by Michael Daunt - February 13, 2008
Is it safe?
Is it safe to call Barack Obama the front runner in the race for the Democratic nomination?
He has won umpteen primaries and caucuses in a row. He is winning by increasing margins and is increasing his demographic reach with every vote. He won among women in Virginia and Hispanics/Latinos (what is the politically correct terminology? I suspect there isn't one) in Maryland. He's winning in the south, the frozen north, the midwest, the west...he's pretty much winning everywhere. And yet the delegate counts I see barely budge.
Tonight, for the first time, CNN begrudgingly acknowledged that he has a razor-thin lead over Clinton in the delegate count.
But...they finally showed how they arrived at their numbers. They have consistently awarded Clinton a larger number of superdelegates. Now, these are not delegates that she has won. These are just people CNN thinks will probably vote for Clinton (in English - they made it up).
If any other candidate had fired the campaign manager and assistant campaign manager after a string of disastrous losses, the media would be telling us that the wheels had come off of their bandwagon, and rightly so. With Clinton, we hear that she is just doing what she needs to do - making the necessary adjustments to go forward - that Doyle was spending too much money too quickly. Actually, the organization of Clinton's campaign was always confused, but not because of Doyle. No, it was because of Clinton. Maggie Williams and Patti Solis Doyle had been constantly stepping on each other's toes, because Clinton failed to lay out exactly where the responsibilities of each one lay. So, Doyle falls on her sword for Clinton. That's fair enough, but I cannot fathom why the media should fall for this spin.
Right now, George Bush looks like a lame duck, but Hillary Clinton looks like a dead duck. Sticking with her previous pattern of moving on from a state that she knows she's losing, she has abandoned Wisconsin to campaign in Texas. So, we can probably put Wisconsin in Obama's column. This means that she absolutely, positively needs huge wins in Texas and Ohio (while hanging on to Vermont and Rhode Island) on March 4th. Narrow victories will not do.
In fact, if the superdelegates get impatient and start moving, she may be finished before the Texas/Ohio vote. And they might. Because, right now, the Obama bandwagon is starting to look like a runaway train.
Michael Daunt is the Publisher of Quiblit Magazine