Wednesday, March 5, 2008

It's all about the numbers...

On Feb. 29, I made this prediction about the outcome of Tuesday on my livejournal:

My predictions based on everything I've read so far...

Obama takes Vermont.
Texas is a statistical tie, but Obama takes more delegates.
(He's ahead in the TX polls farther than he was in Wisconsin, but I'm erring on the side of caution on this one due to too many unknowns).

Clinton takes Rhode Island.
Clinton takes Ohio (but by a fairly slim margin).

Outcome: Obama maintains delegate lead. Clinton gets bragging rights for RI and OH.



She won Ohio by a higher margin than I expected (I was figuring around 5 points), but other than that I was pretty close.

What surprised me though is that my prediction held even after the "kitchen sink" was launched.
I feel pretty good today, actually.
Obama has the same delegate lead and the math favors him clearly.

Clinton has to win every single contest from now on in order to close the delegate gap.
Possible, but highly unlikely.

Wyoming and Mississippi are both favored for Obama this weekend based on his past performance in the south and with caucuses.
There's a full 6 weeks between now and Pennsylvania.
I'm predicting now that he will loose PA, but he will cut down Clinton's lead there significantly.


Ok, now it's time to put on my "campaign advisor" hat...

Obama clearly needs to step up his game on two fronts.
1) Countering the "kitchen sink".
Not in the sense of fighting fire with fire. It's not his style, and frankly, he's not very good at that.
Rather he needs to debunk these attacks swiftly and assuredly. He did well countering the "red phone" ad, but he really tripped up on "CanNAFTA".
That gave Clinton an opening to exploit that gave her a bigger margin in OH (where the economy was the biggest issue).
He also needs to stop trying to ignore it and put the Rezko issue to bed definitively.

His campaign also needs to put more pressure on Clinton to a) release her tax returns, b) release her white house records, and c) prove her own "red phone" worthiness.

So far it looks like he's getting on that train.

2) He needs to keep a closer leash on his surrogates.
Goolsbee should not have been able to talk to Canada for any reason without Obama knowing about it.
The issue here wasn't the alleged "wink wink". That was debunked all around.
The problem was Obama stating that no meeting took place.
Technically this was true since the question was whether a meeting took place with the embassy (there was no meeting with the embassy, it was with the consulate), but Obama should have been better informed on exactly what happened prior to giving any kind of press conference.

I should also point out that Obama now has a move that he should exploit with respects to way Clinton jumped on CanNAFTA.
If he first, definitively puts the issue to bed, then paints her as being overly negative by jumping on it before she knew all the facts, he can turn this around.

2 comments:

A Red Mind in a Blue State said...

Maybe the Clintons don't want to release their returns 'cause Bill made money on cattle futures from Tyson!

Big Yellow Forehead said...

I think you're right about pressuring Hillary. If they're not going to pressure her, they should at least exploit the fact that she's not releasing them. She's obviously hiding something. I'm glad that he finally said something during the last debate about her "experience" in the White House and how she is cherry-picking. Someone needs to ask her if that "experience" includes stealing from the White House!