Barack Obama hadn't expected much from West Virginia. He had been conspicuous in his efforts to lower expectations-remarking to everyone from NBC's Bryan Williams to CNN's Wolf Blitzer that West Virginia was Hillary Clinton Country. Aloft on the upbeat mood of his double digit win in North Carolina and his impressive come-from-behind in Indiana--a near victory in the Hoosier State by some measures--his campaign seemed within striking distance finally of the nomination prize, and by downplaying West Virginia he could stay focused on that goal.

So when the results began to tumble in from Tuesday's primary in the Mountain State, there were not going to be any surprises on either side. Clinton expected to win big, and Obama wasn't going to contest her victory there nor deny her some due consideration, however empty her win might be from his vantage point.

Still, watching county after county fall solidly into the Hillary Clinton column, there was a sense of deju vu--all over again. And, for the umpteenth time this season. Clinton's victory in West Virginia was not just another of the sort of win that we've seen this year--another New Hampshire or another Ohio or even another Pennsylvania-this was a rout. Clinton left little for Obama to brag about. And despite what appears to be for Clinton something akin to impossible math, her triumph in the Mountain State was sufficient to refuel her campaign and deliver her a renewed determination to make her case to the super delegates.

Clinton's not-so-thinly-veiled case is simple: many white voters--most especially those from lower-middle-class and blue collar venues, many of them without a college education--will choose to vote for McCain instead of Barack Obama in November (or not vote at all), putting the Democratic Party at grave risk of missing a golden opportunity to reclaim the White House and bring the Reagan Democrats finally back into the fold. And West Virginia is her current case in point.

Hillary Clinton's sweep of the state was total and unforgiving--Obama carried not a single county. Most counties were blowouts of unprecedented proportions. His closest race was in the easternmost tip of the eastern panhandle, in Jefferson County just south of Hagerstown, Maryland, where he lost by merely 46% to Clinton's 49. That was his high water mark. In some counties Obama was lucky to hang on to percentages in the mid 30s and upper 20s.

Some of the harsher examples: Clinton carried Wayne County along the Kentucky border by 79%. She swept Webster County, in the heart of the state, by 76%. Wyoming County, in the south, fell to Clinton by 79%. And those were some of the easy ones! How about these examples: Clinton won Logan County, about a 40 minute drive south of the capital city of Charleston, by 84%. In Mingo County, along the border where Kentucky intersects with Virginia, Clinton won by 88%--one of the most lopsided results for a single county in all of the 2008 primaries. Clinton beat Obama in Mingo by more than ten-to-one there, winning 7813 votes and leaving Obama only about 700!

There was no safe haven for Illinois Senator, nor any point for retreat. In a month of lowering expectations, this one still carried some sting. Clinton dominated the Mountain State by over 67%, and she will net 20 of West Virginia's 28 delegates.

Many analysts, though impressed with the level of the blowout, were nonetheless undaunted in their reviews of the math. Even with the vast majority of West Virginia's delegates falling into Clinton's column, the remaining arithmetic is simply too much to overcome. She would have to win over 76% of every county in every state between now and the end of the day on June 3 in order to reach the prize. Since this is unlikely, to say the least, Clinton must continue to turn her argument back to her last defensible firewall position: electability. If she can continue to make the case that she is the better of the two candidates when it comes to winning in the electoral math, she might still have some suasion over the opinions of the super delegates and the chattering classes.

And if the state that gave us Chuck Yeager, Cyrus Vance and Don Knotts has managed to keep the Clinton team in play for a few more days--perhaps weeks--what purpose does her active candidacy serve?

Few reporters or newscasters seem inclined to refer to her candidacy at this point as anything but a ship without fuel--aloft on open water and still in motion from residue and inertia. Writing in the current issue of U.S. News & World Report, Kenneth Walsh says that Clinton's unwillingness to quit the race reflects the steely inner Clinton, hardwired for adversity. "Ever since her student days four decades ago," Walsh writes, "she has seen herself as a national leader destined for greatness, and it's very difficult for her to accept failure today in the biggest quest of her adult life."

Meanwhile, Obama remains within sight of the magic number needed to nominate, and many journalists, editors and TV producers are all but saying the race is over. The Economist magazine shows Obama on the cover under the headline "Almost There." Time magazine--in an issue that went to press after North Carolina--shows a smiling Obama near the words "And The Winner Is..."


