There are two minutes left in the fourth quarter, and Team Clinton is trailing Team Obama by 3 touchdowns. She needs a big score this Tuesday, and a fieldgoal won't do:
In a campaign that has frequently defied expectations, a consensus emerged as the candidates caromed across the country: Clinton must win Texas and Ohio to have any serious hope of sustaining her bid to become the nation's first female president. A split decision would not suffice, analysts said, and winning narrowly may not help."We're reaching a point where -- not all voters, but lots of voters -- are starting to feel it's time for the party to coalesce around a candidate," said Geoffrey D. Garin, a veteran Democratic pollster who is nonaligned in the contest. "The Clinton campaign has to have a compelling and persuasive reason to go on. . . . She's got to come out of Tuesday with people believing that she has a realistic path to the nomination."
This is what I've been saying for weeks now. I am just surprised that it has taken people so long to come to this conclusion:
The political math seems to work against the former front-runner. Obama has opened a small-but-growing lead of delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Unless Clinton starts winning big -- and polling in Texas and Ohio suggests that will be difficult -- she could have a tough time overtaking Obama.
Yet, remarkably, in the face of the enormously difficult uphill battle that Clinton faces, her campaign staff continue to insist that Obama is the one who needs to win Tuesday:
"The onus is on him to show some real victories here," Howard Wolfson, a senior Clinton strategist, said Friday in a conference call with reporters.
Obama doesn't have to do anything of the sort. All he needs to do is roughly break even in the delegates that will be awarded on Tuesday and he will continue to roll toward the nomination. It's Clinton who desperately needs to show some "real victories" here since she has gone 0-for-11 since Super Tuesday. In this sport of politics, coming back from 11 straight defeats is indeed a very tall order.
Clinton is the one who needs to show she can win. Anything. Anywhere. And soon.
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2008 Presidential Race
Tags: Democratic presidential campaign
Comments (5)
You seem to be trading vigi... (Below threshold)1. Posted by bryanD | March 2, 2008 2:25 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
You seem to be trading vigilance for cockiness.
If Obama can't close the deal at the ballot box, it will go to the lawyers, a.k.a. accreditation committee. Whole delegate slates can be overturned. It's happened before. Texas was unseated in the 1952 Republican convention until they switched from Taft to Eisenhower. Stemming back to some cook-out in someone's yard or something.
Hillary. FBI files. Copying machine.
1. Posted by bryanD | March 2, 2008 2:25 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on March 2, 2008 02:25
2. Posted by Steve Crickmore | March 2, 2008 9:37 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Yes, if you include the Michigan and Florida superdelegates and degates, Hillary has a 16 delegate lead going into Tuesday's primaries. That is what she must be counting on; that, or something even more sinister to keep her campaign alive if they split the results on on Tuesday- Obama's victory margins in Texas and Vermont are offset by Hillary's in Ohio and Rhode Island though I think he will be do better than that.
2. Posted by Steve Crickmore | March 2, 2008 9:37 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on March 2, 2008 09:37
3. Posted by Steve Crickmore | March 2, 2008 10:47 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Hillary doesn't listen too well, but the one person she does listen to is her husband...Just as Bill finally got Hillary's ear that she must start changing her position on Iraq, in the spring of 2005.
Bill may tell Hillary to quit on Tuesday.
I think Bill understands this better than Hillary..Does he really want to ruin his entire reputation for the very slim chance of victory in August, but the certainty that a divisive full hand on hand credentials fight in an August convention would lead whoever emerges as the victor to be the likely loser against McCain. Does Hillary want to win that badly that she is prepared to take the Democratic party down with her?
3. Posted by Steve Crickmore | March 2, 2008 10:47 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on March 2, 2008 10:47
4. Posted by Glenn Koons | March 2, 2008 11:55 AM | Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
As I go off to church, my prayers are with the Hildabeast for Ohio and Tx. Why? Like Rush, I want this mess to go to the Convention. I want the lefties to be in such a huff that even the deluded voters will see that the entire Party is not worthy of leading America and especially not against Islamofascist enemies plus the newly risen Soviets, er, Russians, the Chi-coms, Chavez, the new Castro, Korea , Iran et al.
4. Posted by Glenn Koons | March 2, 2008 11:55 AM |
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
Posted on March 2, 2008 11:55
5. Posted by DoubleU | March 2, 2008 10:20 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
They mighty be having a second Florida primary vote... at a cost to the Florida taxpayers not the DNC of course.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080302/pl_bloomberg/a_z1b1gct_nm_1
What Hillary wants, Hillary gets, but I think it will upset a few million of those rock star fans.
5. Posted by DoubleU | March 2, 2008 10:20 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on March 2, 2008 22:20