The Note: Enter Sandman
For Obama, the Big Mo shows up at last to make him the clear frontrunner.
Feb. 13, 2008 -- Welcome to the longest three weeks of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's political existence (which also happen to be the shortest three weeks of her political career).
Big Mo was slow coming out of the gate, but he's a good closer -- and Clinton is about to learn whether he can find you even if you flee to Texas and Ohio. This could get ugly: We will now see just how much Camp Clinton wants this thing (as measured by what the candidate and her retooled campaign will do to try to shake things up).
By any objective measure, Sen. Barack Obama is now the Democratic frontrunner: money, momentum, enthusiasm, and now delegates, too. Three contests on Tuesday resulted in three drubbings, with Obama, D-Ill., providing dramatic answers to just about every question that lingered about his candidacy.
"Obama had his most impressive night of the competition, not just in the size of his victory margins but in the breadth of support he attracted from men and women, young voters and old, African Americans and whites," Dan Balz and Tim Craig write in The Washington Post.
"The results left Clinton, the one-time front-runner for the Democratic nomination, in a deep hole. . . . Obama's winning streak, his large margins and the prospect of more victories next week put Clinton in a tenuous position, despite the close delegate competition."
Momentum, we have found thee (though we know we've thought that before): Since Super Tuesday, Obama is 8-0, headed for a 10-0 run -- and the races haven't even been close.
That's what makes the march to March 4 both a painfully long and a woefully short window for Clinton, D-N.Y.; if the campaign has been holding onto some delicious nugget of oppo-research, or a foolproof line of attack against a candidate who still is untested, this is their cue.
"The lopsided nature of Senator Barack Obama's parade of victories on Tuesday gives him an opening to make the case that Democratic voters have broken in his favor and that the party should coalesce around his candidacy," Adam Nagourney writes in The New York Times.
"The sheer consistency of Mr. Obama's victories over the last few days certainly suggests that many Democratic voters have gotten past whatever reservations they might have had about his electability or his qualifications to be president."
Obama now has a 27-delegate edge over Clinton, overcoming the big gap she continues to enjoy (but may not be able to count on all that much longer) among superdelegates, according to ABC's delegate scorecard.
It is Obama's cue to keep rolling. Now those calls to superdelegates just might be persuasive (and more of them are set to roll out, per the Chicago Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet) and the smart money folks will begin hedging their bets.
His speech Wednesday morning in Wisconsin will be the start of his effort to pulverize the remaining bulkheads of Clinton support -- as well as a signal that he won't just be playing defense on his way to the nomination. He plans to speak on economic policy at a General Motors plant in Janesville, taking on both of his opponents at once while tweaking Clinton on trade and the Iraq war:
"It's a Washington where politicians like John McCain and Hillary Clinton voted for a war in Iraq that should've never been authorized and never been waged -- a war that is costing us thousands of precious lives and billions of dollars a week that could've been used to rebuild crumbling schools and bridges; roads and buildings; that could've been invested in job training and child care; in making health care affordable or putting college within reach," Obama plans to say, per his campaign.
The vote breakdown shows virtually no Obama weak spots. "He really cracked the Clinton coalition," ABC's George Stephanopoulos reported on "Good Morning America" on Wednesday. "If he gets these kind of numbers in Texas and Ohio, he will be the nominee."
"Obama won white men in Maryland and Virginia alike. He won 84 and 90 percent of blacks," ABC's Gary Langer writes in his dissection of the exit polls. "Obama narrowly won the few Hispanic voters in Virginia; he'd won Hispanics just once before, in Connecticut. Obama's overall vote margins in the two states were his widest, outside his home state of Illinois, in any primary where fewer than four in 10 voters were African-Americans. He won women in both states, something he's done outside states with larger black turnout only in Delaware, Iowa and his home state of Illinois. Indeed, in Virginia, Clinton won white women by a scant 6-point margin; he won them by 18 points in Maryland."
And yet . . . recall that Obama has had two knockout opportunities already in this race -- one in New Hampshire, and another on Super Tuesday -- and didn't close the deal. There are plenty of reasons to think that Obama is stronger than he was even just a week ago, but if you think the Clintons will go quietly, you don't remember your history.
AP's Ron Fournier cites two senior Clinton advisers talking about the fast-diminishing menu of options: "the campaign feels the New York senator needs to quickly change the dynamic by forcing Obama into a poor debate performance, going negative or encouraging the media to attack Obama," he writes. "They're grasping at straws, but the advisers said they can't see any other way that her campaign will be sustainable after losing 10 in a row."
And keep an eye on the superdelegates, Fournier writes: "Top Democrats, including some inside Hillary Clinton's campaign, say many party leaders -- the so-called superdelegates -- won't hesitate to ditch the former New York senator for Barack Obama if her political problems persist. Their loyalty to the first couple is built on shaky ground."
"The percussive effect of eight losses in a row, with two more potential blows next week in Wisconsin and Hawaii, could take a toll on the morale of the Clinton campaign team and her voters," Peter Canellos writes in The Boston Globe.
"Traditional political analysis, especially in presidential primaries, is that momentum moves the numbers --
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