Obama v Hillary: Is It Over?

Indeed.Yesterday Obama trounced Hillary in the Wisconsin primary and the Hawaii caucuses, extending his post-Super Tuesday winning streak to 10. So whereabouts are the pieces positioned on the chessboard? I can feel the questions rattling around in your frontal lobe, so let me work through a few, namely... Is Hillary finished, Hans? Does she know it? Will defeat in 08 mean she must forever relinquish dreams of Oval Office nookie? In an attempt to rescue the unrescueable will she fling so much shit that she takes Obama down with her? Also, does Michelle Obama really hate America? (And did Bill O'Reilly really refer to lynching her?) And Hans, am I the only one who thinks John McCain looks like a reanimated cadaver?

To which I say, yes, no, yes, no, no, yes, no.

For those of you who don't have to wash your hair, paint your fingernails, or abuse your local 7-11 shop attendant for making you reach for your change, let me explain in greater detail.

In Wisconsin yesterday Obama beat Hillary 58-41. This translates to a pledged delegate split of about 41-29, with another four delegates yet to be allocated. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, then took the Hawaii caucuses 76-20, which translates into a 14-6 delegate split. This gives him an overall lead of 1189-1027 in pledged delegates. (As I explained in a previous post, don't worry about superdelegates. The real contest here, no matter how much Hillary and some media outlets might muddy the water, is for pledged delegates. Ultimately, where the majority of the pledged delegates go, the superdelegates will follow.)

How significant is this for the campaign? Wasn't Obama always expected to win Wisconsin and Hawaii?

Obama was born in Hawaii, so he was always short odds to win there. Not so Wisconsin.

Hillary's people might want you to think that Obama was always frontrunner in Wisconsin, and that they're not perturbed by losing to him there, and Pffffft, Wisconsin doesn't matter anyway, but it wasn't that long ago that Wisconsin polls had Hillary leading Obama.

This has been a pattern in the campaign so far. Hillary's early lead turns into a decisive Obama victory, and the Clinton camp finds some way to discount the importance of the win. For example, Obama's thumping win in South Carolina, they implied, was because of the high percentage of African American voters. They discounted his wins in caucus states such as Iowa, Washington, and Alaska because, they said, the demographics of caucus attendance favoured Obama supporters. Then they wrote off wins in states such as Georgia because it too had a large African American population and was a red state that Democrats wouldn't win in the general anyway. Illinois didn't matter either because that was his home state. And Maryland? Well, you need a microscope to find that on a map of the US. And how come Obama couldn't win the big states -- those were, so they said, the states that really mattered.

Do you see how this works?

So one of the important things about Wisconsin is that it punctures many of these excuses. Wisconsin is a 'purple' state -- that is, a state that is neither reliably blue (Democratic) or red (Republican). In short, Wisconsin is one of the states the Democrats will need to win in November if they're to take the White House. Though not a 'big' state like California or Ohio, it's not particularly small either. Also, the election was via primary not caucus. And Wisconsin is an overwhelmingly white electorate, with a large proportion of working-class voters. So there can be no excuses here: Wisconsin should be positioned right in the electoral and demographic sweet spot for Hillary Clinton.

And she lost. Badly.

So where to now?

It's become mandatory in American political commentary to describe the March 4 contests in Texas and Ohio as Hillary's 'firewall'. These are big states with lots of delegates on offer where Hillary has been leading Obama by decisive margins. Wins here, the reasoning goes, will stop the Obama tidal wave, let Hillary close the pledged delegate gap, and act as the catalyst for further Clinton wins down the home stretch. Only problem is that Obama is closing the gap rapidly in both Texas and Ohio, is outspending Clinton almost 2:1 because he has a torrent of money coming in, and has such a decisive pledged delegate lead that Hillary must win BIG.

And. She. Ain't. Gonna. Do. It. Barring a supernova Obama gaffe (ie, him getting caught blowing Hugo Chavez or holding up a liquor store), it's over. He has an unbridgeable pledged-delegate lead. A win in one or both of Texas or Ohio may be enough to keep Hillary in the race up till Pennsylvania on April 22, but it'll be too little too late. She's been out-spent, out-orated, out-charisma-ed, out-organised, and out-smarted.

And now it's Old Man McCain's turn.

Does this mean Hillary will never sit behind the big desk in the Oval Office?

The chances are pretty slim. Her best chance is if Obama loses in November. She could then stalk the corridors in Washington emitting you-should-have-nominated-me vibes. If she ran in 2012, she would be, again, a formidable contender. But if Captain Hope wins in 08, then it's extremely unlikely any Democrats would challenge a sitting president (unless he were caught blowing Hugo Chavez or holding up a liquor store) for the nomination in 2012. So that makes 2016 the next window of opportunity. And that's so far away, who knows how the landscape would change? And Hillary would be 68 then. Not as old as McCain is now, but still pretty old.

Will she go ultra-negative in a last ditch effort to halt the Hope Machine?

Maybe, but I doubt it. There are huge risks involved in going negative. During this campaign, there have been media and voter backlashes whenever a candidate is deemed to be going negative. Thus, when a Clinton surrogate, Bill Shaheen, crassly raised Obama's youthful drug-taking, rather than harm Obama it rebounded on the Clintons. Likewise, in the lead-up to New Hampshire, the sexist, anti-Clinton tenor of the campaign coverage almost certainly swung voters, particularly women, behind her, helping her pull off a surprise win. So going negative is just as likely to harm her as it is to help her.

What's more, the Clintons have got more at stake here than just this campaign. Hillary is a sitting senator. And Bill is still held in high regard by the party faithful. Both of them can lose their standing in the party and sully their legacy by shit-flinging. And in Hillary's case, if she has the role of Senate Majority Leader or a position on the Supreme Court in mind as a fallback position, she can't afford to alienate her fellow Democrats or Obama.

It also needs to be said that, despite handwringing in some quarters, this hasn't been a particularly negative campaign so far. Much of the nastiness is a figment of the media's imagination. The media thrive on conflict, so they'll frequently see controversy where there is none or fan a spark into a forest fire.

What did Michelle Obama say?

She said 'For the first time in my adult life, I feel really proud of my country'. Cindy McCain*, the wife of John McCain, immediately responded that she had always been proud of her country. Predictably, Fox News and other wingnut outlets have pursued this comment with gusto. Michelle Obama later 'clarified' her comments, saying, I paraphrase, that they were restricted to the sphere of politics and the rebirth of hope, or somesuch. Is it a big deal? Wouldn't have thought so. The plain meaning of Obama's words are so nonsensical and counterproductive that I don't think they'll gain much traction.

More interesting is what Fox blowhard Bill O'Reilly magnanimously said on his radio show afterwards: "I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama, unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels."

Hmmm... using the word 'lynching' in relation to the African American wife of an African American candidate is certainly an interesting turn of phrase. Fox News: 'fair and balanced' (and not at all racist).

John McCain: alive or not?

He's almost certainly a reanimated corpse. This will more than likely be a negative for his campaign.

--HS Fruck

*I'm not sure the McCain campaign wants to start comparing Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama is a Harvard Law graduate. Cindy McCain spent 90 days in a swanky drug rehabilitation centre after being caught stealing drugs from a charity she founded to supply drugs to underdeveloped nations. (I'd be quietly shuffling Cindy to the back of the dais if I were Old Man McCain.)