Reply #84: Nice post [View All]

[karynnj]

I suspect that "what's wrong" is that this is the first "setback" that the Obama supporters have seen since SuperTuesday - and it was because it was easy to accept the ever decreasing Clinton expectations.

I know this happened to me on super Tuesday evening as well. SuperTuesday was as good as designed for HRC. There were 20+ contests, all on the same day. Some in the most expensive media markets ever. When this part of the schedule was first fixed, many complained that it would be bad for democracy, giving far too much weight to the candidate, with the most name recognition going in, the strongest fund raising ability, a husband who could get media coverage in the flicker of an eyelash, and who had the strongest media contacts. This was to make it impossible for anyone but the inevitable HRC. That was the expectation even in December 2003. But something happened on the way to that coronation.

In the excitement of the big Iowa and South Carolina wins, events that showed both Clintons in negative ways, and the wonderful events around his endorsement by first Senator Kerry and then Kennedy, the momentum led to exaggerated expectations. At the time this momentum started - about 3 or 4 weeks before SuperTuesday, HRC was routinely 20 points or more ahead in most of these states and in the national polls. In the excitement, there were expectations that Obama could surprise everyone and pull off upset after upset. That expectation caused me to feel let down when NY, NJ,MA and CA all went to HRC. It was a few days later before I could see that in fact, Obama had pulled off a stunning victory. He was still standing after SuperTuesday and he had won more delegates.

Not only that, the Clintons then set the expectations going forward. Obama, they said, will win all the remaining February contests, then HRC would catch up in March with major victories in Texas and Ohio. This was a very high bar for Obama. The CW set in that it would be a failure if he lost any - even though HRC was polling ahead in many of the states when it was said Obama had to win them. He actually exceeded even those expectations - winning all of them by at least 17%!

It was after the Nebraska, LA, and Washington results, that the issue of superdelegates using their "superior" judgment reared its ugly head. It was after the Potomac primaries that it became commonly discussed with people trying to explain why this could be fair and good for the party. In reality the size of the Obama victories had made it unlikely that HRC wins could let her surpass his delegate count. When she won the three states, that a month before she said she would win and win big, all by smaller margins than ANY of Obama's last 11 wins, parts of the media almost declared her the front runner! In fact, he still has a nearly prohibitive lead in pledged delegates.

Tuesday night, in an atypically thoughtful and serious comment, Chris Matthews spoke of how what we were seeing was not so much a shift in momentum necessarily - but that there were broadly 2 underlying groups of people voting in the Democratic party - and they were present in differing amount in various states. What we were seeing is the election moving geographically. (Rereading this I am conveying what he said poorly - but I don't think there's a transcript. Taking this a step further, Obama did better in the states that demographically favor HRC, than she did in the states that favor him. That this happened after a week where she attacked him with the "kitchen sink" takes me back to my feelings on SuperTuesday night.

I, like many Obama supporters, wanted our highest expectations met - we wanted what would have been major upset victories on Tuesday. The fact is that that misses the forest for the trees -just as my disappointment on SuperTuesday did. Then the important thing was that he was still standing, this time it was that she failed to gain a significant number of delegates. It also shows that there still is an establishment media bias in her favor. Notice that the coverage was similar to when the NYT called NH an upset victory - because she won by 2% a state where she had been 20 points ahead for a year and where she had most of the political establishment on her side, based on a set of polls a couple of days after the IA win.