Over?

The consensus in the mainstream media is that Hillary Clinton lost any chance for the Democratic presidential nomination yesterday, thanks to a big defeat in North Carolina and only a wafer-thin victory in Indiana. Yesterday's results pretty much mirror the primary season as a whole: Barack Obama's victories have tended to come with wider margins than Clinton's, and that means more delegates for the Illinois senator.

In retrospect, the biggest disappointment for Clinton over the past five months may have been that her win in California, the biggest state to vote on Super Tuesday, didn't make her the prohibitive front-runner. Instead, Obama raised eyebrows with his landslide victories in the Super Tuesday caucuses, including Colorado, Kansas, and Minnesota. As I've noted before, elections are almost always won by the candidate with the fewest geographical "black holes" -- states, counties, or cities where he or she gets absolutely walloped. Obama had a couple of states like that (Arkansas, Oklahoma, Rhode Island), but Clinton had a lot more (including the belt of states from Maryland to Louisiana and most of the Rocky Mountain states).

More analysis to come in the next few weeks...

Comments

[John's Son]

I suspect Iran is going to have a complete melt down of their nuclear weapons program and the aggressive action towards the U.S.A. or will significantly reduce the BS its been putting out because that’s exactly what they did the day Ronald Reagan took office and promptly released our people. I remember sitting on an aircraft carrier with a significant number of marines anxiously waiting for Ronnie’s ok to have us introduce ourselves to them. I believe that John Mc Cain is the man that will besides driving the fear of god back into the Iranians will reestablish our Ronald Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt foreign policy of do not tread on us or our friends please.

[Chris VanHaight]

I also think that it is over for Hillary. Even if the Florida results were counted and they split Michigan, Barak would still lead in the popular vote tally and in pledged delegates. Of course, even if he was willing to concede the Florida results to Hillary, he'll stall until at least after the Oregon primary, so as to lock up the pledged delegate lead and make sure that he does not hand her an ounce of momentum by mistake. He would also most likely wait until the Rules Committee meeting at the end of May to make his "generous" offer.