Hillary Is losing the race and The Obama Factor

UPDATE; Sunday Feb 10,2008.
Obama adds Maine to his Saturday wins in Washington, Louisiana and Nebraska, Clinton campaign manager out!
Story at the bottom of this post.

I said I would follow up on Super Tuesday with a post on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, here it is and I am making a prediction right now,,I think Hillary has lost this race for the Presidency.

It has taken a few days from Super Tuesday to make sense of just what Barack Obama has accomplished. After nearly a year of spirited battle in the biggest contest so far, 24 states voting nearly 10 and a half million Democratic votes cast and Hillary Clinton managed a tie!

That is a crushing defeat, she should have been able to seal her triumph Tuesday, instead the young upstart from Chicago matched Clinton nearly vote for vote (less than a 100,000 votes difference) and Obama in the end beat her in the Delegate count by 796 to 794. Sen. Obama won the popular vote in 13 states Tuesday, while Clinton won in eight states and American Samoa. In the overall race for the nomination, Clinton has 1,055 delegates, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as super delegates. Obama has 998. More about the super delegates in a moment, they are going to decide this race.

No mistake folks this is a defeat for Clinton by Wednesday Hillary had to loan her campaign 5 million( and her staff is unpaid) while Obama raised 7.1 million on Tuesday in addition to 30 million in January!

Bill Clinton's polarizing presence in South Carolina (a state she was fated to lose) caused untold damage to the Clinton's reputation among Black voters.
Her attitude has not helped either, she has practically called Blacks disloyal for supporting the first serious black Presidential challenger! Implying after all we have done for you people you Owe me!

How sickeningly condescending can you be!

Black voters are not buying it and neither are the under age 40 voters of all races flocking to the Obama campaign.

Hilliary is even losing the white male vote while retaining women of her generation. More important even some of her Tuesday victory's are suspect. She won in California based on absentee votes (they started sending in ballots Jan 6) but at the polls in California on election day she lost, indicating a late surge for Obama.

Bill Clinton has been muzzled and now sounds apologetic about South Carolina and one thing we know about Bill is he NEVER apologizes! The dust up by the Hillary camp over David Shuster at MSNBC and his comments about Chelsea Clinton (out of line but the Clintons have been too protective the "girl" is now 27) show a campaign staff on the razors edge, grasping at straws, anything that might deflect the press from the real story from the Clinton Camp.
And what is that story?

Fear

Fear that she will lose this race.

Once inevitability flows to a candidate a wave builds, Obama has stalemated Clinton and the next two states are swinging rapidly in Barack Obamas favor!

Super delegates 20% of delegates to the convention are given to Democratic politicos,Governors,Senators,Congressmen,Legislators Mayors people who have won elected office. Most years they vote for the clear winner or the inevitable canidate. Well into January most were leaning as you would expect Clinton's way. Here is the problem for Hillary since Tuesday they are starting to hedge and they are being courted by Obama's people with the line.

Obama is the inevitable candidate.

Is it working?

Obama and Clinton, are competing for 161 delegates Saturday in Washington state, Louisiana, Nebraska and the Virgin Islands, followed by Maine caucuses with 24 delegates on Sunday.
Obama won the last-minute endorsement Friday of Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, the female governor of the state. Both candidates had courted her, Obama speaking with her four times.

"He is leading us toward a positive feeling of hope in our country and I love seeing that happen," she said. Washington's senators, both women, back Clinton.

In strongly Republican and sparsely populated Nebraska, Obama spoke to the huge crowd at an Omaha arena Thursday, exhorting: "You're here because you don't want to just be against something. You want to be for something.

Chris Slaughter, 20, heard the speech and said: "He's a once-in-a-generation candidate."

Obama was the only candidate campaigning in all four states.

Clinton told a spirited rally of 5,000 supporters at a Seattle cruise ship terminal Thursday night that she's "a fighter and a doer and a champion for the American people." She also planned to campaign in Maine.

Clinton and Obama both have an eye on the round that follows - the trio of races Tuesday in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia - and the New York senator in particular was gearing her campaign toward the high stakes primaries in Ohio and Texas on March 4.

Obama is expected to win in Louisiana and Maryland and D.C. and fight Clinton to parity in Washington state. That leaves Ohio and Texas, Hillary may not do well in Texas except among Latinos who don't particularly care for Obama. The Clinton's have high negatives in Texas among white democrats. Ohio like 2000 & 04 will be a battleground, racially polarized it may be again at best a draw for Clinton.

