OK, so this morning I emerged from Omir’s Sooper Seekrit Bomb ‘n’ Fallout Shelter with three observations:
- They don’t make cardboard refrigerator boxes as roomy as they did back when I was seven.
- Army surplus peanut butter and saltines for breakfast? Especially World War II Army surplus? Don’t go there.
- The sky has not yet fallen.
Yes, the sky here on Puget Sound, the place where Mark Twain spent his nicest winter ever one summer, is still up there where it belongs, and it’s still its customary lovely shade of mid-spring gray. I can tell summer is coming, because the rain is getting warmer.
Last night was not a good night. Our favorite candidate didn’t meet expectations. He did better than he was slated to six weeks ago, but he still lost by somewhere around 9 points, and his delegate lead (according to numbers MSNBC was crawling this morning) will be decreased by anywhere from 2 to 26 delegates, and his opponent will have the running room and the talking points she needs to raise some extra cash to fuel her vanity candidacy. In fact she apparently already raised $2.5 million last night.
But it’s not the end of the world.
For one thing, even if his opponent closes the gap by the maximum of 26 delegates (which I doubt) he will still be ahead by more than 100, with two contests that are anywhere from a toss-up to heavily favoring him coming up in two weeks. And that delegate pickup has already been reduced by 1 with the declaration of a new superdelegate, the governor of Oklahoma. He will make up most of that deficit in North Carolina and (hopefully) Indiana, and her chances of catching up will be that much slimmer.
For another, that $2.5 million doesn’t even cover her campaign’s current debt of $10 million. If all of it went to running the campaign rather than paying off creditors, that would be enough to run her campaign for two and a half days. That gets us to, um, let’s see, Friday afternoon. What after that? More indebtedness? I know, I know, she’ll be raising more as time goes on, but Obama is still out-raising her hand over fist and could probably finance his entire campaign through the end of the primaries on what he has in the bank right now, and still outspend her by a comfortable margin. Even if he never got another cent from his supporters.
And third, the enthusiasm and excitement he’s bringing to the campaign hasn’t changed. His message hasn’t changed. Neither has his opponent’s. It’s still politics from the ground up vs. the same old, same old.
So days like yesterday happen. No baseball team goes 162-0. There are good days and bad days. The sky hasn’t fallen
But I’m hanging on to that refrigerator box. Just in case.