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Hillary misses her Maine chance to slow Obama's momentum

James Forsyth

Monday, 11th February 2008

Barack Obama has won the Maine caucus according to the news networks. With 70% of the vote counted, he is leading 58 to 41. The result is a boon to the Obama camp which was expecting to lose in Maine where the make up of the electorate—lots of voters earning less than $50,000 a year—favoured Hillary. The win keeps up Obama’s nearly perfect record in caucus.

Obama is expected to win all three of Tuesday’s primaries—Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia—and is also favoured in next week’s contests in Hawaii, the state where he grew up, and Wisconsin. Hillary now faces the prospect of heading into the crucial March 4th contests on the back of nine straight defeats.

With Hillary replacing her campaign manager on Sunday, the press are going to go into campaign in crisis mode. That could cut either way—the Clinton camp has been adept at drumming up sympathy for their candidate. But at this moment Obama has a small but definite edge.