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The morning after

Now that Super Tuesday is behind them, where do they go from here?
February 7, 2008 1:27:31 PM

080208_tote_main

This past week, esteemed Washington Post columnist David S. Broder predicted that post–Super Tuesday’s comparatively drawn-out primary schedule would benefit Barack Obama. Meanwhile, a usually perceptive Boston Globe op-ed contributor, David Sparks, wrote that the “fat lady won’t sing” for Mitt Romney for a while — joining others, such as radio host Hugh Hewitt, who predicted there was still time for a Romney comeback.

In reality, though, Obama now faces a road that may well get rougher. And the fat lady is singing so loudly for Romney that she’s get-ting hoarse.

It’s true that the pace of the post–Super Tuesday calendar does indeed favor Obama. He won’t have to campaign in 20 primary states at once again, and we’ve learned that the longer voters have to get to know him, the more they like him.

It’s also true that, at least for the next week, the schedule looks good for Obama’s campaign. He faces the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska, Washington, and Maine this weekend, and then primaries in DC, Virginia, and Maryland on Tuesday. The four states holding primaries the week following Super Tuesday have sizable black populations. The other three are caucus states, where Obama tends to do better than he does in primaries because his voters are more committed and thus likelier to participate than Clinton’s. Obama could well sweep these contests, giving him momentum and a push for delegate parity with the frontrunner.

The problem for him is that, after next Tuesday, the calendar switches back to favoring Clinton. Over the next month, the Democratic candidates confront a primary in Wisconsin and caucuses in Hawaii (both February 19), before winding up this phase of the campaign with March 4 primaries in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Most of these states (at least the large ones) have demographics that tend to favor Clinton — a lower percentage of black voters, more working-class voters, and, in the case of Texas, more Hispanic voters. More important, Clinton still retains a narrow lead in delegates. In a propor-tional-representation scheme such as the Democrats use, it’s difficult to rally from behind, since nearly every contest splits the delegates close to 50-50. It now looks like the 800 or so superdelegates — members of the party establishment — could get to decide the party’s nominee. That favors Clinton — unless Obama can win most of the remaining contests.

Conservative agenda
On the GOP side, it’s true that there are significant factions of the party who dislike McCain — particularly the anti-immigration crowd, the hardcore conservatives, and the party’s loudmouths (e.g., Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, and Ingraham).

But, as the saying goes, you can’t beat somebody with nobody. The problem for conservatives isn’t that their vote has been divided (though some of it has been split between Romney and Mike Huckabee). It’s that Romney is too unpopular to be the standard bearer of anything.

Romney tried to win the nomination the old-fashioned way: by buying it. Yet even though he overwhelmingly outspent all his opponents, he’s never showed much vote-getting ability. In complete contrast with Obama, the more voters saw of Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire, the less they liked him. He achieved the singular feat of failing to receive the endorsement of a single newspaper editorial board in New Hampshire. He pretty much bombed out on Super Tuesday. In fact, his most noteworthy contribution to politics this year is the way he has united virtually all the candidates in the Republican race around their personal dislike of him. Now it comes out that, despite Romney’s being the candidate who has been the most supportive of the incumbent, even President Bush is angry with him for his flip-flop on immigration.

Romney also faces an awful calendar in the next few weeks, since McCain should run strongly both in the DC-area primaries next week and in the larger states in early March. (If anyone is going to derail McCain in states such as Virginia and Texas, it’s going to be Huckabee, not Romney.) So while Romney and his allies may not realize it yet, he’s never going to win the nomination — and he’s not gaining any friends, either, by continuing to contest the race. Better to join the bandwagon and position himself for a potential place on the McCain ticket. (Yes, that’s likelier than it seems today.)

Can McCain unite his party? More important, can he position himself so that no third or fourth party emerges in the middle, on the far right, or in anti-immigration circles, to cripple his run? Well, while the Democratic race goes to the wire, he’s got six months before his convention and a vice-presidential choice to make. If he can’t put things in order by then, he doesn’t deserve to be president.

