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January 27, 2008

The Road to Super Tuesday

We don't yet know how big or small Obama's nationwide bounce will be. But at this point, the path forward for Barack Obama is pretty clear. Obama's base states are Illinois, plus the Deep South states of Georgia (29.9% African-American) Alabama (26.3%) ... he's making stops in both those states today. The next layer is probably the six seven caucus states of Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, New Mexico, and North Dakota. Beyond that, his best bets are probably the rest of the Midwest and Mountain West, where Hillary Clinton's favorables among Democrats tend to be lower, plus states with a decent number of African-Americans. That adds Utah, Missouri and Delaware to the mix. Beyond that, Obama might try to compete in Tennessee (16.9% African-American) and hope for an assist from John Edwards, work just a bit to keep the margins from getting too big in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and fight like hell in California. That will give him a shot at fourteen fifteen of twenty-three states, of which he probably needs to win nine to be close enough to close the gap in February.

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I watch essentially no TV, but according to a friend whose viewing habits aren't nil, Obama's already running ads in the D.C. market. And of course MD, VA, and DC have their primaries on 2/12, a week after Super Tuesday.

It's good to know they've got the foresight - and the money - to be working the post-2/5 states already.

Were they on cable news networks?

Nick,

The ads have been running pretty regularly on the cable news stations -- they may also have been on network, but I'm not sure. I was surprised to see them. We in D.C. are not usually in the mix at all in nomination races.

Its not been turned into a winner-take-all system without telling anybody else ... has it?

1 massive win and four narrow losses can equal the same delegates as five narrow wins, after all. Especially given that many of these states have gerrymandered Congressional Districts, so the correspondence between statewide "winning" and delegate counts can get a bit screwy.

"The next layer is probably the six caucus states of Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, New Mexico, and North Dakota."

Um...

The Clinton camp has been putting out signals that they won't target the caucuses. Of course, the might be a misdirection like the Nevada lawsuit (I hope that the Obama folks learned their lesson from being faked out by the Clinton team on that one).

I assume they'll go after at least NM and maybe CO, given her strength among Latinos. Plus NM isn't really a "caucus", you just vote.

I'd say that NM has to look bad for Obama just on demographic grounds (same for Arizona). The only recent poll in CO looked good for Obama - tied with lots of undecided.

NM is a "firehouse caucus"? (that is, its just a primary except the party runs it rather than the state board of election)

That explains why I had only been seeing the other five listed as caucus states ... and from organization on the ground, I think I have seen one or another thing about at least four of those five being targeted by Obama (Alaska, I don't know).

For PR impact, a clustyer of "Obama victories" in the midwest and mountain west would look very good for Obama. It would make it look like Hillary was mostly winning Blue States while Obama was able to win Red States ... even if, especially for the closed Democratic contests, it is entirely an optical illusion representing an ability to get a plurality of a Democratic minority.

Arizona will be an interesting race. A big libertarian influence among Democrats. Lots of wealthy old folks in Phoenix, large youth populations in the only 3 cities that matter, large Latino population, and a popular female governor who, I don't believe, has endorsed either Hillary or Barack.

Napolitano endorsed Barack Obama two weeks ago. She's appearing in a TV ad for him.

I'm in Virginia. My friends and I are eagerly anticipating our first chance to vote for Obama. Yes we can!

"he probably needs to win nine to be close enough to close the gap in February."

Number of states won is not the key metric on 2/5. Delegates won is the key.

I'm volunteering for Obama in Colorado, and based on my experience here, it seems like Hillary's not even contesting it. I'm not sure what the reasoning is there, but Obama has 13 campaign offices here compared to Clinton's 2. There's some latent support for Hillary, but it's not being driven nearly as hard as by Obama's organization.

Nick I hope you see the deep irony embedded in this sentence.

"Obama's base states are Illinois, plus the Deep South states of Georgia (29.9% African-American) Alabama (26.3%)"

Bill Clinton's crime, such as it is, was suggesting that Obama was the African-American candidate in South Carolina. The Obama campaign and it surrogates went nuts insisting that Clinton was injecting race into this in a really ugly way. Well either Obama is running a post-racial campaign or he is counting on significant African American support simply because of who he is.

