[QUOTE=Ravenman]
Yep, you got me. I was flipping through polls too quickly and misread Georgia.
On the Democratic side, we’re at the seventh inning stretch of game 7 of the World Series. The Obama team is down by two runs. It’s not good enough at this point to say, “Well, Obama HAD been down by four in the fifth inning, so it could get close in the next couple of innings…” The point is that Obama has lasted this far, he’s in the big leagues with a two person race, and he simply has to start winning in places where Hillary has a substantial lead right now. Close isn’t going to cut it anymore, expectations don’t matter anymore. Winning and taking momentum are the only rational goals at this point, everything else is for losers.
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I was going to draw a different analogy, but in trying to construct one, I realized that there’s really no single analogy that quite encompasses the complexities of a primary campaign. I was thinking about the baseball season rather than a game, and as far as delegates go, we’re barely out of the preseason here, even after SC: the likelihood that the race will be decided by the delegates won or lost in IA, NH, NV, and SC is negligible - these primaries really are primarily about show, convincing people in the ‘real’ states of Feb. 5 and beyond that you’re viable, that you’re worth voting for. Edwards’ Presidential hopes are all but dead, not because he’s irretrievably behind in the delegate count, but because he’s a mile or two behind in convincing people that there’s a point in voting for him.
We may be in the second week in April with respect to delegates (and on Feb. 5, we’ll play the rest of April, plus May, June, July, and a smidgen of August), but in terms of the psychology of the race, SC is the last half of July.
Anyway, all this is to say that in SC, impressions still matter. Winning big v. winning small will be important. If Edwards manages to edge out Clinton for second despite being mostly dead, that’ll have a significant effect on how people see her candidacy, even though its effect on delegates may be in the ‘count them on one hand’ range.
Once we’re into Feb. 5 and beyond, though, I agree with you completely: it’ll be strictly about winning and piling up delegates.
The picture will be a lot clearer after tonight.
Is this season crack for political junkies, or what?
That’s what I get for never watching TV, except for football (and I was out of town last weekend). I had no idea that Obama had been putting ads up locally. (BTW, DC’s primary is on 2/12 in addition to MD and VA, so the whole metro area will be going to the polls at once. That’ll certainly maximize the effectiveness of broadcast ads in the D.C. market.)
Indeed. Clinton’s relied more heavily than Obama on bigger contributors, people who gave her the max $2300 each for both her primary and general election campaigns early on. It’ll be interesting to see if she can move beyond that, either in finding a lot more big donors, or in doing better with the grassroots.
Meanwhile, I expect Obama’s fundraising machine is still doing more or less what it’s been doing, due to much more reliance on smaller donors that (a) you can find more of, and (b) can be hit up for repeat contributions.
If the Clinton campaign exits Super Tuesday without a whole lot of money in the bank, and Obama has kept it close enough through Feb. 6 that a string of later wins can put him ahead, the difference in fundraising strategies may enable him to get those wins.