy has done for Hillary Clinton. It's hard to believe Sen. McCain is going to try to run on that against Barack Obama, too. This just gets more interesting all the time.