THE FIELD
REPUBLICANS
JOHN MCCAIN

Odds: 1-5 | past week: 2-3
MIKE HUCKABEE
Odds: 12-1 | 6-1
MITT ROMNEY
Odds: 15-1 | 3-1
RON PAUL
Odds: 10,000-1 | 200-1

DEMOCRATS
HILLARY CLINTON
Odds: 1-2 | past week: same
BARACK OBAMA
Odds: 2-1 | same

On the Web
The Presidential Tote Board blog: //www.thephoenix.com/toteboard

COMMENTS

I greatly enjoy your insightful comments, but I remain confounded that - week after week - despite huge and momentous developments, your odds on the Democrats never change. Hillary at 1-2. Barack at 2-1. What has to happen to change the odds?? Let me tell you why I think Barack is - at the very least - an even shot with Hillary at this point. First, look at macrotrends, not microtrends, like the mainstream media tend to do (i.e. daily fluctuations in the polls, etc). Obama, over the last 30 to 60 days, has come from an average of 20 to 30 points down in the national polls, to pull dead even. That's a macrotrend. The Clinton camp fully expected, early on, to wrap this thing up on Feb. 5th. Instead, Obama held her to a dead heat. That's a macrotrend. Obama raised over $30 million in January, and is on pace to do it again in February. Plus, he's got tens of thousands more contributors, most of whom are not maxed out. Clinton raised but one-third of Obama's total in January, and yesterday loaned her campaign $5 million. Plus, key senior staff are working without salary. And large numbers of her far fewer contributors are maxed out. The money issue is a huge macrotrend, and the longer this campaign goes, the bigger a problem it becomes for her. Also, Obama has shown, by being a better "retail" campaigner and having a superior street-level ground game, that he can win in states where he has time to campaign. On Super Tuesday, there was virtually no time to campaign. Going forward, there is. Clinton's last chance to finish him off was Super Tuesday. She didn't do it. From here on, it gets worse and worse for her. Her poll numbers are largely fixed. Lots of people like her, but as many or more do not. Obama, with very low unfavorability ratings, is still rising. Clinton desperately needs to run out the clock, but with a long, expensive campaign still ahead, that's no longer possible. And if it comes down to the "superdelegates", which it may, their main criteria are: 1. Who has the best chance to win in November? 2. Who will best help Democratic candidates up and down the ticket? That's all they care about at the end of the day. Obama wins both questions hands down. With an electorate wanting change, running against McCain, who do you want - a fresh, young candidate who opposed the war from the start, and who can mobilize huge numbers of blacks and young people to come to the polls, as well as attract independents and even some Republicans? Or do you want an older Democratic candidate who, like McCain, voted for the Iraq War, who represents the divisive 1990's, and not only will not mobilize young people to vote, but in fact will best mobilize Republicans to come out and vote against her? No, the superdelegates will break for Obama. So, week after week, you say Clinton is 1-2, and Obama is 2-1. As I've said before, I'll take that bet.

POSTED BY Vic in Chicago AT 02/07/08 10:57 AM
well i guess the morning after is kinda like groundhog day, yes? it just keeps happening. sooooo billary serves up patti solis (doyle), her chief latina. what does that mean...she's learned from felix arroyo and before him nelson merced, that there are those amongst us who confuse voting places with taco bell? drag, yes? now we got maggie williams...lol. it's like "gone wit de wind"...scarlett always turned to nanny, remember? you can almost smell atlanta burning...or is that westchester county, n.y.? damn...anytime now charlie rangel (d-sylvia's) is gonna head north to canada on the underground railroad. i'd say the same for andy young, put he'll probably head south for venezuela. the moral of this lesson is groing old don't mean growing up...or better put, the revolution is televised.

POSTED BY jeffery mcnary AT 02/10/08 6:56 PM
I've lost interest in the Republican campaign. As for the Democrats, here goes: Hillary promises fat pocketbooks. That appeals to the poor like a lottery ticket or a day at Foxwoods. And just like at Foxwoods, where all their money goes into the slot machine and thence into the corporate machine, in a Clinton administration all their tax money will go toward funding Whitewater schemes and charitable boondoggles that do more to help the contributors, and make them look good, than those whom they are supposed to benefit. Hillary is all about money. What's more, she doesn't understand it. More to the point, we need someone who can unite the Democratic party, let alone the Union. That candidate is Obama. Clinton is as divisive to us as she is to the electorate at large.

POSTED BY gordon AT 02/13/08 11:01 PM

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