The Crossed Pond

Kos, whose sources in Democratic circles are marginally better than mine, has an interesting post up on what he hears Obama’s next play will be, should he lose Ohio and Texas tonight. I’m still not convinced he’ll lose either, but obviously, unlike, say, Clinton, his camp is one that plans ahead.

The basic argument: Congratulations Hillary. Now what?

Parallel: This has been fun and all, but we’re moving on. Have a good time trying to reach 80% in Pennsylvania, Hillary. We’re going to be starting the general now.

Longer version: even if she pulls out OH and TX by, say, 5 points in the popular vote, in all likelihood Obama builds on his delegate lead tonight, a lead which is basically insurmountable unless Democratic voters en masse decide to throw him overboard from this day forward, which seems pretty unlikely, to put it mildly. So she CAN, of course, fight to the convention, but by the time she gets there, the conversation will probably already be over. Obama will be able to have his people chair the committee deciding how to seat Michigan and Florida, the superdelegates will be in his pocket, and while he won’t have a majority, when the bell rings in August with no knockout, it’s time to go to the scorecards, which even now, in March, we can pretty much call.

Obama’s camp knows that, and they’ve been floating it on and off for awhile, but they haven’t started a behind the scenes press on it yet. If they do…

That “most rosy of scenarios” is well beyond the realm of possibilities (like Clinton winning 80 percent of the vote in Puerto Rico). And by the end of tonight, Obama will likely have extended his lead in pledged delegates or, at worst, lost a handful — keeping him well ahead in the count.

So if the math is so unfavorable to Clinton, why is she still in? Because she’s still hoping that a late surge will tip super delegates to her, while at the same time she forces the DNC to accept the tainted Michigan and Florida delegates. And since Obama can’t reach an outright majority either, it really comes down to those supers. (Michigan and Florida won’t matter unless they have revotes, and a competitive contest in each will split delegates and provide neither with the necessary boost to reach that majority.)

So what now?

If Clinton wins the popular vote in Texas and Ohio, she’ll declare massive victory and claim it’s a mandate to continue on.

But watch the delegate count. If Clinton doesn’t make substantive gains on the race that matters — the delegate race (remember, the Clinton campaign said it was all about delegates after Iowa) — then there will be a major push from Obama and the party to shut this thing down.

Bill Richardson has already said the delegate leader after today should be the nominee (which by default is Obama, since Clinton couldn’t possibly overtake him today). There’s the Tom Brokaw announcement that Obama has 50 super delegates in his pocket, ready to announce post-election. And aren’t you wondering why Obama’s campaign hasn’t announced its February fundraising numbers yet?

Expect Clinton to get the early media spin victory, but soon expect the hammer to fall — 50 supers, a gazillion raised in February, and high-profile converts like Richardson will create intense pressure for Clinton to call it a day.

There is some possibility of overreach on this, of course, but Obama’s camp have managed to not fall into that so far, and even if they did and created some backlash, it’s unclear that that would much matter.

But one other point to make, that kos has been pushing as well off and on (and reiterates in the post I link). Even if it stays heated until the convention, Republican glee might be pretty misplaced. One thing that these late-season primaries have afforded Democrats is the creation of MASSIVE campaign infrastructure and PR in all of these states. You don’t see that much unless you’ve got your ear on the ground in those states, and it’s easily overlooked, but it’s a very real benefit. The fact is that states that are hotly contested in primaries, tend to be more favorable ground for the eventual nominee later. Paid staff, network of identified and seasoned volunteers, working knowledge of the state, detailed and up to date voter lists, huge name ID, media presence, local connections, on and on and on. The Democratic campaigns aren’t just blowing through in a week and leaving tumbleweeds in their wake; every time another of these mini-super-primary days comes around, they’ve already built and activated an army and the structure for them to march. And in this case, with both candidates probably spending a combined 25 million dollars in Ohio alone, that may turn out to be a huge advantage to the eventual nominee in the fall. To put that another way, how much face time and organization has, say, John McCain put in in Ohio, or Missouri, or Texas, or Wisconsin (one notable exception here is going to be Florida and perhaps New Hampshire)? In a primary this heated and with this much money and saturation, either Obama or Clinton will have already basically run a hot election there once. No small thing come Fall.

And, it should be noted, this is also very apropos to down-ticket races; Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have already lined Democrats up at the polls like they were giving away free money, and have already hauled around every pissant congressman running for OH-16 or whatever along with them. As kos notes, as a vehement Democrat partisan interested in a 50-state strategy, he’s pretty happy if this does blow through Wyoming, Mississippi, Pennsylvania.