My Conclusion, there is no way the party establishment wants a brokered backroom convention, not in the 21st century! The super delegates will be under extreme pressure to end this race now and award their votes to Senator Obama.

The next few primary's are very critical, pulling even again will surly finish Hillary Clinton's presidential race.

Can she lose gracefully, a women who has been thinking of this run since Bill was in the White House?

That is the question the always perceptive Peggy Noonan (former Reagan speech writer)
asks. If you are a Clinton supporter you won't like the answer.

I firmly believe Senator Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for President.

And the Next President of the United States.

It is Inevitable!

Would Hilliary accept a Vice Presidential slot?
Hillary swallow her pride and accept second place? Obama would likely accept her so it will be her call.
If not John Edwards will be the likely V.P.

DeWayne H

Can Mrs. Clinton Lose?
By PEGGY NOONAN
February 8, 2008;

If Hillary Clinton loses, does she know how to lose? What will that be, if she loses? Will she just say, "I concede" and go on vacation at a friend's house on an island, and then go back to the Senate and wait?

Is it possible she could be so normal? Politicians lose battles, it's part of what they do, win and lose. But she does not know how to lose. Can she lose with grace? But she does grace the way George W. Bush does nuance.

She often talks about how tough she is. She has fought "the Republican attack machine" that has tried to "stop" her, "end" her, and she knows "how to fight them." She is preoccupied to an unusual degree with toughness. A man so preoccupied would seem weak. But a woman obsessed with how tough she is just may be lethal.

Does her sense of toughness mean that every battle in which she engages must be fought tooth and claw, door to door? Can she recognize the line between burly combat and destructive, never-say-die warfare? I wonder if she is thinking: What will it mean if I win ugly? What if I lose ugly? What will be the implications for my future, the party's future? What will black America, having seen what we did in South Carolina, think forever of me and the party if I do low things to stop this guy on the way to victory? Can I stop, see the lay of the land, imitate grace, withdraw, wait, come back with a roar down the road? Life is long. I am not old.
Or is that a reverie she could never have? What does it mean if she could never have it?

We know she is smart. Is she wise? If it comes to it, down the road, can she give a nice speech, thank her supporters, wish Barack Obama well, and vow to campaign for him?

It either gets very ugly now, or we will see unanticipated--and I suspect professionally saving--grace.

I ruminate in this way because something is happening. Mrs. Clinton is losing this thing. It's not one big primary, it's a rolling loss, a daily one, an inch-by-inch deflation. The trends and indices are not in her favor. She is having trouble raising big money, she's funding her campaign with her own wealth, her moral standing within her own party and among her own followers has been dragged down, and the legacy of Clintonism tarnished by what Bill Clinton did in South Carolina. Unfavorable primaries lie ahead. She doesn't have the excitement, the great whoosh of feeling that accompanies a winning campaign. The guy from Chicago who was unknown a year ago continues to gain purchase, to move forward. For a soft little innocent, he's played a tough and knowing inside/outside game.

The day she admitted she'd written herself a check for $5 million, Obama's people crowed they'd just raised $3 million. But then his staff is happy. They're all getting paid.

Political professionals are leery of saying, publicly, that she is losing, because they said it before New Hampshire and turned out to be wrong. Some of them signaled their personal weariness with Clintonism at that time, and fear now, as they report, to look as if they are carrying an agenda. One part of the Clinton mystique maintains: Deep down journalists think she's a political Rasputin who will not be dispatched. Prince Yusupov served him cupcakes laced with cyanide, emptied a revolver, clubbed him, tied him up and threw him in a frozen river. When he floated to the surface they found he'd tried to claw his way from under the ice. That is how reporters see Hillary.

And that is a grim and over-the-top analogy, which I must withdraw. What I really mean is they see her as the Glenn Close character in "Fatal Attraction": "I won't be ignored, Dan!"

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Mr. Obama's achievement on Super Tuesday was solid and reinforced trend lines. The popular vote was a draw, the delegate count a rough draw, but he won 13 states, and when you look at the map he captured the middle of the country from Illinois straight across to Idaho, with a second band, in the northern Midwest, of Minnesota and North Dakota. He won Missouri and Connecticut, in Mrs. Clinton's backyard. He won the Democrats of the red states.

On the wires Wednesday her staff was all but conceding she is not going to win the next primaries. Her superdelegates are coming under pressure that is about to become unrelenting. It was easy for party hacks to cleave to Mrs Clinton when she was inevitable. Now Mr. Obama's people are reportedly calling them saying, Your state voted for me and so did your congressional district. Are you going to jeopardize your career and buck the wishes of the people back home?

