Fret Not

Two good takes on last night. Below some excerpts. First up, Josh Marshall:

But I think all these competing scenarios make one point clear. The only arguments for one side or the other being a winner here come down to airy and finally meaningless arguments about expectations. And the result tells a different tale. It's about delegates. It's dead even. You've got two well-funded candidates who've demonstrated an ability to power back from defeats. And neither is going anywhere.

The flip side of the proportional representation in delegates is that not only does it allow a challenger like Obama not to get put away early, it also makes it difficult to put away an opponent late. The conventional wisdom is that Obama will do well in this weekend's and next Tuesday's contests. But if he does, proportionality will reign there too. It's hard to see where this doesn't go all the way to the convention.

And John Cole:

Obama won more states, won more delegates, improved his numbers with key groups, widened his lead among minority voters, and over-all, outperformed Hillary. Period. The fact that the Clinton established machine has not been able to pull ahead should be a real clear sign of how much trouble they are in right now. This race was Hillary’s to lose, and last night she may have started doing just that. You will hear the Clinton camp talking repeatedly about winning the big prize- California. Winning California is irrelevant, as a Democrat is going to win Cali in the general regardless who it is.

Obama now has a clear financial lead, momentum, and the delegate lead, and we are heading in to a number of states where he can compete. I am not drinking the kool-aid, folks, I think I have a pretty clear grasp of where we are right now. Obama is surging and the Hillary camp is worried. You will be able to see it in their faces over the next few days.

Standoff

Regardless of the spin that comes out of the campaigns tomorrow, Super Tuesday, at least for the Democrats, was a draw. Yes, Clinton got the big ones (NY, CA, and, in a sharp rebuke of John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, Mass), but Obama got crushing wins in all parts of the country, stole a state in Clinton's back yard (Conn.) and scored a come from behind win in Missouri.

This thing is going to keep going for awhile. I had a bad feeling when the early numbers started rolling in, but things didn't get out of hand. With some states coming up for Obama that look good, I think he's got to be happy with tonight's results.

On the Republican side...can we call it already? McCain is going to be the nominee. He got big wins in NY, CA, and Missouri and Mike Huckabee cut Mitt Romney's legs out from under him.

Super Tuesday

It's like Christmas Eve for political junkies. 22 states go to the polls tomorrow on a day that might end with the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees basically decided. Since my preferred candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, is still behind Sen. Hillary Clinton in most of the polling, I am just hoping for the equivalent of a draw tomorrow. Clinton's vast name recognition, her long standing in Democratic politics, her formidable campaign machine and, yes, Bill, have helped her maintain a strong lead in most of the big states voting tomorrow (the biggest prizes being California and her home state of New York). Obama has been riding a huge wave that started last weekend with the Kennedy family endorsements, and continued into this week with endorsements from the Los Angeles Times and La Opinion, an influential Latino newspaper. The Obama family was all over California with a star-studded this past weekend, as John Kerry and Ted Kennedy rallied in Nor Cal while Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Caroline Kennedy, and Maria Shriver spread the message in Southern California. There was this viral ad that is still burning up the interwebs. And if visible canvassing the day before an election means anything, I saw LOTS of Obama folks out after work today in Palo Alto and back in San Francisco.

And yet I fear it's all too little, too late. If Obama comes out of the day down by 100 delegates or less, I'd consider it a victory. But the polls have been off so much so far and I think the closing of the gap might prove to be an illusion. We'll see. I would hate to see the dream fade tomorrow, but I'm worried.

A Rare Friday Night Post

And on politics, no less...

So, I've not commented on it, but the pundit class seems eager to anoint Hillary and ready to pen the epitaphs for the rest of the candidates in the Democratic presidential race.

Andrew Sullivan wonders, though, which other candidate is able to turn out a crowd (possibly 20,000 or more) a year before the election?



The typical rejoinder is that events like this, spectacles in their own right, with wide cross sections of the population (check the comments at this post from the Caucus blog here for observations from event attendees) aren't doing anything to move Obama's poll numbers. Like Sullivan, I think what people don't get is that this DOES mean something. The "conventional wisdom" thinks that this groundswell won't turn into votes, but I'm not so sure. This is a change election in a lot of ways. I'll go on record now and say that, absent some 9/11 level event, the Democrats will probably win the White House. Having said that, Matt Yglesias makes a point about Hillary (and her inner circle) that I think a lot of people are overlooking:

One of the things that worries me about the prospect of Mark Penn once again becoming king of the political hill is that his approach to politics seems antithetical to this concept of mass engagement. Instead, it's a model where you break the population down into the smallest possible groups, and assemble a winning coalition of stitched-together wedges of people each engaged through their own micro-initiative. That's not all there is to Hillary Clinton or to the broader case of Clinton-style centrism. Indeed, it's quite different from (in some ways the reverse of) the initial critique of interest-group liberalism with which the DLC launched itself. And in the best moments of her campaign -- the health care plan, the day care plan -- Clinton has completely gone beyond the inane politics of "are archery moms the new soccer moms?" but all that's been in no small part responsive to the new new politics of John Edwards, Andy Stern, and Barack Obama.

I think that a lot of people, in reality, don't WANT the kind of politics that Hillary represents anymore. It's clear that, despite her negatives, Hillary also has some very strong factors in her favor (name recognition, a history of being a competent senator from an important state, and that guy named Bill) that are adding to her invincibility myth. But, to me, this ignores the fact that people are tired of combative, polarized politics, which is exactly what Hillary's election would ensure. Obama's campaign is stirring something in young people that we as a nation need to be able to harness to shape a better future.

Update: Oliver Willis touches on the importance of the youth vote to Obama's campaign.