Pack it in, Hillary
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Editorial
By Greg Hinz
Crain's Chicago Business
May 07, 2008
It’s over.
That’s the last thing that Hillary Clinton’s legions of friends and admirers here in her hometown want to hear today.
“Kentucky and West Virginia and Oregon and a couple of other states are yet to vote,” they’re surely saying. Maybe the Rev. Jeremiah Wright will flip out again. Maybe fundraiser Tony Rezko will get convicted and blab. Maybe the superdelegates will be swayed by some new argument.
Yada yada yada. Ain’t gonna happen.
In thumping Ms. Clinton in North Carolina on Tuesday, and effectively fighting her to a draw in Indiana, Barack Obama almost certainly ended the seemingly endless race for the Democratic nomination for president. And he did it despite having gone through an incredibly bad month or so when the media utterly fixated on Wright-gate and “bitter”-gate.
Barring the unexpected — the 21st-century equivalent of Huey Long’s old nostrum about how his candidate could survive anything except being found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy — the race has ended.
In reality, the mathematics of the Democratic race has been emerging for several weeks. Tuesday’s outcome made the math absolutely compelling. It more than wiped out the gains Ms. Clinton won in Pennsylvania, while sharply depleting the pool of as yet unelected delegates.
As of Wednesday morning, the Chicagoan who would be president leads Ms. Clinton by 152 delegates, 1,845 to 1,693, according to the tally kept by realclearpolitics.com. There are only 217 more delegates to be elected, and the biggest state still outstanding, Oregon, is highly likely to favor Mr. Obama, possibly by a wide margin.
That means Ms. Clinton will have to make up the difference among the several hundred party officials and other superdelegates who aren’t committed or conceivably could change their minds. But what’s her argument?
Popular vote? Even if you include totals from Florida and Michigan — Mr. Obama didn’t even have his name on the ballot in Michigan — he’s still ahead 200,000 or 300,000 or so nationally.
Elected delegates? He leads there 1,588 to 1,422. The lead will decrease little if any for the reasons cited above. Super delegates are not going to risk opening a huge breach with the party’s African-American base by overturning those results.
Yeah, but isn’t Mr. Obama still having trouble connecting with another key party faction: lower-income, blue-collar voters, mostly white and many of them put off by the Wright matter and Mr. Obama’s sometimes elitist demeanor?
There is some resonance to that view. But it’s limited by the fact that Mr. Obama clearly will be the November favorite against likely GOP nominee John McCain in at least three of the big states that Ms. Clinton won: California, New Jersey and New York.
He still has some work to do in swing Rust Belt states like Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania. But an under-reported aspect of Tuesday’s vote is that he’s making progress.
In Indiana, Mr. Obama carried the counties that are home to industrial Elkhart and Fort Wayne, and nearly took Evansville. In North Carolina, he took the counties containing the big cities of Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham and Greensboro by margins of 2-1-plus. And in the two states combined, he actually got a majority of votes among whites under age 65, according to top Obama strategist David Axelrod.
The truth is, Mr. Obama’s battles with Our Lady of Toughness, while at times highly destructive, have made him a better candidate. He’s more on point with a relevant economic message. His jacket is off, and his cute young kids are with him on the campaign trail.
On the proposed gas-tax holiday, Professor Obama finally figured out a way to go negative without being negative. He’s proved he can take a punch — or a flurry — and is better at making the argument about why change is good for America today.
For all of those reasons, the Democratic race is over.
Oh, both sides still will go through a combination of shadow boxing and mating dance in the next couple of weeks. Ms. Clinton has to figure out what she wants — beyond the White House, that is.
Mr. Obama has to figure out how to appease the residents of Florida and Michigan. But the end game is clear.
One wins. One loses. That’s the way it is. |
