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Obama wins another three, can Hillary stop him now?

James Forsyth

Wednesday, 13th February 2008

Barack Obama and John McCain both behaved as if the general election campaign had started last night. Their speeches centred more on each other than their current opponents. Hillary Clinton must have had a horrible feeling of irrelevance as these two went at it.

Obama has now won all eight post-Super Tuesday contests and is 11 points up in Wisconsin which votes next week along with the state where he grew up, Hawaii. He has momentum on his side and Hillary on the back foot. Again, he racked up impressive margins—getting 60 percent of the vote in Virginia, Maryland and DC. He also appears to be extending his support base; winning all income and age groups in both states.

Clinton now must hold Obama off in the March 4th primaries. If she does not, the calls for her to gracefully drop out will begin. Her campaign is continuing to reshuffle but she urgently needs to get on the front foot. But the disastrous consequences of Bill behaving like an attack dog in South Carolina means that if the Clinton camp is to go negative, Hillary herself must do it.

For McCain, Tuesday was not as decisive as he would have wished. While he won all three contests, as expected, he was ran far closer in Virginia than he would have liked—in an effectively two person race, he only just scrambled over the 50 percent mark. A decisive victory might have forced Mike Huckabee, his remaining opponent, from the race. But the narrow margin of his win means that Huckabee is likely to solider on for a while yet. The encouraging thing for McCain is that his victory speech which implicitly took on Obama was effective and showed that he has a plausible strategy against him for what seems set to be this autumn’s campaign.

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Ganpat Ram

February 13th, 2008 2:23pm

I agree that Hillary has blown it this year by her feeble, wimpish tactics. She smiled and smiled at Obama and tried to undermine him with snide, indirect allusions to his deficiencies. That was wretched. She should have looked the public straight in the eye and told them bluntly that Obama is just a three-year Senator who talks in vague generalities, and such a demagogue will be disastrous as President at a difficult time. However, nothing lost: Obama will have a terrible time ruling. He has to quit Iraq, and will be blamed for the defeat and the bloody chaos that succeeds. Or he stays and devastates his followers. He has to cut spending to save the economy. He has to spend more to satisfy his followers. He is very bad at taking criticism. Americans will come to hate this smug man after a few months of his rule. Hillary should fight hard this year, then come back to the electorate in 2012, asking sweetly: "Had enough fun and games with President Obambi, babies? Wanna try Hillary now?"

TGF UKIP

February 13th, 2008 6:30pm

No chance Ganpat Ram, if by some aberration we did have an Obama presidency then all your predictions of the first part would come true. However, they would be truly Democrat disasters, absolute core Democrat policies produced by a President who personified the liberal Democrat ideal. Hillary would be the last person on earth the American voter would flee to. Instead their flight would be into the arms of the waiting Republican Party with, who knows, perhaps even a wiser but still richer Romney leading them. Great speeches, though, and clearly the Clintons will have to dig even deeper to find more and more Rezko style stuff in the past.

Craig Strachan

February 13th, 2008 7:02pm

CNN's delegate calculator says it's impossible for either Hillary or Barack to rack up the 2,025 delegates needed to nominate, even if either one of them sweeps all the primaries from here on in, because of the proportional method of awarding delegates. Hillary may drop out if she loses big in Texas, but I wouldn't bet on it. This thing's most likely going all the way to the convention - and tussles over superdelegates and seating Florida and Michigan

Spes

February 13th, 2008 9:34pm

Well the world's a tough bad place. But how about this scenario? First, have you seen "Barack Obama Airforce 1"? See that, then thought-experiment this. Will the involvement of younger people in this election spill over to greater confidence in other arenas. How about make two "big mac indices" - their soccer team and downward consumption of fast food?

Craig Strachan

February 14th, 2008 12:35am

Oh, and Huckabee needs to quit making out like he's the Black Knight from Monty Python And The Holy Grail. He needs to get real and get out of the race before he gets cut off at the knees.

Al

February 14th, 2008 1:25am

Oh Spectator readers.

Its so funny to read you argue over which democratic president will be worse at fixing the terrible messes created by a conservative administration.

No, your right. After Obama, Americans will be just clawing to invade Iran and cut taxes on the rich so they can invest and spend overseas. Screw spending money domestically, we need more aircraft carriers.