Slipping away

Senator Clinton must feel as though the nomination is slipping away. Forget about the fact that Obama has 21 states and DC to Clinton's 10 states; forget about the personnel shakeup on the campaign; and forget about the fact that she had to loan her campaign $5 million. The bigger issues are losing ten primaries/caucuses in a row, losing the Potomac primaries by such large margins, losing, overall, the women's and Latino vote today, and seeing that Obama is already on the ground with grassroots orgaizations in Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, and Arlington with large Hispanic populations. Latinos make up just about 25% of the vote in Texas and it's quite possible that Obama may get a "substantial" portion of that vote. In addition, Senator Clinton, in the remaining primaries, needs to win all of them at a clip of about 60%, in order to keep it close, which is near impossible since Obama is surely going to win some of those primaries. It is now unlikely that Clinton will have enough delegates to be in the lead going into August. Obama will not have enough delegates going into the convention but he certainly will have the momentum going into to August to win away some of the Superdelegates as well as some of Clinton's pledged delegates. He's already pivoted toward November and is concetrating his efforts on McCain, which, of course, is what the front-runner should be doing.

As for McCain, the Senator won all three of the Potomac primaries, including a closely fought battle over Virginia where he bested Huckabee by 8% points. However, the "not conservative enough" question continues to plague the Senator. Exit polls from all three primaries reveal that 49% think McCain is not conservative enough, but as Dick Morris suggests, conservatives have no where else to go in November and the thought of Obama or Clinton in the White House is provocation enough for conservatives to vote. According to Morris, the strategy for McCain should be to continue to woo Democrats and Independents rather than court the right and attract the conservative base. We'll see how well Morris' strategy plays out in November.

Huckabee lost tonight but will probably hang around until Texas. He'll continue to win whatever is left in the south but of course, one wonders why he hangs around. Of course, there's the hope of being the vice president; there's the hope of influencing the platform; and there's the hope that he goes into the convention in September with 1/4 or 1/3 of the delegates demostrating not only the strength to shape the platform but also looking ahead to 2012 as a contender.