For days now, I've been listening to pundits say that whomever won California would be considered ahead no matter what else happened.  And what happened?  Clinton won it and rather decisively, so now California is no longer the big prize.  I'm shocked.

Going forward, Obama has an edge in the Potomac primaries, but Clinton has an edge in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.  Those are bigger prizes, so it swings back to Clinton; the media won't say it, it'll take March to show it to the rest of the country, but that is where things are going.

Obama won 12 of 22 states -- but not California, the day's most coveted prize. [...]

Clinton won big in the Northeast: her home state of New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. [...]

Although there's still a long way to go and the media are calling it a draw, it wasn't a good night for Obama IMO.

He got more states, but campaign needed to score some of the following to be meaningful to maintaining or increasing his momentum:

More delegates (Clinton got them)
California (to HRC)
Massachusetts (HRC's, after the big story was all those Uber Dems endorsing Obama)

He didn't even knock HRC down, which he should have given that, after the debate, she got busy pummeling BushCo but he was still talking about what was wrong with HRC.

No big deal on its own, but if Changing the Discourse is his big theme, continuing to snipe after scoring the agreement from his rivals to play nice is just lame.

He was dialing back expectations yesterday and his speech at his headquarters was lacklustre. I still like HIM (and Hillary, too) but after all the free publicity about Obamania he should have done better. Someone in the other thread recommended this item at the Washington Note.

Looking at this with a former organizer's eye, the kind of supporters his campaign is drawing are notoriously unreliable. The campaign needs to score bragging rights beyond exciting events or it's just going to fizzle on Election Day.

missouri, oklahoma, tennessee, arkansas all had huge margins of dems turning out over republicans

georgia was slightly more dems than repugs.  

Anyway, one of the things people should keep in mind, if Obama wins, he needs to win in such a way that the Michigan and Florida delegates, if re-instated, would not change or take away his victory.

If, in the end, he wins because of this unresolved issue, because, in this one primary, for whatever reason, a couple states were ignored, it will have long lasting ramifications within the party.

However, ever since SC, Obama has gotten tons of positive media attention, high profile endorsements, etc. While Hillary (or especially Bill) was roundly trashed. It seemed impossible for her to 'win' a newscycle. The pundits were drooling over her poll numbers going down.

Yet, despite all this, her base remains stable and turns out for her. Whereas with his movement/momentum campaign, there is a danger for Obama that the excitement will wear off. Maybe not even by much, but enough to make him lose enough delegates to hand it to Clinton.

But, it's on to Saturday, when Obama is favored to win several more states. Which will give him yet more positive media attention. So who knows. Maybe there's just enough momentum left for him to clinch it.

I am just sick about this.  "He won more states" is more important than "she won the popular vote and more delegates."  The folks who scream disenfranchisement if a step leading to a polling place is broken have no problem at all with saying Obama "won."

I think Howard Dean needs to step in and tell Obama that Hillary has the Superdelegates and he needs to take a VP slot instead of dragging this out.  Which is what Obama should have done in the first place.  Knowing what I know about Hillary Clinton, I would bet money that she offered Obama the VP slot a year ago and he passed her up because he is so arrogant.  The great uniter dividing the party.

And why is it a good thing that she wins the hispanic vote but its a bad thing that he wins the black vote?  You imply that the only reason he wins is the black vote.  Huh?  Then why isn't the opposite true of her - the only reason she wins is the hispanic vote. And also remember this, there are a lot more black voters in our party than hispanic voteres.

I am Southern and a life long Democrat and I can tell you that the black vote is of tremendous importance to our party.  We can't win without an energized black vote.  Just look at the Gore and Kerry campaigns if you don't believe that.  As for the hispanic voters, they will vote Democratic even if Hillary is not the candidate because they have turned against the Republicans.  But the blacks will have lost the wind in their sails and will not be motivated to vote.

As for HIllary winning New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California, Obama will win them too if he is our nominee.  And don't give me this stuff about winning these small states is meaningless.  You wouldn't be saying that if Hillary had won them and you know it.  Somehow that would have been translated as "her wide appeal."  

Your post last night about Obama's bad night reminded me a lot of Bill Clinton saying about
South Carolina that Jesse Jackson had won two elections there.  Everyone  saw his statement as racist and so is your saying that the reason  he won so many states is the black vote.  I say Hooray for that.  We need every vote we can get and none is more valuable that another.  No wonder so many people have turned to Obama.  Hillary's followers are just more of the same old same old - the kind of message that has cost us the last two presidential elections. We always choose the wrong, unelectable candidate.  And you want us to do it again.  Not this time!

I for one am sick of being told to be afraid.  I am sick of being lied to.  I am sick of being depressed about our country and the peole who are in charge.  I don't want a candidate who has twenty steps to go though before we  can get out of Iraq or have health care.  She niggled health care to death the first time she was in chage of such a program and I have no doubt she will do it again.  

If I was in the Obama camp, I'd be wishing those delegates counted and working to win in spite of them.