Days before the West Virginia primary, in an interview with Bryan Williams on NBC Nightly News, Obama refused to acknowledge the Time cover, suggesting that embracing it might jinx what momentum he now has. This was more than modesty on Obama's part. Indeed, it seems that hubris has wrought setbacks for both candidates all season, creating a seesaw effect as each one claims a brief shining moment of high ground held, only to lose it weeks or days later. This is why the sober and analytical faces of NBC's Tim Russert and CNN's John King are useful to us at times like these. For these numbers wonks, the math makes it clear: it is impossible for Hillary Clinton to reach the nomination without intra-party bloodshed or outright insurrection. And if by some stretch of the imagination she became the nominee, her moment of glory in Denver would be Pyrrhic, for the damage inflicted on the party would surely cost Democrats the election.

But Clinton and her team remain tireless and undaunted. For them, the question can just as easily be reversed. If Obama is such a sure thing and the true choice of the party, then why hasn't he closed the deal? If he's so inevitable, then why haven't the super delegates put him over the top? He, too, will likely not reach the convention with enough pledged delegates to claim victory, and his only course of action will be to fight for every super delegate, wooing or leveraging some of them away from Clinton.

Furthermore, Clinton claims to be leading in the one thing that truly matters from a moral standpoint--popular votes. Despite the cries of foul from skeptics, she achieves this math by including all votes cast in Florida and Michigan, and by rejecting some caucus-only states based on her own arbitrary criteria of which caucuses were "fair" and which ones were not.

And for Clinton, she has all but said that her dazzling victory on West Virginia and Obama's trouncing there is a sure indicator of why race remains a factor, especially in the general election. Her code words are "hard-working people" and "hard-working middle class whites," though few journalists or analyst regard these as much of a cipher. According to the U.S. Census Bureau and other sources, West Virginia's population is nearly 96% white. Once traditionally Democratic, the state has nevertheless shown a tendency to swing into the GOP column from time to time, most notably in the election of 1984 when Reagan won the state, and again in 2000 and 2004, when neither Al Gore nor John Kerry came close in the Mountain State. But Bill Clinton won there handily in 1992 and again in 1996. This raises the stakes, according to the Clinton spin camp, and demonstrates that no state can be taken for granted in a rush to choose an idealist and abstractionist like Obama--someone the Clinton's say will be unable to speak directly to the economic and security fears of lower income whites.

Clinton's un-coded prose: like in so many elections since the mid-1960's, a significant share of white and non-black Democrats--including ethnic Democrats, ethnic Catholics, Hispanics, older conservatives, lower income and middle income--will find themselves unable to vote for Obama. The party will cheer wildly in Denver, then watch in horror as Obama wanders haplessly along the same historical path as George McGovern, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry. Republicans won't even break a sweat--it will be another turkey shoot, and the Democrats will knowingly commit certain suicide if they nominate Obama.

For Obama, it all comes back to the current math. These arguments may be wearing thin with the party elders. Clearly, John McCain and the Republicans benefit more if the nomination remains in question when the first gavel convenes Democrats in Denver. Clinton must derail the Obama train--and quickly--if she wants to retain any hope of keeping her name in play. Even the odds of a partnership with Obama have grown increasingly long.

And for Team Clinton, this makes the status of the Florida and Michigan delegations even more important. And here's something to watch closely: the Democratic National Committee's Rules Committee meets the week after Memorial Day. One of the most important items for discussion at this session (indeed, the one that the press will scrutinize most closely) will be the disposition of the outcast delegations from the Sunshine and Wolverine states. Members of that committee already expect the arm-twisting and the shouting matches to be serious and emotional. Indeed, the outcome of the nomination may rest in how they arrive at their decision.


Speaking the night of her Mountain State victory to a lively crowd in Charleston, Clinton was enthusiastic and upbeat. Though her voice was occasionally raspy and clearly tired, she said she was now "more determined than ever to carry on this campaign until every person has had a chance to make their voice heard." Clinton's campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, told reporters the next day that the campaign will remain focused on the big prize and continue to take this contest state-by-state all the way through June 3.

"We think we're going to be the nominee," Howard Wolfson, her campaign communications chief, was quoted as saying, "and we're going to make our case to the super delegates." Other campaign spokespersons and loyalists remained defiant as well: there will be no surrender, no retreat. Obama is not yet the nominee, nor is he inevitable.

