Obama and Clinton: The Day After North Carolina and Indiana
A day after Barack Obama did better than most thought he would in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, he picked up 4 super delegates and Hillary Clinton picked up 2. Clinton had canceled her appearances for today to have a meeting with as many super delegates as she could.
It is not possible for anyone to win the nomination without the super delegates. Unless one of the candidates drops out, it will not be the people who decide the nominee, but the party insiders, the Governors, ex Presidents etc. Some of the still uncommitted super delegates like New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg believe Clinton still has a strong chance. As a matter of fact, she today added an additional stop in West Virginia, where the primary is next Tuesday and where she has had a huge lead in the past polls.
Barack Obama spent his day focusing on the national campaign. He has switched from attacking Clinton to attacking McCain. In his speech last night, he had more nice things to say about Clinton than negative ones. The way he takes on McCain now could have an effect on the upcoming primaries and the final decision of the super delegates. He will be giving them a preview of what to expect between August and November if he were to be the nominee.
With each of the candidates having a different focus now, the campaign will take on a different persona. The latest national polls mostly show Clinton beating McCain and Obama losing to him. The way Obama goes after McCain will affect these polls one way or the other. He will either prove he can make points and win in November or the voters will get the opposite picture. And so will the super delegates. A political campaign is like a big chess game. Each player plotting out his or her moves far in advance, trying to outguess the opponent, trying to guess what he or she will do next. With each primary, one of the candidates loses more defensive pieces and the candidate, the chess queen becomes more vulnerable. But not all chess games end in check mate. Many a game ends in a draw and that is still very possible here.
Popularity: 6% [?]
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Comment by SMS on 8 May 2008:
So let’s see what Clinton is claiming again — that “Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
Obama’s support among whites is actually increasing compared to Ohio, Mississippi and Pennsylvania. She lied about that.
Obama’s support among “hard working Americans”, which is code for poorer Americans, has also increased over those in previous contests, save for Mississippi, where the under-$50K vote was overwhelmingly black.
Obama’s numbers among college grads is static to increasing. We don’t have exit poll breakdowns for education by race, and we can assume North Carolina’s huge numbers with “no college” are due to the large African American percentages in the state. But what about Indiana, a state that is whiter (83.9%) than Pennsylvania (82.1%), Ohio (82.9%) and Texas (48.3%)? Despite the demographic disadvantage, Obama actually increased his support among voters with no college degrees.
So how can Clinton be so wrong? Because she’s citing an AP-Yahoo News poll from back on May 3rd. Rather than cite actual voter data, she is basing her claims on an old poll taken before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries.
Yup. That’s what Hillary Clinton has been reduced to. Ignoring actual votes and cherry picking polls.
Which really, shouldn’t surprise anyone. She’s already ignored and belittled every state and voter demographic that doesn’t support her. So it only follows that since in her world, the only things that are important are things that support her, she’d ignore election results in favor of the one (outdated) poll that confirms her manufactured reality.