THIRTEENTH INNING STRETCH AND REV. WRIGHT - April 30, 2008

The game of baseball can, in principle, continue indefinitely so long as the score is tied at the end of nine innings and each inning thereafter. The Democratic primary race has no such theoretical infinitude, and the score is not tied. All the same it has gone on far past all prior expectations. After six weeks with no primary contests, Pennsylvania gave voters one more chance to send a decisive signal. Once again they sent a mixed one, leaving Barack Obama with the nomination still nearly in his hands, yet no closer to actually grasping it.
   

Even as the campaigns geared up for the next round of primaries, however, Obama's former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright (see previous column) abruptly re-surfaced in the media, turning up at the National Press Club to make remarks that have at minimum thrown the Obama campaign off stride, and have the potential to do it very serious damage (video). Before considering this still-evolving story, we can look at the state of the race as it emerged from the Pennsylvania primary.

  
As the last few batches of votes were counted in Pennsylvania,

an argument broke out in the liberal blogosphere over the

exact size of Hillary Clinton's winning margin. Cable television

networks were rounding off the vote totals to even percentages

– 55 percent to 45 percent – and by simple mental arithmetic

reporting that Hillary had won by a ten point margin. Obama

supporters rushed to argue that when computed with greater

precision she had in fact only won by 9.35 percentage points, a

hair short of the symbolically freighted "double-digit margin."

This argument is no more strained, and less perversely

complicated, than many arguments that Hillary supporters

have made, but the very transparency of its quibble illustrates

the frantic efforts on both sides to find even the most tenuous

grounds for spinning the outcome in one direction or another.

    
When all the spin is balanced out, Pennsylvania, as with Ohio

and Texas six weeks earlier, was another case of Obama not

quite closing his sale. He was not expected to win Pennsylvania,

a state whose demographics, like Ohio's – many older working

class voters, fewer young college-educated voters or African

Americans – favored Hillary. Even after Obama surged to the

lead nationally he trailed her there by some 20 points. On the

other hand, after outspending her at least two to one, the

Obama camp had to be disappointed not to have further closed the gap. Had the margin been substantially closer, say five points or less, the pressure on the 300 or so remaining uncommitted superdelegates to shift toward the Obama camp would have become intense.
 

On the other hand, had Hillary won by a substantially larger margin, perhaps 15 points, Obama might be facing a real crisis of confidence, not a mere embarrassment. Hillary did well enough to keep herself in the race and push back against pro-Obama voices pressuring her to withdraw. She did not demonstrate the sort of erosion in Obama's support that would transform the lingering uneasiness many Democrats feel about his general election prospects into deeper and growing doubts.
  

Nevertheless Obama remains in some sense on the defensive – having to explain why he has not quite managed to consolidate his strength. The strategic argument the Hillary camp makes against his general election prospects is rather weak. It is true that in the primaries as a whole Obama has failed to win the working class core of the Democratic Party, other than African Americans. His strength lies around the periphery of the Democratic coalition – higher income voters, younger voters, Democratic-leaning independents. His supporters can argue, however, that this is precisely where elections are won. Core Democrats might turn out with slightly less enthusiasm for him than for Hillary, but if the edges turn toward him his overall support pool still grows.
  

The state-by-state nature of the Electoral College complicates this picture but does not essentially change it. Obama might have more trouble in expected swing state Ohio, but compensate by putting Colorado into play – a state that has drifting away from solid Republicanism, and with a political culture for which Obama is a better fit than Hillary. Nationally, trial-heat polling shows both Obama and Hillary running about even with McCain, with no clear trends in any direction.
  

Hillary's argument to late-state voters and superdelegates is not really about the prospective general-election map, but Obama's potential – though not yet demonstrated – vulnerability to Republican attacks portraying him as naïve, insufficiently nationalistic, and not quite a real American. Such attacks have more often than not been effective against (white male) Democratic presidential candidates going back fifty years to Adlai Stevenson. Merely previewing them, as Hillary's campaign has done, is at once offensive to many Obama supporters and just the sort of thing that could give pause to late-state primary voters and superdelegates.
  

Hillary's message received an unexpected boost when Rev. Wright appeared at the National Press Club to repeat some of the most incendiary comments that he has previously made in sermons. These were just the remarks that Obama sought to separate himself from when the Wright controversy initially erupted, a storm Obama had evidently weathered without visible damage in polling. In the wake of Wright's reappearance, Obama was forced to repudiate him more forcefully – leaving himself open to a charge of opportunism, since Wright did not say anything at the National Press Club he has not said before from the pulpit.
  

At minimum this latest outbreak hampers Obama in retaking the initiative in week leading up to the next round of primaries, on 6 May, featuring Indiana and North Carolina. Obama has been expected to easily win North Carolina, with its large African American population; the question – as with Hillary's win in Pennsylvania – will be the size of his margin. Polling shows Indiana as close; so in this case "winning" by conventional wisdom may actually correspond to winning the state. Some recent North Carolina polling has shown Hillary closing the gap there.
  

If Hillary were to win in North Carolina (still very unlikely) the Obama campaign would be in serious trouble. Even a narrower than expected Obama win there, coupled with a handy Hillary win in Indiana, could put Obama very much on the defensive going into the remaining primaries. On the other hand, a good Obama day – winning both states, or a big win in North Carolina and only a narrow loss in Indiana – could restore his momentum, brush aside the Wright controversy, and trigger a movement by the uncommitted superdelegates to secure him the nomination.
  

Then again, Indiana and North Carolina may deliver yet another round of verdicts that simply keep the race alive as it heads into its final rounds.
    

Rick Robinson

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Author of the article holds B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and M.A. degree in English from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California . Mr. Robinson worked as a county-level campaigner in Dukakis (1988) and Clinton (1992) presidential campaigns. He presently works as a journalist and political commentator.

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The Countinuing Democratic Race - March 10, 2008

Foreman vs. Ali 2 - February 15, 2008

Super Tuesday Truth - February 8, 2008

Into the Stretch: Landscape before Feb. 5 - February 2, 2008

Turnaround! - The New Hampshire Primary Results - January 10, 2008

Out of the Gate: Obama makes history - January 5, 2008

Mike Huckabee Story: From out of Nowhere - December 27, 2007

American Health Care - December 17, 2007

At the Starting Gate - November 15, 2007

Iowa and New Hampshire - October 4, 2007

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Democratic contenders - July 3, 2007

Immigration debate - May 10, 2007