Clinton is expected to do well in the May 20 Kentucky primary, a state with demographic numbers very similar to West Virginia. Over 90% of Kentuckians are white, and only about 7.5% are African-American. Kentucky has an unemployment rate of roughly 5.8%, slightly higher than the national average. Kentucky has taken a harder hit in the mortgage crisis than some neighboring states, and like everywhere, fuel prices are causing most middle class and lower income consumers to make hard choices. Though she was widely ridiculed as a panderer for her "gas tax holiday" stump speeches in West Virginia, her argument gained significant traction with some lower income voters there. Polls indicated that many undecided and "somewhat undecided" voters broke decidedly for Clinton as a direct result of the gas tax repeal. Clinton may choose to expand on this populist pitch into Kentucky, even as Obama and almost every economist agrees that the fuel tax rollback is nothing more than a cheap carnival gimmick. But if Clinton wins big there next week, gas tax relief or no, her campaign will surely seize on a win as yet more evidence that she would be the better nominee to face John McCain in November.


Unlike West Virginia, Kentucky has a more reliable track record for the GOP: Nixon won the Bluegrass State twice, Reagan twice, and father and son Bush in three out of four elections. But, like the Mountain State, Bill Clinton won Kentucky twice, winning easily in 1992 and then narrowly defeating Bob Dole in 1996. Population increases and the ensuing demographic shifts actually helped solidify Republican success in Kentucky during the last decade. George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in 2000 by a larger margin than any previous GOP win; and in 2004, Bush's margin got even larger.

Nevertheless, Hillary Clinton will make the case that a win in Kentucky--no matter the proportion--should serve as another warning to the Democratic Party not to become fixated on eloquence and idealism in the face of electoral realities. The right sort of Democrat (read: Clinton) might easily pry Kentucky loose from GOP control, if only given the chance, and her husband is the recent case-in-point. And if she wins the Kentucky primary by a large margin, she may again briefly surpass Obama in the much-touted aggregate popular vote--assuming she is given a pass on her insistence to include Michigan and Florida in her grand total.

Another powerful factor in Clinton's staying power is money. Hillary Clinton's campaign is now approximately $20 million in debt. On several occasions she has loaned the campaign money from her personal fortune, and these loans now total roughly $12 million. Further, Clinton has tapped out nearly every heavy-hitter donor from her list of major supporters and big-name loyalists. Unlike Obama, whose millions of online contributors give an average of roughly $100, Clinton's donor list is made up of people who have given larger sums, most of them donating right up to the federal campaign limit of $2300. Very few on her active list can donate a second time. Meanwhile, Obama's fundraising efforts continue to outpace Clinton's by nearly two-to-one. Obama will have few money problems between now and the convention.


Wednesday, May 14, 2008:

The Clinton campaign was looking forward to savoring at least a few days of sweetness from their huge win in West Virginia yesterday. They needed the good news and they were enjoying a few hours of good press, soaring on what they hoped would be the start of a derailment--or at least some breaking--on Obama's seemingly unstoppable campaign on rails.

But the joy would not last through the 24- hour news cycle. While campaigning in Michigan today Barack Obama was joined onstage in Grand Rapids by Sen. John Edwards, the popular first tier candidate who was pushed to the margins when the Democratic race turned quickly into a two-candidate fight. The long-awaited Edwards endorsement went for Barack Obama. The enthusiastic crowd roared with approval. Edwards began his address by praising Hillary Clinton as a friend and a tenacious fighter for Democratic Party principles. Despite a few boos from the audience, he pressed on. "She is a woman who is, in my judgment, made of steel," Edwards said, "and she's a leader not because of her husband...but because of what she has accomplished." Edwards also spoke of party unity. "We must come together as Democrats and stand up for our principles in the fall." Edwards gave highlights of some of his own stump speeches, talking about health care, poverty, joblessness, veterans, and the dangers of corporate influence in Washington, and using the metaphor of walls to build his case (a wall between public schools and private schools, for example). But after a few minutes, the former Senator cut to the chase.

"The reason I am here tonight," Edwards told the large crowd, "is because the Democratic voters have made their choice and so have I. There is one man who knows that this is a time for bold leadership. There is one man who knows how to create the change--the lasting change--that you have to have to build from the ground up. There is one man who knows in his heart that this is the time to create one America, not two...and that man is Barack Obama."

