Obama's Huge Win; Romney's Huge Loss

The Token Dem in our office is an Obama precinct captain, having committed to Obama after Chris Dodd dropped out of the race.

Yesterday as we were seeing the initial east coast results come in, he said that the evening before, all Obama precinct captains had received an expectation control email from Obama Central that discussed the great advances the campaign has made in the last month, and concluded that if they finished Super Tuesday within 100 delegates of Hillary, they would consider it a strong showing.

Well:

David Plouffe, on a conference call just now, offered the Obama campaign's estimate of where they stand at this moment in terms of delegates.

"We are, in terms of delegates, ahead currently: about 606 to 534, in terms of pledged delegates awarded tonight," he said.

The Obama campaign's delegate guy, Jeff Berman, caught and corrected the inaccurate early reports of Nevada's delegate count, so they've got credibility on this count. (Politico) (Note: AP puts the tally at Clinton 739/Obama 700)

An explanation of how this happened may be found in the Token Dem's trail to Obama. Candidate-less after Dodd's drop-out, he considered Obama and Hillary on the issues and found them to be nearly identical. He doesn't carry any ill-will towards Hillary or Bill, feeling their time in the White House was a good time for America.

He was drawn to Obama, first by his affinity for progressive policies, then because of (1) Obama's electric style, and what it portends for the U.S. if he's given a national and global bully pulpit and (2) he felt it more important for America to elect a black than a woman.

(He read this and emailed me of point 2: "Off base. I don’t think this at all. Early on, I felt the nation wasn’t there for either just yet. It’s equally important for both demographics to have an opportunity – and eventually the certainty – of becoming president." I guess I "mis-heard" him, but in my humble opinion, if you look at the fiber of our nation and the comparative history of the two groups, he is undoubtedly right: Either a woman or a black as president will say a lot about America, but a black will say more.

(Should Obama be elected,the black victim lobby will have nothing more to say. The dark spot of slavery on our history will have been lifted. Electing Hillary will make Gloria Steinem happy, but it is a lesser event -- and I think a lot of Dems realized that yesterday.)

All this portends badly for Hillary as the primary campaigns wind down.

As for Romney, who the polls showed enjoying a mini-surge while McCain was rocketing, I don't regret my vote for him at all, but his performance yesterday opened my eyes.

Here is a man who is running on his experience as a manager: business, the Olympics, Massachusetts. But what is a campaign if not a business? If the Romney campaign were a business, it would be holding a going out of business sale now.

He spent far too much time and money on Iowa, ignoring other states early on because he was too focused on trying to win a state with a strong evangelical population. Every day and every dollar he spent in Iowa was a day and a dollar not spent in New Hampshire or California or any number of other states where he had a better shot.

It looks like Romney is doomed to join Steve Forbes and Ross Perot as guys who did well in business but couldn't translate it to politics. Michael Bloomberg, take note.

So, with November shaping up as a vote all about the war and the economy, McCain better find himself a running mate with sterling credentials on the economy -- and who will give conservatives some reassurance that McCain won't stuff the SCOTUS with soft judges.

And he better be praying that someone in the Clinton campaign figures out how to stop Obama, because this year being an angry old white guy up against a dynamic young black guy does not seem to be a good bet.