Notice it doesn't just say win Texas and Ohio, but she has to win both comfortably. Is that even possible with all the momentum Obama has? He'll almost assuredly win all 3 states today, and has the Hawaii caucus and Wisconsin primary next Tuesday. He should win Hawaii due to it being his "home state" and it being a caucus. Wisconsin could be a bit more of a race, lost poll I saw actually had Clinton winning in Wisconsin.

But it comes down to Texas and Ohio. And what does a "comfortable" win mean?

Thoughts?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/02/12/clintons_bid_comes_down_to_texas_and_ohio.html

neither one of them will ever be "comfortable" in Texas, shoot there are more libertarians down here than democrats

Pale...y'all still have an open primary on March 4th though.
So they still have to run!
Now, I know it is a lost cause in November...

1. Certainly those states plus Pennsylvania are the big ones remaining. They will go a long way towards deciding the frontrunner. In the most recent polls I can find (all from late Jan) Clinton leads by 23 in Ohio, 10 in Texas, and 20 in Pennsylvania. The Real Clear politics average of recent polls nationwide has Clinton ahead by 1.6%.

2. The current delegate numbers plus the proportional way the Democrats divide them makes it a practical impossibility for either candidate to reach the magic number of 2025 just with pledged delegates. It will almost certainly go to the convention unless something big happens.

If nominated, I will run. If I win, I will serve. If I win, I will crush this planet under a Iron Yoke of Oppression that will consist of the following rules:


Women from the age of 30 and below are not allowed to wear anything but bikinis. There will be a weight exemption.

Firearms will be sold only in unattended vending machines. In airports. And schools.

Sundaes every Friday!!! Extra caramel, too!

The llama will be our national bird.

Why yes there are!!!

Yoss:
What about the concerns of her donors and surrogates, that if she does not win Texas and/or Ohio by comfortable margins, that her campaign is done?

I hereby nominate X!

She probably does need to win those states to ulitmately get the nomination, but "comfortably" and "or she's out" appear to be the opinion of one person.

If she splits those states, is she done Yoss?

I don't think it depends on winning the states as much as what the overall delegate split is. But talk of the candidate with the overall national lead in polling being done is wishful thinking on your part.

Yoss.
Obama is nowhere close to being done.
Please reference the Feb. 8-9 USAToday/Gallup poll that put Obama ahead by 3 percentage points — 47 percent to 44 percent — among 525 Democrats and Democrat leaners. (+/- 5 percent)

Where on earth did that come from? Certainly nothing I said.

I said earlier that NEITHER candidate can wrap it up with pledged delegates. This is the closest contest in many decades. I'm not the one talking about it being done, you are.

The following is originally from the NYTimes and copied from MSNBC Website.

Yesterday Hillary was being criticized for not controlling her aides and then firing her campaign chair for not controlling funds correctly. The comments in the cooler were - if she can't control her own campaign funds, how can she run the country, etc.

If you read the following, can't we say of Obama that if he is so naive as to think that race would not be an issue in the election, that he is not capable of running the country either? Anyone who is deluded enough to think that this country, that is splintered in many ways, would not consider race to be a major issue is most likely not ready to be President.

WASHINGTON - It was November 2006 when Senator Barack Obama first gathered friends and advisers at a Washington law firm to brainstorm about what it would take for him to win the presidency.

Those who attended the meeting said the mix of excitement and trepidation at times felt asphyxiating, as the group weighed the challenges of such a long shot. Would Mr. Obama be able to raise enough money? What kind of toll would a campaign take on him and his family? What kind of organization could he build?

Halfway into the session, Broderick Johnson, a Washington lawyer and informal adviser to Mr. Obama, spoke up. “What about race?” he asked.

Mr. Obama’s dismissal was swift and unequivocal.

He had been able to navigate racial politics in Illinois, Mr. Obama told the group, and was confident he could do so across the nation. “I believe America is ready,” one aide recalled him saying.The race issue got all of five minutes at that meeting, setting what Mr. Obama and his advisers hoped would be the tone of a campaign they were determined not to define by the color of his skin.

As he heads into a fresh round of contests Tuesday, the Potomac primaries, in a tight rivalry with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and with an impressive record of victories across the nation in which he drew significant white votes and overwhelming black support, he claims to have accomplished that goal. Some South Carolina supporters summed up his broad appeal and message about transcending differences in a chant: “Race Doesn’t Matter.”

Glimpses inside the Obama campaign show, though, that while the senator had hoped his colorblind style of politics would lift the country above historic racial tensions, from Day 1 his bid for the presidency has been pulled into the thick of them. While his speeches focus on unifying voters, his campaign has learned the hard way that courting a divided electorate requires reaching out group by group.

Campaign zigged and zagged
Instead of following a plotted course, Mr. Obama’s campaign has zigged and zagged, reacting to outside forces and internal differences between the predominantly white team of top advisers and the mostly black tier of aides.

The dynamic began the first day of Mr. Obama’s presidential bid, when white advisers encouraged him to withdraw an invitation to his pastor, whose Afro-centric sermons have been construed as antiwhite, to deliver the invocation at the official campaign kickoff. Then, when his candidacy was met by a wave of African-American suspicion, the senator’s black aides pulled in prominent black scholars, business leaders and elected officials as advisers.

Aides to Mr. Obama, who asked not to be identified because the campaign would not authorize them to speak to the press, said he stayed away from a civil rights demonstration and did not publicize visits to black churches when he was struggling to win over white voters in Iowa. Then, a month after Representative John Lewis of Georgia endorsed Mrs. Clinton, setting off concerns about black voters’ ambivalence toward Mr. Obama, the campaign deployed his wife, Michelle, whose upbringing on the South Side of Chicago was more familiar to many blacks than Mr. Obama’s biracial background.

The campaign’s strategy in the first contests left Mr. Obama vulnerable with Latinos, which hurt him in California and could do the same in the Texas primary on March 4.

Faulted by Latino leaders as not being visible enough in their communities and not understanding what issues resonated with immigrants, the campaign has been trying hard to catch up, scheduling more face-to-face meetings with voters, snaring endorsements from Latino politicians and fine-tuning his message.

Mr. Obama has resisted any effort to suggest that the presidential primaries were breaking along racial lines.

“There are not a lot of African-Americans in Nebraska the last time I checked, or in Utah or in Idaho, areas where I probably won some of my biggest margins,” he said Sunday in an NPR interview.

“There’s no doubt that I’m getting more African-American votes,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that the race is dividing along racial lines. You know, in places like Washington State we won across the board, from men, from women, from African-Americans, from whites and from Asians.”


It seems that we have a bunch of people running for President who had no clue as to what they were going to be up against. To not be prepared for what they would face is ludicrous. This goes for the Dem's and Repub's. Do we really want someone running the country who can't even foresee what will happen on the campaign trail?

#1. I am not talking about it being done, people inside the Clinton camp are speculating that.

#2. I was being sarcastic because you said, "But talk of the candidate with the overall national lead in polling being done is wishful thinking on your part." Obama is beginning to take the lead in national polls, hence my sarcasm about Obama not being done.