America had the biggest primary election in its history today. On the Republican side John McCain solidified the inside track to his party's nomination. On the Democratic side an even split between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ensured that the contest will continue.
Republicans: Mike Huckabee proved he can win in the South. Mitt Romney proved he can win his home states (Massachusetts and Utah, to go along with his previous victory in Michigan) and caucuses in the mountain West. But it was John McCain alone who demonstrated the reach to compete and win across much of the country. He won the big coastal states of California, New York, and New Jersey, the big midwest state of Illinois and narrowly took such border states as Missouri and Oklahoma. He won primaries in states where Republicans have great difficulty prevailing in general elections, but is clearly not the first choice among the party faithful in its Southern electoral bastion.
There is little to preclude McCain's wrapping up the delegates he needs to clinch if his rivals stay in the race in the upcoming weeks. Some polls showed Romney actually ahead in California going into today's voting, yet McCain leads here by 16 points at the time of this post. It's clear that the Huckabee candidacy has worked to McCain's advantage, splitting the social conservative anti-McCain vote.
McCain's biggest challenge looking ahead to the general election campaign will be to inspire these southerners and other social conservatives to overcome their mistrust of him
and go to the trouble of voting in November. A Southern conservative running mate, perhaps Huckabee himself, could help him with that. Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee could help even more.
Democrats: In tennis terms, Clinton held serve. NBC projects today's delegate haul as perhaps 840 for Obama and 838 for Clinton, and you can't cut it much closer than that. There was an enormous amount of positive publicity for Obama in the past week, including high-profile endorsements and polling data that seemed to indicate New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California were in play. Instead, Clinton won all these large states rather easily. She also won big in Arkansas, Tennessee and Oklahoma. Obama piled up a gigantic victory in Illinois and swept a number of midsize and smaller caucus states. The caucus format is what's keeping Obama so competitive so far. Clinton has won most of the big states; Obama has won more states but smaller ones. All in all Clinton won 9 states and Obama 13. This is by design of both camps, and is producing the remarkable closeness of the race.
The lessons to be drawn are that, first, it's just not possible to overestimate the formidable nature of Clinton's candidacy. Even with much apparently going against her, she manages to give as good as she gets. Second, Obama seems to keep threatening to break through and gain the upper hand. With a surge of contributions coming his way and time to concentrate on a few states at a time, he will again be hard to stop. But don't forget the first point.
Next week will come the "Chesapeake Primaries," Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. The best estimates from delegates already won, today's results and the leanings of Democratic "Super Delegates" (such as Members of Congress who get automatic seats at the convention) have Clinton ahead by about 50 overall delegates at the moment. This horse race is still way too close to call and could go on for quite awhile longer, potentially even to the convention to be decided by Super Delegates and/or floor fights over the seatings of the sanctioned Michigan and Florida delegations. Messy developments along those lines would not be good publicity for the party's November campaign drive.
2 comments:
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Had Edwards not dropped out, he really could have been a kingmaker, using his influence to possibly steer the Democratic convention to his way of thinking.
With only two players in the race, the likelihood is that one of them will secure the nomination before the convention, and in all likelihood, the other will be left out in the cold, unless they decide that a Reagan/Bush type of deal is needed to heal possible rifts within the party.
Exactly right, Webby. My guess is Edwards decided to get out when he did in order to influence the campaign itself. Both Clinton and Obama want his endorsement and will compete for that by embracing some of his issues. Edwards may feel this will commit them to promises either winner will have to keep should they win office.
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