I’ll confess that I had a bout of irrational exuberance just prior to the New Hampshire primary when the polls showed Barack Obama with a healthy lead. I was stunned when Clinton pulled out a narrow victory there. But it is hard not to get a little excited about Obama’s prospects for Super Tuesday. A week ago I privately thought that Obama would go into tomorrow’s contests slightly behind nearly everywhere, and further disadvantaged by a huge early-voting deficit. I figured he had a chance to break even only if late deciders broke really, really, heavily in his direction. I had no hope that he might score a knockout win. What a difference a week makes!
Obama still has to overcome an early voter deficit, but he’s now in position to win both the media narrative and the delegate wars. The latest polls show that Obama has completely eliminated Clinton’s lead in the national polls. In California, Obama is now fractionally ahead in the Suffolk Poll (.pdf) and ahead by six points in the Reuters/CSPAN/Zogby Poll. Zogby also has Obama up in Georgia (+17), Missouri (+5), and tied in New Jersey (Quinnipiac has Hillary up 48%-43% in the Garden State).
It can’t hurt that the First Lady of California gave a surprise endorsement to Obama yesterday. Obama’s momentum is overwhelming at this point, and he is poised to win the undecided vote nearly everywhere. And then there are signs like this from the Los Angeles Times:
A record number of new voters — almost 151,000 — registered as Democrats in the final 45 days of eligibility for Tuesday’s election, party officials say.
That’s the Obama factor. And it could change the political landscape for a long time. For the first time since Clinton won New Hampshire, I feel like Obama is going to be the nominee.
He could even win a psychological knockout if he carries enough states. However, no matter what happens tomorrow, the delegates will be split fairly evenly. No one is going to get mathematically eliminated. So this thing could still go to the convention.
