“No candidate in recent history — Democratic or Republican — has won the White House without winning the Ohio primary,” Mrs. Clinton, of New York, said at a rally in Columbus, Ohio. “We all know that if we want a Democratic president, we need a Democratic nominee who can win Democratic states just like Ohio.”It doesn't sound like she's even warming up her voice yet.
Interesting possibilities arise out of last night's V,O,T,R primary: Vermont, Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island.
For one thing, Hillary swept all of Ohio except for the isolated counties containing large urban areas like Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and Cleveland. A startling observation for Obama is that he didn't carry the surrounding suburbs of those cities. That would concern me because he's never had that problem in other big-ticket states. Indeed, in Texas, he carried the suburbs of Dallas, Houston, and Austin. Curiously, he didn't carry San Antonio. We might chalk that up to that city being more conservative than the other three.
Clinton's electoral map is starting to show great strength in the Southwest and Northeast. This is comforting news for her should she continue on to the convention and be within striking distance of Obama at that point: she can make a very strong case that she will win in states that Democrats must win in order to win the elecdtion, where Obama's strengths are in states that normally won't vote Democratic if you held a gun to the voters' heads.
Should a brokered ticket be necessary, meaning Obama and Clinton agree to both appear on the ticket, this might be enough for her to win the top spot.
While Pennsylvania is the next truly key battleground state, should Clinton prevail there, which seems likely now given that nearly all the counties surrounding it have gone into the Clinton column, the next race of interest after that would be Oregon on May 20, which could prove to be the stopper for either Obama or Clinton.
North Carolina on the 6th of May should be an easy Obama victory, but look for Bill Clinton to pull the same moral victory there that he did in Alabama: Obama won that state by 14% points in the popular vote, but the Big Dog's campaigning made the delegate race a 27-25 split.
Apart from Mississippi and Wyoming, there are no more primaries this month. Obama should do well in both of those states, but keep an eye on Wyoming in terms of the Afghanistan oversight issue.
One side note to the Obombers who believe Hillary's done for: we all castigated Al Gore for giving up too easily. Maybe you guys should cut her some slack. She has a point about her candidacy being viable, still.
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