The Morning After

We get to sit back this morning and examine a fairly interesting playing field for each party this morning. When you look at the numbers it is clear that John McCain is the Republican to carry the blue state bound group while still struggling mightily with the home field in red state land. Clearly he cleaned up with a lot of delegates, but how do you ignore that the list of states sounds like the land of the locks for the democrats? The only 2 states he won that are traditional Republican strongholds are Oklahoma and his gradually blue leaning home state of Arizona. This lends to 2 schools of thought that as a general election candidate McCain would:

1. play stronger in blue state land by virtue of his overwhelming support among more moderate republicans and independents.
2. be such a disappointment to the right and center right parts of the party to the point where a disaffected party stays home and puts more of the swing states and even a few more of the northern plains states (where Romney cleaned up) will be in play for the Democrats.

Either scenario seems to play well to the Democrats who figure to be able to raise money challenged only by each other. Of course the bean counters will be quick to point out that most of Hillary's donors are already tapped out on what they can give and so Obama has an obvious advantage since he has a higher number of donors who have given much smaller amounts individually. That being said, clearly someone is voting for Hillary and so unless she just doesn't know how to get money out of her supporters (which is doubtful) than she is in trouble long term. People who donate to your campaign tend to be people who will vote for your campaign since after all they are investing in the candidate as an enterprise and it would only stand to reason they would follow this through.

As for the delegate counts, keep in mind that the numbers you see today include the super delegates (elected officials like governors, mayors, state reps, etc.) of which there are 800 and HRC currently has a 193-106 lead. The supers can change their mind and would be the moving piece in any brokered convention. That being said, the longer and more legitimate the Obama campaign becomes in the eyes of the super delegates out there, the more likely his total of super delegates figures to go up. Conversely, if HRC suddenly gains huge momentum expect to see these flood to her. A great example of this system at work was explained in the endorsement post I wrote yesterday concerning Barbra Boxer. Super delegates will show up at a poll and cast a vote but that doesn't mean they will declare support for that candidate or that they will ultimately be a super delegate for that candidate. At the end of the day a cynic would say this is what is called being a bandwagon delegate.

All that aside, the next few weeks will be very interesting as things slow down to a trickle by comparison to what we have seen over the last few weeks. The Democrats have 3 caucuses this weekend (WA, NE, ME) and one primary (LA) and that should be fertile ground for Obama who cleaned up in the caucuses and has shown real strength in the caucuses since they are all about energy, momentum, and ground operations.
More later....