Kristol Klear: Obama’s Path to Victory

Once again, a short commentary on Bill Kristol's op-ed in the Monday NY Times (thanks to my friend Micah for giving me the text to work off of, my browser for reasons passing understanding can't access the site)

Kristol's absolutely right in his analysis of what's about to come on Tuesday (not that he's the only one saying it):

Obama leads Clinton by roughly 70 delegates among about 2,000 chosen so far in primaries and caucuses. (There are still about 1,200 delegates outstanding.) Among the superdelegates, Clinton is ahead by about 100 superdelegates among the 300 who have declared a preference (though any of them can change their mind, so a count of them now is in large measure premature). All in all, Clinton seems to be slightly ahead.

She won’t be for long. On Tuesday Obama is expected to prevail in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. So around 9 p.m. Tuesday night, television networks probably will be announcing, for the first time, that Barack Obama holds an unambiguous delegate lead.

The bigger question is where does that leave Clinton, who in spite of the money she bragged about raising after her five million dollar loan became public is still likely strapped for cash?

Clinton’s campaign believes Ohio and Texas will constitute her firewall. Will it hold?

I suspect not.

My friend Micah, who's a Clinton supporter is telling me that Kristol is wrong, that he thinks Clinton's comeback will be in Wisconsin, though he admits:

if she can win wisconsin and use that momentum to take ohio and texas, she's the frontrunner going into spring break
if obama sweeps through march 10, this race is probably over.

Kristol agrees.

Obama will have momentum. He will likely have more money than Clinton for advertising. His ballot performance among Hispanics and working-class whites has generally been improving as the primary season has gone on. He intends to push a more robust economic message that could help him further narrow the gap among lower-income voters.

And an interesting regression analysis at the Daily Kos Web site (poblano.dailykos.com) of the determinants of the Democratic vote so far, applied to the demographics of the Ohio electorate, suggests that Obama has a better chance than is generally realized in Ohio.

Either way, this next week should be a lot of fun.

On a personal side note, the USC Undergraduate Student Government election is going on, and i'm working for the Presidential ticket of Jens Midthun and Tony Jercinovich. Voting is the 19th - 21st of this month, and if one Presidential race isn't exciting enough, for the next ten days or so, i've got two going on...