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Obama and Clinton Fight to a Draw

There are as many different delegate counts out there right now as there are news outlets. MSNBC seems to be putting a lot of effort into maintaining an accurate count and here's what they have:

Obama: 838
Clinton: 834

Note that this total does not include super-delegates who are free to change their vote right up until the convention. Only the pledged delegates must vote for their candidate on the first ballot.

There are a lot of estimates around for how the super-delegates will fall and most of those give Clinton about an 80 delegate lead. Personally, I find it hard to imagine that the super-delegates will be the deciding factor in this campaign barring some unforeseen circumstances such as a scandal that would be seen to cripple one of the candidates in the general election.

Imagine the outrage among the African-American community if Obama wins a majority of delegates through the primaries and caucuses and the super-delegates hand the nomination to Clinton. We should see more discussion about this in the coming months, and I think it will become increasingly clear that the super-delegates will eventually have to follow the lead of the voters. Of course, at this point in time, there isn't any clear direction from the voters based on the current pledged delegate count.

The most interesting result of the night for me was Idaho where Clinton won by a lopsided margin.

Obama: 80%
Clinton: 17%

While it's true there were only about 20,000 people voting in the Democratic caucus in Idaho it should be noted that Idaho is one of the whitest states in the union where blacks number just 0.4% of the total population. Barack Obama made a trip to Boise last Saturday where he spoke to a rally of about 14,000 people.

The Idaho results demonstrate the large impact that Obama can make when he is able to personally campaign in a state. This could make a big difference in the upcoming contests where there will be fewer states voting on any given day. Look for the Clinton campaign to challenge Obama to a series of debates in order to keep him off the campaign trail preparing for debates. The Clinton campaign's willingness to debate is a demonstration of how worried they are. If Obama is smart he will sharply limit the number of debates and focus on campaigning and pressing the flesh.

It also wouldn't hurt if he could learn a little Spanish.

Update: Another indication of the closeness of the race is the total vote count from last night:

Clinton: 50.2% (7,347,971)

Obama: 49.8% (7,294,851)


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Comments (3)

"Look for the Clinton ca... (Below threshold)
Lee Ward:

"Look for the Clinton campaign to challenge Obama to a series of debates in order to keep him off the campaign trail preparing for debates. The Clinton campaign's willingness to debate is a demonstration of how worried they are. If Obama is smart he will sharply limit the number of debates and focus on campaigning and pressing the flesh."

Clinton challenged Obama to three debates yesterday, and their eagerness to debate Obama shows that they feel they can score points against Obama by debating.

Obama would indeed be smart to decline. His Los Angeles debate performance probably lost him California, and he can't afford to lose Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio.

I agree debates aren't Obam... (Below threshold)

I agree debates aren't Obama's strong suit while Hillary always does well. She has a strong command of the issues and comes across better while Obama tends to be more hesitant.

But let's face it, the front-runner usually isn't the one who issues debate challenges.

Well, since Hillary is lead... (Below threshold)
Lee Ward:

Well, since Hillary is leading in delegates 1000-902 according to the Associated Press", clearly the front runner HAS issued the challenge in this case.

But Clinton has good reason to fear Obama's momentum, and he stands to pick up more momentum this weekend. It looks like Hillary will make her stand in Ohio and Texas.

I'm beginning to think this is Obama's nomination to lose, but that's not to say he won't lose it, and if anyone can make him lose it (among all of the the Democratic contenders we've see over the past year) it's Clinton. The debates are defintely part of that strategy, but since Obama isn't the frontrunner (he's got momentum but not the lead) it'll be interesting to see how he weasels out of the debates, especially the Fox debate.

I think if Gore stepped into the race tomorrow it would be too late for him to beat Obama, and that's saying a lot.




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