Rumors had been circulating among the chattering classes for at least a week that Edwards was close to making this endorsement. So the timing of the actual event seemed deliberate, and was widely viewed as a way to take some of the thunder out of Clinton's lopsided success in West Virginia the day before.

There is lengthy and unresolved debate over whether high profile endorsements matter to most voters. Bill Richardson's endorsement of Obama came amidst much fanfare, and there followed several days of intense media coverage with all the predictable analysis, overwrought hashing and rehashing, spin and counter spin. It seemed at times that Richardson was getting more press attention as an ex-candidate than he ever did while his campaign was active, especially once the master of hardball redirect--James Carville--entered the fray to call Richardson's endorsement nothing less than an act of personal betrayal.

But Richardson was an affable and lovable second tier kind of guy. His endorsement carried great weight not because he would bring with him thousands or tens of thousands of potential voters, but because he was so widely viewed as an honorable and decent political figure--and because of his Latino heritage at a time when the Obama camp badly needed a high profile inroad into the Hispanic community.

Edwards, on the other hand, is an unapologetic liberal fighter and an unvarnished populist. His natural voter base is now fully occupied and sealed off by Hillary Clinton, who, according to Time magazine's Joe Klein, now stumps like a reincarnation of Huey Long. For Obama, John Edwards provides a valuable bridgehead to the Old School side of the Democratic Party--the beer-chugging, bowling alley, union oriented, middle class or lower-middle class kind of Democrat that Hillary Clinton champions at virtually every campaign stop--the side of the party that has drifted toward the GOP more often than not since the late 1960s.

Further, Edwards has delegates--genuine, bona fide delegates that are individually worth more than their weight in gold bars, or better still, a hundred cans of gas from the nearest Shell station. In the nip-and-tuck parity of this high stakes delegate battle, Edwards modest total of 19 actually count for something important--assuming that Edwards' delegates choose to support Obama (delegates are not compelled by party rules to maintain their pledge of support to their candidate once that candidate is no longer active, nor are they required to vote in the same direction as their own candidate's endorsement).


Monday, May 19, 2008:

Tomorrow's showdowns in Oregon and Kentucky may be another in this long, tiring series of split decisions. As of tonight, Obama is leading in Oregon and Clinton is leading in Kentucky--a pretty predictable state of affairs. And what that means is that on Wednesday morning, both sides will be feverishly spinning their tales about momentum and the moral high ground.

Obama continues to draw enormous crowds. At a midday appearance in a city park along the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, Obama spoke to a crowd estimated by the Associated Press and other news agencies at between 65,000 and 80,000, arguably one of the largest open-air campaign events in recent history. And in keeping with his recent change of tact, Obama spoke in Portland as if he were the nominee of his party and already in a head-to-head match-up with John McCain. Obama and McCain have been trading more direct punches during the last few days over everything from Social Security to homeland security to the Iraq War.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is campaigning harder than ever. Unfazed by the nearly impossible math, and unconcerned with the growing chorus of voices in her own party calling for her to step aside, she makes as many appearances as possible in Kentucky while attempting to catch a few hours of sleep each night. Her goal, according to some within her campaign, is to continue to add to her popular vote math with a massive win in the Bluegrass State, something akin to last week's big victory in West Virginia. If she can pull off a big win--essentially conceding Oregon to Obama--she can add a few delegates but also solidify her claim to be the "real" front-runner because of her accumulated popular vote totals.

At stops throughout Kentucky, Clinton says it is presumptuous for Barack Obama to retool his campaign for a general election when the nomination isn't his to claim. "You can declare yourself anything," Clinton said, "but if you don't have the votes, it doesn't matter." Clinton, who refuses to concede that Obama may be the nominee-apparent, maintains further that the current delegate count fails to reflect the true will of the party since she has in fact now won more popular votes in the primaries. Obama's supporters counter that the only way Clinton is able to manipulate the math in favor is by rejecting some caucus states and by including Florida and Michigan.


As a sidebar to the posturing over delegates and popular votes, the Washington Post has reported that there are serious discussions under way between the Obama and Clinton campaigns to prepare for a "merger" of fundraising efforts and mechanisms. Though neither side wants to concede, there is the expectation that every dollar will count once the fall campaign hits full stride, and some Democrats want the cash-gathering operations fully integrated and ready to meet the challenge of GOP attacks after the conventions.

