Delegate fight: Who has the Mo?
Posted: Friday, May 02, 2008 9:25 AM by Domenico Montanaro
USA Today looks at the superdelegate success Obama has had this week, despite his political troubles. The question on everyone’s mind: Can he keep it up if he loses both Indiana and North Carolina on Tuesday?
The New York Times suggests that Clinton’s chances -- despite the momentum she's showing in polls and the confidence the campaign is exuding -- are very remote. "By and large, the group that matters most at this point -- the uncommitted superdelegates, who are likely to hold the balance of power -- still seem to view their decision the way the Obama campaign would like them to see it. They suggest that they are more sympathetic to the argument that they should follow the will of the voters as expressed by the delegates amassed by the candidates when the primary season is done rather than following Mrs. Clinton’s admonitions to select the candidate they think would best be able to defeat Senator John McCain and the Republicans in November.”
“‘It’s about the numbers, and the numbers are the numbers,’ said Chris Redfern, the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party and an uncommitted superdelegate. ‘It’s not about hand-wringing. And Senator Obama has the lead.’”
That said, “Clinton has an unmistakable bounce in her step these days -- a sense of energy and optimism that somehow belies the daunting challenge she faces in wresting the Democratic presidential nomination from Barack Obama,” the AP’s Fouhy writes. More: “All of which has given her advisers at least a glimmer of hope that, after a long period of being thought a sure loser, Clinton has regained enough momentum to persuade uncommitted superdelegates to give her candidacy another look. While it may still be a long shot, advisers believe she is in a stronger position to make that argument now than she has been for much of the primary season.”
The Indy Star looks at the polarization that's developed inside the Democratic Party between Clinton’s and Obama’s supporters.
Will it be harder for Obama as the Dem nominee to win over blue-collar, culturally conservative Dems? Or for Clinton to motivate blacks? McClatchy finds quite a few black Democrats who plan to stay home if Obama is denied the nomination. “‘It would hurt me not to vote,’ said Charles Clark, an Indianapolis retiree. He's thinking about leaving the presidential box on his ballot blank this fall if Hillary Clinton is the Democrats' nominee. ‘There was a heck of a push made so blacks could vote. I know that,’ he said. ‘But it would also be very unfair if they pushed Barack Obama to the side.’”
“Michelle Moore, an Indianapolis housewife, is less gentle: ‘Hillary Clinton would not even still be in the race if Obama was a white man,’ she said.”
In his latest National Journal column, NBC political analyst Charlie Cook writes, “Just days ago, it seemed that the only way that Barack Obama could fail to clinch his party’s nod would be to leave his wife and move in with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. That is, until Wright took to the lectern at the National Press Club to launch what amounted to a kamikaze attack on Obama’s candidacy, sputtering nonsense that must have left the senator’s campaign operatives wondering whether they had accidentally tuned their TVs to the political horror channel.”
More: “But to downscale, high-school-educated, white Democrats who make less than $50,000 a year and are more likely to spend money at Wal-Mart than Starbucks, much about Obama seems a bit odd. And Wright’s diatribe seems to be reinforcing stereotypes with these voters, presenting Obama with his gravest crisis yet as a candidate.”
And, his conclusion: “The math is still the math, but a race that seemed to be over may not be over. What happens in Indiana and North Carolina on Tuesday could tell us a lot about how quintessentially middle-class states now view Obama.”
