Note: All delegate math done “back of the envelope” style.
It may take a few news cycles for the sheen of victory to fade, but Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic nomination all but died in Texas last night. She is certainly within her rights to stay in the race and pray for a miracle, but the six weeks between next Tuesday’s Mississippi primary and the Pennsylvania primary will see tremendous pressure for her to throw in the towel. Barack Obama doesn’t have much to crow about this morning and Clinton is by no means finished but, to my reading of things, her odds of winning the nomination got longer last night.
The – ahem – firewall needed to hold in two places, but held only in one. In Ohio she won by eleven points and will gain around fifteen delegates on her nemesis. In Texas though her mere three point win in the primary and (probable) loss in the caucus will likely all but wipe out her delegate gains from Ohio. The final delegate numbers weren’t available at the time of this writing, but it looks like Clinton would need to repeat her victory last night dozens of times to show any significant gain. Whatever delegate pickup she finally takes away from yesterday is likely to be short lived as well. The caucus in Wyoming on Saturday and the primary in Mississippi on Tuesday both look like probable Obama victories and will likely restore and even enhance Obama’s pre-March 4 delegate lead.
Then it’s six weeks of nothing until Pennsylvania. That’s a lot of news cycles for a campaign that is, on paper at least, woefully behind. In that time both campaigns are going to address themselves to the super delegates. Clinton’s argument is going to be that Obama cannot win big states, that he stumbled when she attacked him, and that if she has the momentum of a lot of wins going into the convention the party elders should throw it to her no matter what (hopefully small) lead he has in pledged delegates. Obama’s case to the super delegates is simpler and stronger for being so: she can’t catch me, but I can’t force her out and John McCain is on the loose.
Anyone can, depending on their preferred outcome, reach different conclusions from last night’s results. Obama backers can take comfort in the fact that the delegate math didn’t change and the two largest remaining states are now off the table. Clinton backers can point to her first victories since Super Tuesday and say that it builds the foundation for more.
To me at least, last night’s results look very similar to those of Super Tuesday. Clinton won in some ways, but so did Obama and the next couple of contests favor him over her. Her delegate math looks exceedingly grim and her only chance to stand triumphant in Denver is to overcome that deficit by convincing the party elders that she’s the only one capable of beating McCain. Maybe she can do that without tarnishing herself, maybe she can’t. Clinton had a good night last night, but on sober analysis it probably wasn’t good enough.
