Latest polling shows Hillary with a solid lead in Ohio and neck and neck in Texas; from what I can tell, the momentum has shifted ever so slightly in Hillary’s favor over the past week, but we’ll have to see if its enough to carry her to victory in Texas - and, in my view, if Hillary doesn’t win Texas then the pressure from the party establishment will become intense for her to quit. Be that as it may, I see no signs of quitting on Hillary’s part - and, know what?, if I were in her position, I’d keep right at it until I was actually beaten. Why roll over for a non-entity like Obama just because he’s had a good media ride?
Anyways - what do you think? Brave enough to make any predictions?
UPDATE, Matt Margolis: It’s hard to make any predictions for the Democrat races in Ohio and Texas, but what I’m hearing so far are major indicators of a momentum shift in Hillary’s favor. Democrats who have made their decision in the past 3-days after going for Hillary, and the whole “change” message is not having as big an impact as it used to. I think given these indicators, if Hillary can win either Ohio or Texas, but not both, she’ll still stay in the race.
In other news, it’s looking likely that John McCain will secure the Republican nomination tonight.
UPDATE, Matt Margolis, 9:02 PM: McCain clinches nomination… Blogs For Victory is proud to announce the launch of Blogs for John McCain’s Victory.
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Watching McCain’s victory speech; in pointing out that we can’t undo the past and we must win in Iraq, McCain is offering a devastating critique of HillBama’s position on Iraq, and the War on Terrorism.
Ohio: 26% in, 58% Hillary, 40% Obama; 38% in, Hillary 57%, Obama 41%; 49% in, Hillary 57%, Obama 41%; 10:56pm Eastern Fox calls Ohio for Clinton
Texas: 10% in, 51% Obama, 48% Hillary; 15% in, 50% Obama, 48% Clinton; 22% in, Obama 49%, Hillary 49% (less than 3,000 votes separation out of more than 1.4 million counted)
UPDATE, by Matt Margolis, 10:51 PM: Hillary poised to win Ohio… Razor thin margin in Texas… Hillary takes slight lead:
Clinton: 748,849 49%
Obama: 738,007 49%
UPDATE: Hillary wins Ohio… Hilary leads widens in Texas…
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Hillary’s warm up speaker says “let us go to Michigan and Florida”…ie, lets have a bloody knife-fight for the nomination.
Precincts Reporting: 54%
Hillary Clinton: 987,717 50%
Barack Obama: 940,394 48%
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Is it just me, or is Obama acting like he won the Democratic nomination tonight?
UPDATE, Matt Margolis, 11:54 PM: Hillary’s lead continues to get wider… I think it is clear that momentum has shifted away from Obama…
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: MSNBC calls Texas for Hillary. The “mo” is certainly back with Hillary right now - could be that the rather empty rhetoric of Obama is finally starting to wear off…
UPDATE: Kossaks ain’t too happy…
Tags: 2008 Campaign, Ohio, Super Tuesday Two, Texas
March 4th, 2008
At least, that is what I get from this memo from David Plouffe over at Politico:
So it is clear that narrow popular vote wins in Texas and Ohio will do very little to improve their nearly impossible path to the nomination. If they do not win Texas and Ohio by healthy double digit margins – and they led by healthy double digit margins as recently as two weeks ago - they will be facing almost impossible odds to reverse the delegate math.
While the Clintons gamely continue to try to move the goal posts, at some point there has to be a reckoning. It is a very simple question – what is their path to secure the nomination? No amount of spin can change the math. We look forward to their tortured answers on Wednesday morning.
The Clinton campaign has insisted that this is a race about delegates. And we agree. The tale of March 4th is not who wins what states but where the delegate battle stands after all the delegate yield for all four of these contests have been allocated.
Is Team Obama pre-conceding Texas and Ohio and trying to pre-spin it as a de-facto victory based on delegate count?
I can’t help but feel that this is an unfortunate memo - Obama’s people shouldn’t be trying to browbeat Hillary into a concession, but concentrating on coming into the convention with the most delegates. Leave it to the party bigwigs to pressure Hillary to get out - what Obama’s camp is doing here is appearing like they now deserve the nomination because, to this point, they’ve done slightly better than Hillary. I don’t know about anyone else, but I think Obama will have won the nomination when he wins it, and not a moment before.
Tags: Delegate Count, Ohio, Texas
March 4th, 2008
One poll shows her up by 12 in Ohio, and tied with Obama at 46 in Texas (Via Real Clear Politics, which has all the recent polling).
Tomorrow might be a very interesting day.
Tags: Ohio, Polls, Texas
March 3rd, 2008
Contrast this to the grudging acceptance in the GOP of Huckabee’s entirely quixotic campaign:
Top supporters of Senator Barack Obama, joined by at least one prominent but uncommitted Democrat, raised the pressure Sunday on Senator Hillary Clinton to bow out of the presidential nominating race if she fails to score clear victories in two big-state primary contests Tuesday.
“I just think that D-Day is Tuesday,” said Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a former Democratic presidential hopeful who has yet to throw his weight behind either leading candidate. He said the increasingly negative campaign advertisements aired by both Democrats made it more urgent that the party unite quickly behind a nominee…
…Richardson, saying that it was vital to Democrats’ hopes in the November election to mount a positive, unifying campaign, said on CNN that “whoever has the most delegates after Tuesday, a clear lead, should be, in my judgment, the nominee.” For that to be Clinton, she would have to dramatically exceed the results predicted by polls, which now show Texas a virtual toss-up after weeks of steady progress there by Obama, while Ohio voters narrowly favor Clinton.
Boiled down, they are getting so worried over in Democrat-land that even if Hillary wins Texas and Ohio, they want her out - because by now there’s enough polling data to show that she’s by far the weaker candidate to run against McCain. They’re not so much worried about what she’ll do to Obama - they’re worried that after all is said and done, she might beat Obama, and then go on to get beaten by McCain and if there’s one thing Matt and I discovered in writing Caucus of Corruption, the only thing which scares a Democrat is the prospect of losing a race. So much for loyalty; so much for letting the people and the delegates decide - regardless of what the people want, the Democratic leaderships wants Hillary out and Obama in.
Personally, I think that either candidate brings strengths and weaknesses to the table - and while it would be sweet to beat a Clinton, I think that we can just as well beat either of them, or lose to either of them if we screw it up. Naturally, the longer the Democratic contest goes on, the better for we GOPers…but, still, there is something unseemly in senior Democrats trying to declare it over before it actually is.
Tags: Ohio, Texas
March 2nd, 2008
