Might as well start asking: How well does HRC HAVE to do Feb 5th to survive?

S.C. took "inevitability" away from her forever. May have taken "electability" away as well. And so much for the "two for the price of one" meme. All down the crapper.

Still, she has the Beltway, and she could essentially use them to FORCE the party to accept her as nominee at Denver. She'd likely be looking at a Mondale-style asswhupping if she did, but who knows?

Anyway, the HRC campaign is looking badly damaged tonight, folks. What would you say is her survival point, her "live to fight another day" point, on MegaSuperMondoCoolsville Tuesday, Feb 5th?

That's news to me.

What part of "standing eight count" don't you understand?

You can't really be arguing that S.C. doesn't matter.

BTW, I never said SC didn't matter, but you're just about implying that it's ALL that matters.

It does mean she's lost "inevitability". It means that the "two for one" arguement doesn't work and won't work again. And if I was running her campaign, I'd be being REALLY nice to my superdelegates right about now.

It means that the HRC campaign is no longer entitled to its arrogance. If it ever actually was.

I basically agree with your premise that they're not as invincible as what they once thought, but I was only thinking you were placing too much emphasis on SC. I think it was way more important for Obama to win SC than for Hillary to win it. Now if she lost a couple in a row, then I'd start really worrying if I were them.

Granted, she did lose by a more sizeable margin than she thought, and that in itself should be of concern to them more than just the idea that she lost.

toward Super Tuesday with sizable leads in 19 of the 22 States and, as many of them have a different voting demographic than SC, I strongly doubt they'll suddenly switch and start trending -- by the necessary huge margins he would need -- toward Barack.

He has a lot of work to do to make up some pretty sizable margins in some fairly delegate-rich States.

Granted she split those states, but Obama hasn't been blown out yet, Clinton has. Some polls have California in single digits, while Obama has momentum heading into Super Tuesday. In a matter of a couple of days, Obama went from down almost 20 points to Hillary in South Carolina to leading by a few points after his victory in Iowa. If that can happen with an 8 point win there, it can definitely happen in other states after a 30 point win in South Carolina.

Two biggest states up for grabs if you give the Southern states + Illinois + caucus states to Obama and Arkansas + Northeast to Clinton. She needs to win those.

Can we assume, after tonight, that HRC can still count on the Northeast?

is down by 14 in Missouri and, yes, holds a double digit lead in Illinois (his home State), but is trailing by 40 points (as of an early Dec Poll, so I'm sure that's tightened by now) in Arkansas. She's currently Polling outside the margin of error in 19 of the 22 Super Tuesday States.

He has a lot of work to do in a lot of different places with a lot of different voting groups.

Clinton leads in 4. Obama in 2. You don't think that Obama is going to tighten the gap like he always seems to do in these races?

and strongly leads outside the margin of error in all the delegate rich States (CA, NY, NJ, MO) except for Illinois (Barack's home State) and Georgia (where Barack leads by seven points). He only leads in one other State (Idaho by two points), so she is basically leading in every State but those two.

No one will win the required number of delegates on February 5th. I strongly suspect that number won't be reached until the March contests and possible not even until the April 22nd Pennsylvania Primary.

I believe she'll come out with more delegates at the end of Super Tuesday than Barack, but not enough to clinch the nomination or to let down her guard for the rest of the February contests.

As for looking badly damaged, I don't think so. Barack did very well in a State that people had anticipated him to do very well in. He still has a lot of voting groups in States that don't have the demographic make-up of SC to make in-roads into and I don't know if one anticipated win in one Primary will be enough for these groups -- who are still supportive of Hillary -- to suddenly desert her and go to him.

It'll take a lot more than that and Barack has a lot of work to do in the next 10 days.

Leave spinning to the GOP.

...BTW, go here: http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P08/SC-D.phtml

What the hell is a "soft delegate"?

had to win big so the mediawhores could go on and on about the big win for obama....damn, wolf blizter must have used the term stong support 1000 times between 6 pm and 6 30 pm central time.....the mediawhores will be patting themselves on the back all night tonight and on sunday talk shows and even going into monday.....hell cnn and msnbc might even hire more reporters and have theme music playing as they lead into the HOUR OF POWER WITH YOUR HOST......BARACK FAWELLBINSON OBAMA.....

Let me make one thing clear and if you do not believe another word I say till after hrc is ellected then you should know it was the mediawhores that invented this "inevitability' mantra around HRC...She nor her staff ever said it was inevitable hrc would win teh presidency....trust me....

This is one state irregardless of the total vote differences. In the next few days this will hurt obama as the mediawhores indicated becasue with this high percentage of black votes obama will be viewed as the black candidate. Irregardless of the 23 % of teh white vote he received.....

so, I will venture to say this.....on 2/5 HRC will win over half of the states especially the biggest states minus Illinois as I giv ethat one to obama......So come back on 2/6 and see how well I did....

n/t.

if you beat Obama by labeling him "the black candidate"?

Also, given that Obama did very well among whites tonight, are you sure labeling him as "the black candidate" will even work?
Is it not equally likely that that will drive more and more whites to SUPPORT Obama just to prove that they aren't as quietly but deeply racist as the HRC campaign seems to think they are?

If nothing else, are you sure that it's honorable for a DEMOCRATIC candidate to campaign, in this day and age, by denouncing her opponent as "the black candidate"? Could HRC ever do anything as president if she was nominated by going THERE?

It will be interesting to see how the southern states like Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee break (I think they will, surprisingly go Obama's or Edward's way). If Hillary wins big in states like California, New York, and New Jersey, then she will have momentum into the post-Super Tuesday caucuses. However, if Obama manages to win a large state other than Illinois or runs close in states like New Jersey and Massachusetts, then this thing will really go down to the wire. The Texas and Ohio Dems may play a greater role than they originally thought.

Nearly all the February 5 states apportion delegates. So A candidate can lose every state by 5 points and still not come out far behind.

Super Tuesday is unlikely to settle anything, except maybe being hard for Edwards to explain away if he loses every state.

They went along with his nonsense in Nevada when he pretended to win there. Could you imagine if Hillary had pulled that, claiming a victory when she lost the popular vote? They would have savaged her.

Steve