Obama, Obama, Obama. Has he got enough momentum to carry him over the line? Can he score the superdelegates? Is he too black or not black enough and does it even matter? Can he, will he, should he, nab the nomination over Hillary? It’s all about Obama today.
It can’t come down to superdelegates, can it? In doing the math on delegates, it looks highly likely that Obama will end up with a pledged delegate lead when all this is finished by June. Even if Hillary wins some big states along the way, Obama will score enough delegates to keep his count moving. The super delegates (those 796 party folks who can decide on their own who to vote for and change their mind along the way) will be in an unenviable position when all is said and done. They will be getting unbelievable pressure, especially by the Clintons and their establishment backing, to “pledge” to one or the other. But here is the deal: how does a party who has protested and screamed and yelled about counting all the votes, that the popular vote matters most, that an election was stolen by the Supreme Court in 2000, go against the votes and participation by voters in the Primary process??? — Matthew Dowd, ABC News
Obama rides the wave: Obama will have momentum. He will likely have more money than Clinton for advertising. His ballot performance among Hispanics and working-class whites has generally been improving as the primary season has gone on. He intends to push a more robust economic message that could help him further narrow the gap among lower-income voters. And an interesting regression analysis at the Daily Kos Web site (poblano.dailykos.com) of the determinants of the Democratic vote so far, applied to the demographics of the Ohio electorate, suggests that Obama has a better chance than is generally realized in Ohio. — William Kristol, The New York Times
Can he nab the white working class vote? Whether Obama can cut, even modestly, into Clinton’s white working-class margin is, in my view, the single most important factor that will decide who wins this nomination. If he can, he has a strong shot at Ohio (March 4) and Pennsylvania (April 22). If he can’t, Clinton will probably be able to hold him off. Ohio and Pennsylvania are lifeblood states. They’re large, they’re diverse in a variety of ways, they’re swing states in November (Pennsylvania has gone narrowly Democratic lately, Ohio narrowly Republican). And they are old states, rustbelt states, with large white working-class populations. If a candidate wins both of those decisively, he or she will be permitted, at the very least, to start talking like a nominee. — Michael Tomasky, The Guardian
Can he close? In the coming weeks, despite a disadvantage in fundraising, Sen. Clinton can win in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. Despite all their enthusiasm and fundraising, does the Obama team really think that they will take the nomination away from someone who has won primaries in states commanding over 215 electoral votes, if they have only won primaries in states commanding roughly a third that number? They can’t and they almost certainly won’t. Sen. Obama must win at least two of the three remaining “big” states. To do that he must figure out how to address the silent issues of risk and race. — Arnon Miskin, RealClearPolitics
Why Dems must choose Obama: The US is tired and discouraged these days. The country is right to seek a little inspiration, a lifting of the spirits, a sense of renewal. Mrs Clinton is the perfect antithesis of those things. She is commanding in debate; she knows her facts. But she is dreary and angry at the same time, which is no easy feat. She personifies partisan division. And, through her husband and her nostalgia for the 1990s, she is tied to the past. She is indeed the paradigm of business as usual, with the taint of dynastic succession thrown in. The Democrats would be wrong to make her their nominee, in my view, even in a field of unexceptional candidates – but this is not a field of unexceptional candidates. — Clive Crook, The Financial Times
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