Clinton may be hopeful, but Obama rolls on
By Adam Nagourney and Carl Hulse
Published: May 2, 2008
INDIANAPOLIS: Have Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's chances of winning
the Democratic presidential nomination improved as Senator Barack
Obama has struggled through his toughest month of this campaign?
After weeks in which her candidacy was seen by many party leaders as a
long shot at best, Clinton's advisers argued strenuously on Thursday
that the answer was most assuredly yes, that the outlook was turning
in her favor in a way that gave her a real chance.
Still, despite a series of trials that have put Obama on the defensive
and illustrated the burdens he might carry in a fall campaign, the
Obama campaign is rolling along, leaving Clinton with dwindling
options.
Obama continues to pick up the sup****t of superdelegates =97 elected
Democrats and party leaders =97 at a quicker pace than Clinton.
On Thursday, he got a boost from a high-profile defection: Joe Andrew,
a former Democratic national chairman appointed by former President
Bill Clinton, said he had changed his mind and would back Obama. Even
after Clinton's victory in Pennsylvania, Obama has held on to a solid
lead in pledged delegates, those selected by the voting in primaries
and caucuses.
Although Clinton has cut into Obama's popular vote lead, it would be
difficult for her to overtake him without counting the disputed
results in Florida and perhaps Michigan.
By and large, the group that matters most at this point =97 the
uncommitted superdelegates, who are likely to hold the balance of
power =97 still seem to view their decision the way the Obama campaign
would like them to see it. They suggest that they are more sympathetic
to the argument that they should follow the will of the voters as
expressed by the delegates amassed by the candidates when the primary
season is done rather than following Clinton's admonitions to select
the candidate they think would best be able to defeat Senator John
McCain and the Republicans in November.
"It's about the numbers, and the numbers are the numbers," said Chris
Redfern, the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party and an uncommitted
superdelegate. "It's not about hand-wringing. And Senator Obama has
the lead."
None of this is to say that Clinton has run out of string. She has
waged a spirited and focused campaign in the past month, a period in
which Obama has at times seemed to lose energy.
Several polls signal that Obama's troubles have shaken the confidence
in the Democratic electorate, and it is too early to measure fully how
much he may have been hurt by a round of incendiary appearances by his
former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
A big Clinton victory in Indiana on Tuesday and in West Virginia the
next week could, combined with her victories in Pennsylvania and Ohio,
give her ammunition to say that Obama would fail to draw blue-collar
sup****t against McCain in the fall.
David Plouffe, the manager of Obama's campaign, said that if Clinton
won 55 percent of the remaining pledged delegates =97 an assumption he
called "overly generous" =97 she would still need about two-thirds of
the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to reach the 2,025 delegates
needed to secure the nomination.
Clinton's advisers did not dispute Plouffe's calculation, in effect
acknowledging the enormousness of their task.
Senator Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who ran for
president and has now endorsed Obama, said that Clinton still had a
chance but that it was something of a long shot. "I still don't think
the math is there," Dodd said.
Most of what chance Clinton has rests on her ability to convince
superdelegates that Obama would be a flawed candidate in the general
election. In recent weeks, he has certainly struggled with a series of
problems =97 some of his own making =97 which has made it easier for her
to make that case.
Many superdelegates said they were queasy about Obama and his former
pastor, and fearful of how the issue might be used in the fall. Still,
they said they were not convinced that that made him a weaker general-
election candidate than Clinton, or at least not convinced enough to
cast a vote that could be ****trayed as overturning the will of
Democratic primary voters and blocking the effort by Obama to become
the nation's first African-American president.
Andrew, the former national party chairman, said in an interview that
Obama's response to his problems with Wright convinced him that Obama
was the better choice
"What's happened here is how he has handled each one of these crises =97
because you know there are going to be crises =97 has made him an even
stronger candidate," Andrew said.
Obama has also picked up superdelegate sup****t from Democratic members
of Congress in relatively conservative districts =97 despite efforts by
Republicans to make Obama a liability for Democrats running in
competitive districts, including campaigns for two open seats in the
South that are under way.
Representative Baron Hill of Indiana and Representative Ben Chandler
of Kentucky endorsed Obama, for example, and both face the likelihood
of stiff Republican challenges in the fall.
Beyond the resistance Clinton is facing to the electability argument,
there is clear concern among Democrats =97 some unaligned, some
sup****ting Obama =97 that the fight is hurting the party and should come
to an end soon. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who is
sup****ting Obama, said she saw an increasing anxiousness among
superdelegates to bring the nomination fight to a conclusion.
"The delegate math is not going to change significantly," McCaskill
said. "She is a formidable candidate, she has passionate sup****t, but
I don't see the people who are for Obama wavering one bit."
Clinton advisers acknowledged that the path to the nomination was
steadily uphill, and to some extent dependent upon factors outside
their control =97 yet it was a path nonetheless, they said.
First, Clinton must win the Indiana primary as a means of
demonstrating to sup****ters and donors that she is building on
momentum after Pennsylvania, they said, and she must run strongly
enough in North Carolina to avoid the perception that she did no
better than an even split. Then she must win in a state that catches
people by surprise, like Oregon or Montana.
The Clinton campaign must also persuade the Democratic National
Committee to seat at least some of the delegates she won in the
disputed votes in Michigan and Florida. It must also persuade
superdelegates to include the popular votes cast in Florida, and maybe
in Michigan, in calculating the overall tally.
Without that latter success, it would be all but impossible for her to
match Obama in the popular vote total. But that is a tough sell
because since neither candidate campaigned in those states after they
held their primaries earlier than allowed by the party. Obama's name
did not even appear on the Michigan ballot.
One of Clinton's chief strategists, Geoff Garin, said the campaign
hoped to end the primary season on June 3 lifted by a series of
victories, and by coming close in the pledged delegate totals and the
popular vote =97 though he declined to say what close would be.
"We'll know it when we see it," Garin said.
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