1.

CLINTON WINS OH, TX, RI & OBAMA WINS VT & TX CAUCUSES -- NOW WHAT?
By Ashish

** Analysis on where the race goes from here and why Hillary Clinton is still not back in it... **

411mania
March 5, 2008

http://www.411mania.com/politics/columns/70352

Hillary Clinton had a big night last night, winning the primaries in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island, giving her campaign its best day since winning New Hampshire in early January. Barack Obama won the Vermont primary and the Texas caucuses. So what does this all mean and where does the race go from here?

The major news networks seem to be spinning Clinton's wins as major and seem to be framing the race as a "dead heat" now. While her wins in OH and TX are a very positive sign for her and something she deserves a lot of credit for (let's face it, she and Obama campaigned very hard in both states and she won both, plain and simple), the cold hard facts are that she still has virtually no chance at winning the nomination. The media and the Clinton camp will likely spin this a million different ways in the coming days, but unless she works out some sort of backroom deal to steal the nomination, she will not win it under the current rules. That is just a fact of the math. She needed to win OH and TX by 15-20 points to make any sort of game-changing dent in Obama's pledged delegate lead and despite having 15-20 point leads in both states as recently as two weeks ago, she blew them both and finished up gaining basically nothing except symbolic victories.

Looking ahead, Obama is likely to win Wyoming on Saturday and Mississippi on Tuesday. Then both campaigns put all focus on Pennsylvania which is on April 22nd. Pennsylvania is a closed primary that Clinton should win. But after that, the schedule becomes VERY favorable to Obama. He is likely to rack up several wins and build another long winning streak throughout May (including likely wins in Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Oregon, Montana, and South Dakota). But the night to really watch will be May 6th. May 6th is the next biggest day, delegate wise, as it will feature both North Carolina and Indiana. And guess what? Obama is expected to win both of those easily. I won't go through all the numbers, but under normal assumptions about what will happen from here on out, Obama will have a near 200 pledged delegate lead on May 7th and an even bigger pledged delegate lead when the primary season ends in June. There is virtually no way that superdelegates will overturn a 200+ pledged delegate lead. It just won't happen (unless some sort of major scandal about Obama comes out).

The results of OH and TX remind me a lot of Super Tuesday. On Super Tuesday, Clinton won the big states and the media declared her the night's winner. It wasn't until a few days later that people started realizing that Obama WON the delegate race on Super Tuesday and that was what mattered. Looking at last night's results, Clinton did not really gain any delegates. Rhode Island and Vermont wiped each other out and whatever delegates Clinton gets out of Ohio (likely 7-10) will be wiped out by the delegates Obama wins in Texas (likely 7-10). That means that Clinton is now still just as far behind as she was before, and now has fewer states in which to make up the gap.

But some will argue that she now has the momentum. And that is probably true. She won two big states and deserves the momentum. But guess what? Momentum is only relevant in the short term. Obama will get his own momentum when he wins in Wyoming and Mississippi and then it is a MONTH until Pennsylvania, meaning that whatever momentum either candidate has will long disappear by the time PA votes. And if Clinton wins PA, the schedule again seems to lineup a bunch of favorable Obama states after that.

Clinton will eventually begin to argue that she should get the nomination despite losing the pledged delegates because she won big states. But guess what, the people who have to buy that argument are superdelegates, and most of them are from states that aren't New York and California. She already has most of the "big state" superdelegates. Will superdelegates from smaller states agree that their states don't matter and overturn the election results for Clinton? Highly unlikely.

What will also be interesting to see now is the strategy Obama and Clinton now take. Clinton obviously had some success with her "kitchen sink" strategy of throwing all kinds of attacks at Obama and hoping something sticks (and in the case of Ohio, NAFTAgate stuck). I'd expect them to continue that, especially now with the Rezko trial underway in Chicago. One thing Obama cannot do is sit around and take attack after attack. She made a big issue out of an Obama campaign economic policy guy apparently talking to Canada about some of Obama's views on NAFTA and he seemed to more or less let her say whatever she wanted. He will have to respond quickly and aggressively. He cannot just ignore Clinton. He knows that there is almost no chance that she can win, but ignoring her seems to make him come off arrogant and also serves to fire up her supporters. There will be plenty of time for McCain later.

The other thing to watch now is how superdelegates react this week. Some reports yesterday stated that Obama is sitting on 50 superdelegate endorsements that he has yet to announce. If that is true, and it is a big if, he will be able to halt Clinton's momentum almost instantly. He will also make the math against her winning even more daunting than it already is. I suspect, though, that superdelegates, for the most part, will now stay out of this until May 7th. I'd keep that date in mind because if things go as expected from here until May 7th (Clinton wins PA, Guam while Obama wins Wyoming, Mississippi, North Carolina, Indiana), he will have a clearly dominant pledged delegate lead with only six contests left (four of which he'd likely win -- West Virginia, Oregon, South Dakota, and Montana). That is the day I'd expect many superdelegates, including some high ranking members of the party, to begin to solidify behind Obama.