That you thought it important to high-light the African American populations of Georgia and Alabama shows that in your mind a part of this really is about race. I mean you can demographically slice either state all kinds of ways. You chose race. This all smacks of having your cake and eating it too.

South Carolina's African American Democrats voted 4-1 for Obama, South Carolina's white Democrats votes 1-3 for Obama. This doesn't prove that race was dispositive but it certainly suggests that it was important and maybe enough to explain much if not all of the margin.

When people explain Huckabee's success in Iowa against his relative failure in New Hampshire there was not a pundit in the country that did not explain that by a relative difference in numbers of Evangelicals in Iowa vs New Hampshire. That is not even controversial, he is expected to do well among his natural constituency. But when Bill suggests that Obama won South Carolina because his natural constituency came home, including black women who in other circumstances probably would have voted for Hillary, somehow he becomes some hurtful racist.

Either Obama has a natural constituency among African Americans in which case pointing out that Georgia is 29.9% African American is the key data point, or this race is going to be decided on race neutral grounds which would make that more or less irrelevant. Some Obama supporters seem to want to have it both ways.

Hillary Clinton does well with older voters. If I explained that her projected victory there came about because of heavy turnout by seniors would that make me ageist? Or just a guy that thinks it is important to examine results along demographic lines.

A lot of Obama supporters need to be think 'beam' 'mote' 'eye' here. What really separates Clinton's comments from a hyperfocus on racial demographics in upcoming states?

'there' in the last post being Florida

Bruce, its not rocket science. Obama has not been running as the 'black' candidate.

Clinton is trying to make the race a black versus white contest.

It's about the campaigning, not the voting.
Are you campaigning based on peoples better angels, on lifting people spirits and the nations goals or appealing to their basest fears and biases.

Clinton was playing the race card and noone knows better how to code word talk race then a southern Governor.

Bruce: I don't think it would be ageist to point out that Clinton is winning by winning old voters. Obviously everyone's got to have a base. Obama's trying to campaign as a cross-racial candidate while racking up as many racial solidarity votes as he can without really appealing to racial solidarity. Likewise, to use your age example, Clinton keeps campaigning with Chelsea and talking about college affordability, but continues to rack up seniors' votes without necessarily making a direct appeal to seniors.

But I think it's important to point out that Obama isn't really campaigning as the "black candidate". Nor, I think, is the Clinton campaign doing an awful lot to stoke this fire ... I think it is mostly press-driven.

Bruce, in addition to the points made by Pat and Nicholas, I don't really understand why you are treating Nicholas's original post as if he is some sort of surrogate for the Obama campaign. That is the implication when you say that Nicholas's analysis of Obama's electoral prospects represents trying "to have your cake and eat it too."

And Bruce,

read this:

http://www.slate.com/id/2182938/

All excellent points.

But when you are somehow compelled to cite African-American support to a tenth of a percentage point in examining probable results of future states and the desireability of committing resources to that state you have in fact conceded the point that both Clinton and Obama are appealing to natural constituincies. Pointing out that these conscious strategies of playing to your strengths actually may have provided the margin you openly strategized it would strikes me as a little odd. A fair reading of Bill's comments is that Obama locked down the black female vote in ways the Clinton camp didn't expect. They wanted that demographic slice to vote for Hillary, in practical reality it went for Obama. Pointing out that Hillary would have won if black women had voted her way is why us political junkies look at demographic breakdowns to start with. To pretend it is legitimate to hyperfocus on inputs while ignoring the implications of outputs is just hypocritical.

It's about the campaigning, not the voting.

But is it? Edwards has been campaigning on grounds that promise to help these constituencies more than Obama or Clinton, but he simply did not get that support in South Carolina.

I think when it comes to Obama, you really do have to consider not just his message but his speaking style as an appeal to the demographic we are talking about here. The way Obama speaks naturally appeals to that consistuency, in addition to the youthful one as well. There is a reason why people compare him to MLK.

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