Some Democrats, however, have grown concerned that political giving for the Democrats may be reaching a ceiling, as both the Obama and Clinton campaigns have shattered every record during their 18 months of campaigning. Average contributors and heavy-hitters alike may be burned out or broke or both. Still, there is optimism in some fundraising circles that Obama's remarkable effort at generating so many small givers--one million or more donors, by some estimates--will bode well for the Democratic Party in a year when Democrats have been outpacing the GOP by wide margins.

But the pessimists are also undaunted, and their hyperbole still carries weight. Some fear that the worst crisis for the Democratic Party will be unification, not fundraising. Polls continue to indicate a high level of rejection on the part of partisans of one candidate toward the other. Many Obama supporters say they will not vote for Clinton in November, and many Clinton backers say the same of Obama, a clear indication that the negative effects of the long, vitriolic campaign season have taken hold with some voters.

Though it is unlikely that masses of Obama supporters will choose to support John McCain, there is the more likely scenario of millions of potential Democrats simply staying home on Election Day. Still others--many younger voters in particular--may be swayed by Ralph Nader's anti-establishment, anti-corporate appeal. Some analysts have already noted that recent polls show Clinton's negative scores now outstripping her positive indicators.

Conversely, many Clinton supporters say that it is Obama--not Clinton--who is damaging the party. Hillary Clinton has in many ways made Senator McCain's task easier. Earlier in the primary season, when she was battling Obama for the hearts and minds of voters in Ohio and Texas, Clinton made the point repeatedly on the campaign trail that there were essentially only two candidates with the fortitude and the experience to deal with foreign policy and military complexities: John McCain and Hillary Clinton. And her "ready on day one" mantra included the unspoken (and sometimes spoken) point that McCain was also a seasoned and battle tested leader ready for tough, life-and-death decisions. The irony for the Democratic Party is that if Obama wins the nomination, many "Clinton Democrats" may take her at her word and conclude that John McCain as the better choice. This may be especially true in the swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana and Florida.


Another important argument that the Clinton team has been making lately has to do with Obama's dazzling, record-breaking fundraising ability. Sure, Obama has been consistent in his ability to raise more money--in most months twice what the Clinton campaign raises. But Hillary Clinton asks us to look through the lens the other way: Obama is also spending more money, outpacing Clinton by over two-to-one in advertising dollars spent in most states. Why is it that the Illinois Senator can spend that much cash and still not have this thing locked up? Is this lack of results not a fair indicator that Obama is anything but inevitable?

The Obama camp counters that these new givers--those who contribute largely online and give in small increments of $25, $50 and $100--will continue to give even after the convention. Unlike other pretenders to the title of First Internet Candidate (Al Gore in 2000, Howard Dean in 2004), Barack Obama has channeled the decidedly non-traditional energy of his followers into a massive, ongoing tidal wave of financial support. Indeed, the Obama campaign could absorb a 40% decrease in giving and still outpace John McCain's best month--assuming McCain's fundraising efforts stay roughly the same.

This provides much hope for Democratic strategists, and much cause for concern among Republican thinkers and sages.


Still, Senator Clinton remains unfazed by these side issues. She regards these point-counter-points as distractions to her direct pitch to voters and her gut appeal to super delegates. For Clinton, the bottom line is the Electoral College map and that magic number of 270 votes, and she has become more determined than ever to trumpet this fact at every opportunity.

Clinton sees Obama as unable to reach the magic electoral number. On the other hand, according to her campaign, only Clinton has the moxie and the skill to unlock the GOP's control over the red and blue map. Clinton sees no need to sugarcoat the fact the electorate in November may be more conservative than the Democrats voting in primaries and caucuses. Indeed, this has been historically true in nearly every election since the mid-1960s. Clinton also suggests--stopping short of saying it outright--that many white Americans will find themselves unable to vote for Obama in the general election because race may still matter to a measurable percentage of whites.


Since Obama is breaking new ground, and since polling on race can be both slippery and confounding, Obama's true reach into the ranks of white voters may not be known until November 4.

On that day, we'll know whether we have entered into the post-racial world symbolized by Obama and his advocates, or we'll know that Hillary Clinton, the tireless pragmatist, was right all along.

 

Road Show is published each week by Thursday Review publications, copyright 2008

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