So how can Clinton possibly win? If a major Obama scandal comes out, that could change things. The other scenario is that if she somehow gets Obama's pledged delegate lead down under 100, in which case the Democratic party would probably hold new primaries or caucuses in Florida and Michigan. She still wouldn't be able to make up the pledged delegate gap, but if it's really close, say less than 50, maybe she has some sort of argument to convince some superdelegates to side with her. But this scenario would require that she win EVERY state from now on with 60%+ of the vote. She didn't even win 60% of the vote in her homestate of New York.

So to sum up, winning Ohio and Texas are very positive wins for Clinton. She fought hard for them. But at some point, she will have to explain how she wins the nomination. The fact is that last night was Clinton's best chance to bite into Obama's delegate lead, and she failed miserably. She didn't even gain 20-30 delegates. She gained basically nothing. The media will spin this to her because they jump from one extreme to the next, somebody has to have all the momentum in the weird world of cable news. But the longterm picture is that NOTHING changed last night and, if anything, it is now even harder for Clinton to eat into Obama's delegate lead because she blew her best chance and now has four fewer states in which to gain ground. Don't fall for the short-term media hype. At the end of this thing, the media AND the superdelegates will talk NOT about who won what states and how big they are, they will talk about who won more delegates and THAT is the person who will be the nominee. Looking at the delegate count and the upcoming states, there really is no way she wins unless she somehow steals the nomination, in which case none of this matters because the Democratic party would be saying that people's votes don't matter, thus ripping the party apart and handing the November election to John McCain. At this point, she may be positioning herself to get into a position at the end where the party forces Obama to pick her as his Vice President in hopes of uniting the party. Obama probably doesn't want her as his VP, but the longer this goes and the more Clinton supporters begin to dislike Obama (and vice-versa), the more likely it will be that he will have to put her on the ticket to appease her supporters. Even though he is winning, he isn't winning by enough to take the risk of blowing off Clinton supporters and figuring he can win in November without even 20-30% of them.

But Clinton and the media want this to go on, so she bought herself two more months with her wins in OH and TX and on and on we go.

2.

CLINTON: ENERGIZING VICTORIES, BUT DIFFICULT DELEGATE MATH
By Peter Baker and Anne E. Kornblut

Washington Post
March 5, 2008
Page A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/04/AR2008030403354.html

As Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton raced from border towns on the Rio Grande to farm communities in the Midwest trying to salvage her troubled presidential campaign in recent days, advisers at her Arlington headquarters were awash in mixed feelings about whether she should go on.

Decisive victories in both Ohio and Texas, they agreed, would justify staying in the race until the next big primary in Pennsylvania in seven weeks. Defeats in both of the big states would spell the end. But the prospect of a split decision or close results generated sharply different judgments from her strategists about her future.

Clinton wiped away the debate last night with a robust victory in Ohio and a narrow win in Texas. But as she vowed to keep campaigning, the tight vote in Texas signaled she may yet face a tough decision in coming weeks. The slim margin in the Texas popular vote and an additional caucus process in which she trailed made clear that she would not win enough delegates to put a major dent in Sen. Barack Obama's lead. And regardless of the results, she emerged from the crucible of Ohio and Texas with a campaign mired in debt and riven by dissension

Clinton plans to use her triumphs in Ohio and Texas, as well as in Rhode Island, to argue that she still has a credible claim to the Democratic nomination, despite the delegate math. Many in her circle believe she finally recaptured momentum on the campaign trail in recent days and managed to put Obama on the defensive by questioning his readiness to serve as commander in chief. If nothing else, they hope she has earned a new lease to make her case to the nation.

Appearing before jubilant supporters in Columbus last night, an energized Clinton seized on the Ohio victory and declared that she will go "all the way" to the White House. "Keep on watching," she said. "Together, we're going to make history."

As the results came in, aides reported that the dark mood that has clouded her campaign headquarters for weeks had finally lifted, and talk of dropping out was fading. "It means she goes on," a senior campaign strategist said on the condition of anonymity. "All the late-breaking voters went with her, and the next batch of states favor her. He is starting to get scrutiny like he has never seen before, and he is out of material to talk about on the trail."

Another Democrat who has advised her noted that Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, have made a career of refusing to give in when the establishment has counted them out. "She doesn't give up," the Democrat said. "He doesn't give up."

Critical to Clinton's prospect of victory are the superdelegates, the nearly 800 elected officials and party leaders who can vote any way they choose. Her campaign envisions what aides call a "buyer's remorse" strategy of raising enough doubts about the first-term senator from Illinois through increasingly vigorous attacks and tougher media scrutiny to convince the superdelegates that it would be too risky to nominate him.

That reflects the recognition that it would be enormously difficult for Clinton to overtake Obama in the pledged delegates chosen by voters in primaries and caucuses. By some calculations, Clinton would need to win more than 60 percent of the vote in the dozen contests remaining between now and June 7 to catch Obama in pledged delegates -- a steep challenge given that, so far, she has won that much in only one state, her onetime adopted home of Arkansas. Even in New York, where she is a sitting senator, she won 57 percent of the vote. She won 55 percent in Michigan, where Obama was not even on the ballot.

