The Obama algebra
by WonkoKevin
Hillary goes 50 MPH down a road. Barack leaves 20 minutes later and travels at 60 MPH. How long will it take Barack to catch up with Hillary?
That is the dominant metaphor for the Democratic race now. Few predict that Obama will win outright on Tsunami Tuesday, but there is a strong feeling in the Wonkosphere that Obama has the momentum, if not the plurality.He has closed the gap in national polls, and he won the endorsement of Susan Eisenhower: Given Obama’s support among young people, I believe that he will be most invested in defending the interests of these rising generations and, therefore, the long-term interests of this nation as a whole. Without his leadership, our children and grandchildren are at risk of growing older in a marginalized country that is left to its anger and divisions. Such an outcome would be an unacceptable legacy for any great nation. Marc Ambinder reports on Obama crowd sizes:
The last time the United States had an open election was 1952. My grandfather was pursued by both political parties and eventually became the Republican nominee. Despite being a charismatic war hero, he did not have an easy ride to the nomination. He went on to win the presidency — with the indispensable help of a “Democrats for Eisenhower” movement. These crossover voters were attracted by his pledge to bring change to Washington and by the prospect that he would unify the nation. It is in this great tradition of crossover voters that I support Barack Obama’s candidacy for president. If the Democratic Party chooses Obama as its candidate, this lifelong Republican will work to get him elected and encourage him to seek strategic solutions to meet America’s greatest challenges. To be successful, our president will need bipartisan help.
Obama gets 15,000 in Ada County (Boise), Idaho. That’s 7 times the number who caucused in Idaho in 2004.
Obama gets 20,000 in Minneapolis…
In today’s NYT, Frank Rich draws the Obama-JFK comparison:
Richard Goodwin knew in 1960 that all it took was “a single significant failure” by Kennedy or “an act of political daring” by his opponents for his man to lose — especially in the general election, where he faced the vastly more experienced Nixon, the designated heir of a popular president. That’s as good a snapshot as any of where we are right now, while we wait for the voters to decide if they will take what Mrs. Clinton correctly describes as a “leap of faith” and follow another upstart on to a new frontier.
The Carpetbagger Report discusses the challenge Obama has moving out of retail politics:
Obama seems to excel when he has time. In Iowa, for example, voters got to “kick the tires and look under the hood” of a large Democratic field. Candidates showed up at their homes. They got to ask questions, get answers, and interact with the field the way voters in other states can’t. These folks, after getting up close and personal with all of them for almost a year, and looking each of them in the eye, preferred Obama to Edwards and Clinton in a big way. Come Tuesday, the dynamic is reversed — so long retail politics, hello wholesale. For Obama, this creates an even more daunting challenge. First, he faces a candidate with all the benefits of an incumbent in nearly two-dozen contests in which she starts out with a lead (Illinois is the exception). Second, as Corn explained, “At this stage, the candidates will be reaching voters mainly through commercials. A television spot is a fine medium for a candidate to share his or her resume, to list his or her accomplishments. It is much tougher to convey the intangibles of hope, faith, and transcendence in a 30- or 60-second spot. The bottom line: advantage to Clinton.”
Ambinder chimes in again on the Obama algebra:
If Obama can win enough delegates Tuesday to just keep it close enough to stay in the game then the calendar in the period before March 4th sets up pretty well for him. The next contests are spread out and give him a chance to build momentum once again leading into March 4th. To wit: Feb 9: Washington caucus (he does well in caucus states, and Seattle is educated, upscale mecca) Feb 12: Virginia is diverse, with Tim Kaine endorsement. Maryland is diverse, big black vote. DC is his for the taking. This one night alone will bring Big Mo on TV (a Tuesday night in prime time). Feb 19: Wisconsin is anti-war, lots of students. Obama could compete here. Hawaii on same night gives him padded win and nice personal storyline. That’s it until March 4th. He could go in to that date with renewed momentum. Because of this I predict Clinton team will challenge him to a series of debates in the period between Tuesday and March 4th. They can’t let him float back up like this. Key to the whole thing is to not get blown out on Tuesday - split just enough delegates with her so the media keeps him “in the game.” After Tuesday Clinton team may have to face the fact that he is still alive while many of her big states (NY, NJ, CA, MA, FL) will now be in the rearview mirror…
Finally, Chris Bowers at Open Left reports on some interesting analysis concerning where Obama’s coalition is coming from:
Poblano’s analysis means that Barack Obama is winning virtually all Dean voters from 2004, and a plurality of Clark voters from 2004. In other words, Barack Obama has combined the coalitions of the two main netroots fueled candidates in 2004. It certainly shows, too, given that Obama has raised more money from small donors than Dean and Clark combined from four years ago, and that he is drawing crowds even larger than the ones for Dean that caused the media to ooo and aaahhh four years ago.
So, let’s see here: a campaign that uses extensive internet organizing, huge campaign rallies, heavy youth and creative class support, a record breaking number of small donors, a fulfilled promise of record turnout, and combination of Dean and Clark voters to force the best possible candidate the Democratic establishment could offer down to the wire?. Correct me if I am wrong, but in terms of structure, that seems to be exactly what the emergence of the progressive blogosphere suggested could happen in a Democratic Presidential primary in 2004. Just because the particular campaign in question comes from a candidate a couple dozen well-known bloggers didn’t seemingly single-handedly pluck from relative obscurity doesn’t mean the Obama campaign isn’t using the exact same energy and exact same new, political trajectory that the blogosphere was riding back in 2003-2004.
Barack Obama’s campaign is the manifestation of the contemporary progressive movement after it exploded from its original early adaptors and disseminated widely into American culture at large. What Obama is doing would simply not be possible without the explosion of new progressive activism that started in the late 1990’s with such seemingly disparate events as the founding of MoveOn.org, the Seattle WTO protests, and the multiple outrages over the 2000 Presidential election. Hell, no matter the problems we have with him at different time, Obama was really the first netroots candidate to be elected to the Senate. In Chicago in early 2004, I saw him use the Dean coalition plus African-Americans (and a colossal, timely, flame-out by a self-funded front-runner) to win his Senate primary. Obama was also the only top-tier candidate who opposed the war from the start this time around, and I don’t think you will find Obama’s campaign is to the right of Dean’s on pretty much anything.
It feels like the butterfly effect, the Frankenstein monster, or some sort of self-mutating computer virus. The political zeitgeist that the progressive blogosphere first seized upon five or six years ago was released into the population at large and came back, unexpectedly, as the Barack Obama campaign. That energy certainly didn’t turn out with the same rhetorical approach it started with, but otherwise it is nearly structurally identical. In other words, the whole people-powered thing turned out exactly the way we planned it would, only that it sounds a little different. It is like a bunch of loose molecules forming a cloud, once the energy that started almost ten years ago grew, it took on a like of its own, reached a critical mass, and seized onto the first available nucleus. Soon enough, we will find out whether that could covers the Democratic Party in a flood.
