Barack Obama has the chance to begin chipping away at Hillary Clinton’s lead in delegates for the Democratic nomination tonight when a clutch of apparently favourable states stage presidential contests.
The two candidates remain neck-and-neck in polls but Mrs Clinton has a slight edge, of less than 100, in delegate numbers as they race to reach the 2,025 total needed for victory.
Yesterday her aides suggested that Mr Obama had “some real advantages” in elections this weekend and through the rest of February. Mrs Clinton, who has latterly tried to portray Mr Obama as the establishment candidate and herself as the underdog, has not campaigned in either Louisiana or Nebraska ahead of tonight’s elections.
Instead, she has left it to her husband, Bill, and daughter, Chelsea, to carry her colours in these states. Mr Clinton has adopted a lower profile in the past fortnight after racially-charged clashes with the Obama campaign and has admitted that he made “a mistake” by speaking out so strongly.
His daughter was involved in controversy after an MSNBC reporter was suspended for suggesting that Chelsea, who has become increasingly prominent in Mrs Clinton’s campaign, was “being pimped out in some weird sort of way”.
Advertisement
The campaign announced tht it had received $8 million (£4 million), largely through the internet, in recent days and plans eight high-value fund-raising events before the end of the month. But it is still struggling to keep pace with Mr Obama who generated $32 million in January and is on course for a similar sum in February.
Mr Obama’s campaign way was reinforced when Chris Gregoire, the Governor of Washington, endorsed him despite being heavily courted by Mrs Clinton. “He is leading us toward a positive feeling of hope in our country and I love seeing that happen,” said Ms Gregoire, on the eve of caucuses in the north western state.
Tonight 204 delegates will be awarded proportionally in votes across Washington state, Louisiana, Nebraska and the US Virgin Islands, as well as a further 34 in Maine tomorrow.
Delegate counts vary depending on different estimates made by media organisations of how super-delegates – Democratic party officials and members of Congress – will vote. The Associated Press says that Mrs Clinton is ahead by 1,077 delegates to Mr Obama��s 1,005, while CNN puts the figures at 1,033 and 937.
Although Mrs Clinton aides expect her to take enough delegates to stay narrowly in front, they have suggested that Mr Obama will get the “bragging rights”, not least because three of the weekend’s contests are low turnout caucuses where his superior grass-roots organisation counts for more.
Advertisement
Mrs Clinton’s camp is also pessimistic about the primary election in Louisiana where up to half the electorate will be black voters, a group which favours Mr Obama by a margin of up to four to one. They are increasingly focused on March 4 primaries in Texas and Ohio, the type of big states where she usually performs best.
With Mr McCain now all but certain to win the Republican nomination, Mr Obama – who has shown he can win independent support – may now benefit from votes that might otherwise have gone to the Arizona senator in looming open primaries.
But Mr McCain still faces a difficult challenge in overcoming opposition from the social conservative base in the Republican party. Yesterday he was helped in this task by an implicit endorsement from President Bush.
He said: “Soon we’ll have a nominee who will carry a conservative banner into this election and beyond”. Just hours earlier, Karl Rove, his former strategist, symbolically donated $2,300 to Mr McCain’s campaign.
— Hillary Clinton has played the “gender card” in her presidential campaign and her husband has been accused of playing the “race card” (James Bone writes). But Mrs Clinton will not be playing the baseball card. She was to appear in a set of collectible cards featuring presidential candidates as baseball stars. Upper Deck, the sports memorabilia firm, portrayed the only woman candidate as Morganna the Kissing Bandit, a figure famous in the 1970s and 1980s for dashing on to the field in a T-shirt and gym shorts to plant a kiss on a player’s lips. “Like Clinton, she saw something she liked and went after it,” Upper Deck’s blurb said. But the company withdrew the card after a focus group said the image was inappropriate. At least two of the cards leaked out and were being auctioned online at eBay, with one attracting bids as high as $310 (£160).