Polls show Hillary closing the gap on Obama in Wisconsin. I haven't seen a poll for Hawaii. I'll say Obama gets a narrow win in Wisconsin and a landslide win in Hawaii. I can't say I remember an election where Hawaii mattered. Of course, the Clinton campaign will say it doesn't matter, but that's only because she'll lose the state. But without polling it's hard to know. Maybe Clinton can pull out a win there and make the state matter. Oh, McCain will win both states in a landslide.
Update: Oops. The Republicans aren't voting in Hawaii. But they are voting in Washington. Again. This time it's a primary, instead of a caucus. Apparently, Washington wants to compete with Texas for the Weirdest Primary System award. McCain will win Washington narrowly.
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Obama won Wisconsin. I hope that Hillary will abdicate soon. I doubt she will. McCain might have a shot at her, but Obama would crush him. I hope she sees the overall importance of that, but, given politicos are driven by ego rather than the common good, well there you go.
Pete
Clinton still has no reason to quit. She's polling ahead of Obama in both Ohio and Texas. There's too many delegate on the table for her to walk away now.
And you're right Pete, a lot of this is about ego, not public service. The best chance for the Democrats to win in Nov. is to have Obama at the top of the ticket. I'm still convinced of that.
I'd agree that Clinton has no reason to drop out yet. Her fundraising is improving and there are some big delegate prizes left. But she has three things that will make the path very difficult.
First, she's in a pretty big delegate hole right now. She needs win about 65% of the rest of the delegates, and she was barely able to get 65% in New York. With proportional allocation, she needs to win bigger than has has won so far.
Second, Obama is continuing his trend of outperforming the polls. I'd guess that Hillary needs to be up by more than 40% in a poll to get a 65%- 35% split in the delegates. She's not there and the trend is working against her.
Third is that Obama has been methodically eating into Hillary's electoral strengths. Hillary won women in Wisconsin by 51%-49%. Her margin used to be much greater. Obama now wins white men by a large margin. And Obama is now pulling even among Hispanics. Hillary now has only one solid constituency: the elderly.
So things are pretty bleak for Hillary, but she's not dead yet. Some serious negative campaigning might give people a pause about Obama. I'll admit that the plagiarism charge has me wondering even though it's bogus. Borrowing someone's words must be unauthorized to be plagiarism. In this case, Gov. Patrick seems to be encouraging the use of his words. So it's really a case of politicians sharing lines. But that's still a little weird and I suspect that Obama will stop doing it. He has the talent to come up with his own words.
Hillary is also close enough that she could benefit from an Obama gaffe. He's still a little new to the national campaign, and he might screw up. It's worth staying in for two weeks to see if he slips up. But it's going to be an ugly two weeks, I think.
Hey, I haven't checked in here in a while, but you've got to put up some predictions this weekend for next Tues!
I think TX is too close to call right now, but I think Obama will surprise and win the state. I still think Clinton wins Ohio, and she's still killing him in RI.
Finally, great op-ed in today's Times from Bloomberg, who's not running. He so eloquently states a position that is aligned with my political views that I wanted to stand up and cheer: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/opinion/28mike.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
Finally, a titan of political discourse passed. RIP, Buckley: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/business/media/28buckley.html?hp
I'll have predictions on Monday. I've been really sick recently. I'm not sure what I have, but I'm having trouble eating solid food. It's not nausea or reflux. It's like I'm full all the time.
Texas is a really interesting state. First they have a wacky primary/caucus system. With his superior organizing, Obama will win the caucus portion and Hillary will whine about how the caucus portion was unfair. But Obama can actually win the primary delegate battle and lose the popular vote. The reason is that the districts are weighted by how strongly they have voted democrat in the past. The black districts get the biggest weighting, while the Hispanic districts get a much lighter weighting because they often vote republican. Even worse for Hillary, her strongest districts happen to have four delegates, meaning she has to win by about 65% to gain any advantage in those districts. So the rules pretty much doom Hillary, but she might be able to pull out a popular vote win and persuade the Texas superdelegates to switch to her side to match the popular vote.
As for Buckley, it's sad to see him go. I rarely agreed with him, but I always respected his opinion. And "Firing Line" was the best political talk show ever. It's sad that someone like Buckley has been replaced in print by Jonah Goldberg and on TV by Tim Russert. Kinda like replacing your BMW with a Yugo.
First of all, Tom, go to a doctor. You were in India recently, and god knows what you might have. Plus, you're getting old like me, and the body gives out in horrifying ways.
I'm a little disturbed by these words "Obama Spends Heavily to Seek Knockout Blow". I've seen this on every news site I've searched tonight, including the BBC, FOX, CNN, MSNBC, etc. Word for word. This is the least edited piece I've seen in some time.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Obama%20Spends%20Heavily%20to%20Seek%20Knockout%20Blow
What does this mean? It means we might as well get RSS feeds directly from the AP, since there is no added value from our media. We might as well read all the press releases and deduce what we may.
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