The Note: Reaching for Sunshine
The Note: Florida holds key to Dem race, as Obama stumbles to the nomination.
May 21, 2008 -- Among the cruel ironies of campaign '08: The candidate who was winning right up until the voting started to count would now be winning again -- if only the voting still counted.
Another lopsided loss -- albeit tempered by a simultaneous victory, and yet another boffo fundraising month -- wasn't the way Sen. Barack Obama wanted to set up his triumphant speech Tuesday night in Des Moines.
Again Obama loses a state in a landslide (35 points) despite his near-coronation. Again it matters just about not at all in terms of the nomination -- yet more than Obamaland wants to concede when it comes to the general election.
So it is with a clearer-than-ever picture of the obstacles before him that Obama, D-Ill., stands ready to claim the Democratic nomination. And it's with disappearing arguments about the match-ups and the math with which Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., continues to try to stand in his way.
This is what the precipice looks like: With Clinton's blowout in Kentucky, and Obama's solid win in Oregon, Obama clinched a majority of pledged delegates, ABC's Karen Travers reports.
He now stands just 70 delegates away from capturing the nomination (and 190 ahead of Clinton), per ABC's delegate count. He can afford to stumble his way past the finish line if he has to: He needs just 23 percent of the outstanding delegates to get to 2,026, ABC's political unit calculates, and he'll almost surely get there June 3, unless the supers move him there sooner.
"Within reach," is how Obama described it in Iowa, mustering all the symbolism a presidential candidacy is capable of in returning to the site of his biggest victory.
"The Democratic presidential race is all but over," the AP's Nedra Pickler and Beth Fouhy write. "The only real issue is whether [Obama] and rival Hillary Rodham Clinton leave the race with their futures -- and their party -- intact."
(What does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- who said in February there would be "a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided" -- say now? How many supers were math majors?)
"The Democratic Party has never denied the nomination to the person who won the most pledged delegates in all the contests," ABC's George Stephanopoulos reported Wednesday on "Good Morning America." "And the superdelegates are not going to do that for the first time, with the first African-American candidate to reach that milestone. There would be a revolution if they did. So unless some kind of lightning strikes, Sen. Obama is the nominee."
Obama's delegate edge is now an "all but insurmountable advantage," Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny write in The New York Times. "Even as Mr. Obama moved closer to making history as the first black presidential nominee, he stopped short of declaring victory in the Democratic race, part of a carefully calibrated effort in the remaining weeks of the contest to avoid appearing disrespectful to Mrs. Clinton and alienating her supporters. Instead, he offered lavish praise for his rival over 16 months."
Next up: "He was planning a vigorous schedule of travel to general election states and a voter registration drive focusing on black voters to offset any losses among whites. Aides said he was considering delivering another speech to deal with damage in the primary because of attacks on his relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as well as on his patriotism," Nagourney and Zeleny report.
And this: "Barack Obama is quietly planning to take over the Democratic National Committee and assemble a multistate team for the general election, the latest sign that he is putting rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and the nomination fight behind him," the AP's Pickler writes.
Your possible new DNC chief: Paul Tewes, "one of the leading architects of Obama's success in the marathon Democratic primary race," Pickler reports. (What ever happened to not declaring victory prematurely?)
First, Florida: The Sunshine State is oddly critical to both Obama and Clinton at this point -- far more important than any of the three jurisdictions still to vote. Obama needs Florida as he pivots to the fall in a key state he's almost entirely ignored, and Clinton needs it as she grasps that last sliver of electoral possibility -- getting those disputed delegations seated and settled (in her favor).
"The Sunshine State's election results remain both in limbo and capable of changing the shape of the race," The Hill's Sam Youngman writes.
Not good to start off the general election with Florida painted red: "Obama must overcome real challenges to win Florida's 27 electoral votes, and his tentative schedule seems to acknowledge that, as he's reaching out to key demographics," Adam C. Smith writes in the St. Petersburg Times.
"In the Iowa contest, he transformed the electorate by mobilizing new and younger voters, a tactic that helped him win in unexpected states and has brought him to the cusp of the nomination," Peter Wallsten reports in the Los Angeles Times. "Now, with a three-day swing through Florida, Obama begins his effort to organize his way to victory in November. Nowhere will that be more daunting than Florida, a Republican-leaning battleground state where Obama has not appeared in public for many months."
In case Obama needed the reminder of what's ahead, the voters once again spoke loudly on that subject.
"Kentucky voters ignored the persistent notion that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama will be the Democratic presidential nominee," Ryan Alessi writes in the Lexington Herald-Leader.
"The nominee's challenge will be to make peace with his or her foes' ardent supporters -- a feat that could be difficult for Sen. Obama, judging by the racial polarization and intensity of voters registered by exit polls," Jackie Calmes writes in The Wall Street Journal. "In Kentucky, seven in 10 whites said they voted for Sen. Clinton Tuesday, and just four in 10 said they would vote for Sen. Obama in November if he is the nominee against Sen. McCain. Seven in 10 Obama voters said they would back Sen. Clinton if she won the nomination."
You could take race out of the sample -- Kentucky and Oregon are both overwhelmingly white -- and still see the socioeconomic and cultural splits that have long defined the campaign.
"It doesn't take a political scientist to see that Oregon and Kentucky look alike in color, but not much else. Or to see that race isn't the only fault line in this Democratic presidential campaign," Jim Tankersley writes in the Chicago Tribune. "But the fact remains that demographically similar voters made very different choices in each state; a PhD in Oregon and a PhD in Kentucky didn't see this race the same."
"His 50-point loss among Kentucky whites was second only to his losing margin among whites in Arkansas," ABC Polling Director Gary Langer writes. "Working-class (i.e. less educated) whites, consistently a better Clinton group, especially in Southern states, were far more dominant in Kentucky than in Oregon. They accounted for two-thirds of white voters in Kentucky, and backed Clinton by 4-1."