"Her durability is impressive if not astonishing, but she is still looking at some pretty cold, hard numbers in the race," said Jim Jordan, a Democratic strategist who initially ran the 2004 primary campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). "She's running out of time, she's running out of space." He described a Clinton nomination even with wins in Texas and Ohio as "impossible, really."

Steve McMahon, another Democratic strategist who is not working for either candidate, said the odds are long. "It's difficult to see how the math works for Senator Clinton," he said. "If you look at most models out there circulating, the one thing that's consistent is that she has to perform pretty strongly in order to have any hope of making up the deficit among elected delegates."

Still, Clinton supporters said yesterday's results suggested that Obama has not been able to close the deal, leaving her an opening. "She has lost 11 states in a row -- and the closest was Wisconsin, which she lost by 17" percentage points, said Paul Begala, who was a White House aide to her husband. "The theory of momentum suggested Obama should roll up equally large margins today, but voters seem to want to keep this race going. I suspect Senator Clinton agrees with them."

Indeed, Clinton had hinted Monday that she was ready to keep the race going. "I'm just getting warmed up," she said. She seemed to surge on the strength of attacks on Obama's leadership preparation, conflicting statements about the North American Free Trade Agreement and connections to fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, whose trial on unrelated extortion and money laundering charges opened Monday.

But candidates rarely admit they are considering dropping out until the moment they do. And Clinton, until the Ohio results came in, deflected questions about her plans yesterday, saying that she did not like to make predictions when asked repeatedly what she would do if she lost Texas, Ohio, or both.

"No person has ever won the White House without winning the Ohio primary in either party, so I think Ohio is pretty important," Clinton said in an interview with the NBC affiliate in Columbus. "The voters are not ready for this to be over. They want to be sure they are picking the person who would be the strongest nominee against John McCain."

Clinton has been counting on Ohio and Texas to vault her back into contention after losing every contest since Super Tuesday on Feb. 5. Her strong showings in those states may now help curb what some Clinton strategists had expected to be escalating calls from senior Democrats to end her campaign in the interest of pulling the party together to face McCain, the Republican nominee. But Obama's allies said they would try to avoid piling on, recognizing that it might only prod her to stay in.

"I don't think anybody in the Obama campaign is going to tell her to get out," said former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), an Obama supporter. "Only Hillary can decide what's right and what her future course should be. It becomes increasingly difficult to see mathematically how she can do it, but there may be other reasons to stay involved other than winning the nomination."

Her organization, though, is drained of money and energy. Outgunned by Obama in the fundraising department, the Clinton campaign is carrying millions of dollars in debt, although officials would not say how much, and it threw everything it had into Texas and Ohio. Campaign aides expressed optimism that she will draw a new infusion of money after these primaries and have enough to go forward, although that remains unclear.

Perhaps just as significant, many on her team appear exhausted and dispirited. Advisers have not waited for Ohio and Texas to launch into a furious debate about whom to blame for her problems. Senior advisers described the infighting as debilitating and destructive, with some members of her inner circle barely speaking to one another. Many fault Mark Penn, the campaign's chief strategist, for crafting a message they said did not match the mood of the year. Penn's allies blame other advisers for mismanaging campaign finances and not putting organizations on the ground in many caucus states.

As recently as last week, there were divisions among top advisers over which advertisement to use against Obama -- one attacking his Iraq war position, or one featuring a "3 a.m. call" to the White House that describes Clinton as better prepared to be president. The latter advertisement won out. But Clinton advisers were infuriated about the original debate, blaming Penn for encouraging her to cling to an unsuccessful argument -- that Obama's deeds have not matched his stated opposition to the Iraq war.

And even though Penn claimed credit for the phone-call ad, senior Clinton advisers expressed confusion over whether Penn or Austin ad guru Roy Spence had made it. Penn's allies said he made the ad -- and insisted on airing it over the objections of other senior advisers, including Mandy Grunwald, who is technically in charge of ad making. Penn wrote the ad, his allies said, and Grunwald reluctantly made it, but then tried to get it spiked.

The sniping over the ad was the latest expression of divisions within a team that has never been cohesive. Advisers complained bitterly about one other, and stories in the media delineated their differences. Several people inside the campaign said earlier that if Clinton won last night, it would be despite her campaign, not because of it.

Moving forward, Clinton officials think she will probably lose the next two contests, in Wyoming on Saturday and Mississippi on Tuesday. Their firewall, they hope, is Pennsylvania on April 22, giving Clinton time to continue raising doubts about Obama's experience, questioning his sincerity about toughening trade laws and appealing to women in a state that mirrors Ohio's working-class demographics. Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a strong Clinton ally, believes he could engineer a victory for her.

"The streak of losses has been snapped," one adviser said last night. "I think we touched bottom a week ago, and we've been coming back up, and the question was: Did we have enough time? And so far, based on the results, we did."