x-post from Docudharma for the sake of convenience for readers, as I’m about to go argue with Booman in his diary.
Here are some observations on yesterday’s vote. (There will be more in the days to come now that I have some time back after making around 1000 calls for the Obama campaign.)
Talking about Hillary is the main course in this diary, but would you like to start with an appetizer? Let’s talk about Huckabee. The venerable NYT announces that Huckabee has been revived with a solid showing in the South. This is stupid. Why? Well, let’s take a look at the GOP primary map. Huckabee is running out of South!
See, the problem with winning mostly just one section of the country is that after that section has voted in its primaries — it doesn’t vote again. (Michigan and Florida will, I predict, be exceptions to this rule, as the Democrats let them vote again in late May or early June, or perhaps hold caucuses or choose delegates at state conventions.)
So if you look at that map and try to find “South,” you’ll see that Huckabee has Louisiana coming up on Saturday (I predict he’ll win), Virginia (only semi-South these days) next Tuesday, Texas (again not fully South) on March 4, and Mississippi on March 11. Even if he lasts that long, he won’t last long enough to see North Carolina, Kentucky, or (counting the bottom part of the state) Indiana vote in May. So, Huckabee is not “revived” — he has, instead, “shot his wad,” although I don’t think the NYT would include that in a headline. But they need a storyline, so there they go. Romney will still finish second when push comes to shove. I don’t think either one of them will be on the ticket, though: look to Govs. Pawlenty or Crist or (my dark horse, if Rudy can swallow it) Pataki for that.
Is anyone else running out of a precious electoral resource? Why, yes! Pretend you didn’t already read the title and look below the fold.
The only reason Hillary Clinton is not now limping her way towards writing a concession speech is the massive support she got from the Hispanic (or as I was trained to call them, Latino, but the major newsfolk seem to have decided otherwise) community, especially in California and Arizona. And guess what? With California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and New York now past us, she has almost run out of Hispanics! (Yes, there are other Hispanic population centers, but with exceptions to be discussed below they aren’t big enough to swing that much of an election.)
What are the exceptions? Well, there’s Florida — which again I think will vote again one way or another, and which I think Clinton will win. Obama’s just going to have to swallow that one and hope to win Michigan to counter it.
There’s also the last scheduled Democratic contest, Puerto Rico, with a not-too-shabby 63 delegates and a corrupt and vicious political system that should be just to Hillary’s liking. (It’s amazing that Puerto Rico’s caucus could determine the nomination in June, but it could happen.)
And then there’s Texas, March 4. This is Hillary’s last real big Hispanic Hurrah, and I think it will help her very much. But aside from that, she’s in trouble. She got skunked nationwide in the non-Hispanic primary vote, and her situation isn’t getting prettier. Her best bet is that Ohio and Pennsylvania have the kind of older working class population and big-city machines that favor her. The point is not that she won’t win — I still think she has to be favored, based on her winning Ohio, Texas, and then Pennsylvania, plus hammerlocking superdelegates — but that her Super Tuesday successes don’t predict the future all that well.
She does have another secret weapon, though, that so far as I can tell (although I’ve been too busy to read much) no one except me was mentioning in the lead-up to Super Tuesday: the Asian community. Or, let me quote the diary I wrote on Monday:
I’ve learned some interesting things as a humble Precinct Captain in Brea. East Asians seem pro-Clinton; South Asians more pro-Obama. (I haven’t seen discussion beyond the white/Black/Latino breakdown in the media before the CA primary; ignoring the large Asian population is dumb.)
Now some journalists seem to have finally realized that the Asian community is about as pro-Hillary as the Hispanic community. Both effects are fueled, I think, by two things: a respect for the Clintons’ previous political success and, I’m sad to say, a degree of anti-Black sentiment that is much more acceptable than in most polite Anglo society. (I assume that they can be won over to voting for a Black man in the general election, although with Asians I’m even less sure than with Hispanics, due to their lower degree of affiliation with the Democratic Party.) The importance of Asians means that one contest in the near future is one that has barely been getting any media play is actually critical, because it could be the stage for a Hillary upset before next Tuesday’s “Chesapeake primary” (MD/VA/DC): the Washington caucus.
Washington has one of the largest Asian populations of any state, and they have been politically active. (Witness the election of Gov. Gary Locke in the 90s.) People view Washington as a state tailor-made for Obama, and especially given that it’s a caucus it might be, but no one seems to be attending to the wild card that the Asian community might be, much as (though to a lesser degree than) Hispanics in California. Because the expectations for Obama are so high, this is the place where I’d expect Hillary to go looking for a better-than-expected performance before next Tuesday. I haven’t looked closely at either state, but Obama would seem likely to win the Nebraska caucus and Louisiana primary on the 9th, or Maine on the 10th; don’t be surprised if Hillary camps out in Seattle this week. (No, I haven’t checked her schedule — hell, I’m blogging at 3 a.m., what do you want?)
What the hell, having come this far I might as well keep going and predict the rest of the race. We have now learned a lot about how different parts of the country respond to these two candidates, so we can now start making predictions with at least some basis.
Markos and others have been writing about how February favors Obama so much. While I agree, there’s a number I haven’t seen tossed around much: 596. That is the total number of delegates at stake in the “Super Echo” contests from Feb. 9-19. Yes, I agree that these states are quite good for Obama — but we’re in delegate counting mode now, right? Let’s say that Obama takes 60% of these delegates to 40% for Hillary. That gives him roughly a 120 delegate edge — 2/3 of which will probably be erased on March 4. Grant Obama wins in Rhode Island, Vermont, Wyoming, and Mississippi, and you still have the two of them roughly tied going into the final quarter — the six week break before Pennsylvania, before which neither has any reason to drop out. (After all, no one knows what news might break during that stretch.)
I think that Pennsylvania will go strong (and probably dirty) for Hillary, largely balanced out by Obama winning in Indiana, Oregon, and the upper plains. Hillary will probably win West Virginia and Puerto Rico. I give Hillary a slight net advantage in all these races combined.
I’ve left two May contests off the table: North Carolina and Kentucky. If either Hillary or Obama dominates those two, I think that the superdelegates break their way. If not, we can expect a brokered convention, with delegates fought over one-by-one in a way we haven’t seen since Ford versus Reagan, and Clinton has much more practice at twisting arms, especially when she promises to give Obama the Vice-Presidential slot that he does not want but may be forced by party bosses to take. (Hillary as his VP doesn’t work. I still think it should be Webb.) Right now, I think that when people write the history of this race, they will decide that the 134 delegate North Carolina primary on May 6 was the critical one. If that race is fought to a draw, they should come into Denver roughly even.
Obama’s best chance to win is that he wears well on people the more they see him. He’ll have a lot more time to concentrate on each race starting Feb. 13, and that will be what gives him the edge, if anything does. But tonight, in looking at the two states I’ve identified as the most critical, one primary result bothers me as an Obama supporter more than any other. Both of these states border, and politically may be most similar to, Tennessee. Clinton won that state by 13 points. Obama has to figure out why — and how to stop that effect from spreading.
Of course, if they do let Florida and Michigan vote again, then the other critical contest is Michigan, which Obama needs to offset a Hillary win in Florida. I don’t know enough about Michigan to have a sense of how it will go; ot seems pro-Obama, but less so than Florida is pro-Hillary. Of course, Florida will be less pro-Hillary if Obama has a couple of high-profile endorsers campaigning for him there: like, say, Edwards and Gore.
