OUR VIEW THE primary Next Door
Weekly flaps fail to derail Obama campaign
Saturday, May 10, 2008
The Barack Obama campaign does not appear to be collapsible.
That's the real news coming out of Tuesday's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.
Extras
Some people, in watching Sen. Hillary Clinton, have wondered what sort of strategy she has for coming from behind to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Even before this week, the numbers did not seem to be there for her.
In truth, her strategy has been to hope for an Obama collapse, for lightning to strike in a way that changes everything. The premise, articulated by Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland even before the Ohio primary, was this:
Sen. Obama, being so new to the national scene, has not been vetted the way other candidates have been. And his support, being based on so little knowledge of him, might turn out to be fragile.
Well, after that, lightning did strike, in the form of a certain pastor from Chicago. When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright thrust himself back into the national limelight with explosive statements before the most recent primaries, some pundits said that if Sen. Obama's run collapsed, the collapse might be dated from that point.
And there were other problems, too; remember the flap about the candidate calling certain white voters "bitter"?
There were, indeed, enough such flaps that if the Obama campaign had collapsed, the pundits would now be confidently telling us that the flaps were the reason.
But Sen. Obama won big in North Carolina and lost only marginally in Indiana. His support turned out to be firm.
By now this newcomer has almost as much claim to the label "survivor" as his opponent. He has been through a campaign as brutal and long as they come. He's looking good.
Apparently, the voters of Indiana and North Carolina are not moved by the flaps-of-the-week that enthrall the political classes. The flaps flopped.
So did political gimmickry. To top off all the other advantages she had over the last couple of weeks, Sen. Clinton took the easy, presumably popular, stand on gasoline prices, with prices soaring. She offered drivers a respite from federal gas taxes. Even that didn't help.
Still, there is uncomfortable news for Sen. Obama. He continues to be relatively weak with certain white voters. The rural parts of Indiana that are across the border from the Miami Valley, for example, went for Sen. Clinton, even as the big urban areas (and college towns) tended toward Sen. Obama. The Democrats have to hope that the racial divisions in the primary will dissipate in the general election.
The voters of Indiana were even more surprised than those in Ohio had been earlier to find themselves with a role in the primaries. A few months ago, the possibility that voters in such a small, Republican state, with so a late a primary, would be important was out of the question.
Ironically, though, by going very slightly for Sen. Clinton, the Hoosier Democrats boosted Sen. Obama. That's because of what's happened in earlier primaries. Tiny victories in small states just aren't enough for Sen. Clinton now.
Nor is the lightning strategy promising. Right now, lightning just seems to be making Sen. Obama stronger.
— Cox News Service