Mrs. Clinton is stoking the idea that Mr. Obama is too soft to withstand the dread Republican attack machine. (I nod in tribute to all Democrats who have succeeded in removing the phrase "Republican and Democratic attack machines" from the political lexicon. Both parties have them.)

But Mr. Obama will not be easy for Republicans to attack. He will be hard to get at, hard to address. There are many reasons, but a primary one is that the fact of his race will freeze them. No one, no candidate, no party, no heavy-breathing consultant, will want to cross any line--lines that have never been drawn, that are sure to be shifting and not always visible--in approaching the first major-party African-American nominee for president of the United States.

He is the brilliant young black man as American dream. No consultant, no matter how opportunistic and hungry, will think it easy--or professionally desirable--to take him down in a low manner. If anything, they've learned from the Clintons in South Carolina what that gets you. (I add that yes, there are always freelance mental cases, who exist on both sides and are empowered by modern technology. They'll make their YouTubes. But the mad are ever with us, and this year their work will likely stay subterranean.)

With Mr. Obama the campaign will be about issues. "He'll raise your taxes." He will, and I suspect Americans may vote for him anyway. But the race won't go low.

Mrs. Clinton would be easier for Republicans. With her cavalcade of scandals, they'd be delighted to go at her. They'd get medals for it. Consultants would get rich on it.

The Democrats have it exactly wrong. Hillary is the easier candidate, Mr. Obama the tougher. Hillary brings negative; it's fair to hit her back with negative. Mr. Obama brings hope, and speaks of a better way. He's not Bambi, he's bulletproof.

The biggest problem for the Republicans will be that no matter what they say that is not issue oriented--"He's too young, he's never run anything, he's not fully baked"--the mainstream media will tag them as dealing in racial overtones, or undertones. You can bet on this. Go to the bank on it.

The Democrats continue not to recognize what they have in this guy. Believe me, Republican professionals know. They can tell.

DeWayne here above I was talking about Fear and Inevitability, look below and tell me what you think. The Republicans have a lot to worry about this November and Karl Roves dirty tricks bag will prove useless against Obama. McCain can beat Hillary Clinton but he cannot win against Barack Obama!

We have met the next Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy and he is Black and a Democrat!

The New Kennedy

The Noble Patriot

After Losing New Hampshire(he had won Iowa) Barack Obama gave a concession speech.
Only this was not a "concession" but a call to arms! A Masterful performance and any Republican that says this is all flash and no substance, nothing to worry about, well the voters will not care anymore than the last time we had such a stark choice!



Remember the last time Flash,Youth and Inexperience won out over the Establishment guy? 1960 48 years ago.



Update; Sunday February 10

Maine caps Obama Weekend Sweep
Obama Takes Delegate Lead With Wins In 4 States; Clinton Manager Steps Down

(AP/CBS) Illinois senator Barack Obama finished a series of weekend primary and caucus contests undefeated as he bested Hillary Clinton in Maine today, according to CBS News estimates.

Obama’s victory in the Maine caucuses follow on the heels of his Saturday sweep in which he won Louisiana’s primary contest as well as caucuses in the states of Washington and Nebraska.

His winning margins ranged from substantial to crushing. In Maine, he led 59 percent to 41 percent with 87 percent of the precints reporting. In Louisiana, Obama defeated Clinton, 57 percent to 36 percent. He won in Nebraska by a 68 percent to 32 percent margin and in Washington 68 percent to 31 percent.

Obama's victory in Maine -- and the ease with which it came -- actually exceeded expectations, even though he swept the caucuses held on Super Tuesday. Clinton had the backing of the state's governor, John Baldacci, and its proximity to New Hamsphire and Massachusetts, both of which Clinton has already won this year, led some analysts to expect a close race.

Even Obama's own campaign said they didn't expect to win Maine, according to a document the campaign said was accidentally leaked earlier in the week.

In the delegate chase, Obama has pulled ahead of Clinton, even when the support of uncommitted super delegates is figured in. According to CBS News estimates, Obama holds a razor-thin lead with 1,134 delegates overall to 1,131 for Clinton.

The results in Maine came in the wake of a shake-up on the Clinton campaign. Sunday afternoon, Clinton campaign manager Patti Patti Solis announced she was stepping down from that post. She will be replaced by senior advisor and longtime Clinton confidant Maggie Williams.

Campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee said Solis Doyle was "not asked to step down," reports CBS News' Fernando Suarez. Elleithee said the change in leadership was not due to this weekend's losses.