Barack Obama added Wisconsin and Hawaii to a primary season winning streak that now totals 10 and has put Hillary Clinton into a must-win scenario in Democratic contests coming early next month in Texas and Ohio.
Clinton is now counting on a debate on Thursday in Austin, Texas, to attempt to stall Obama’s momentum and regain her footing in the campaign.
Ohio and Texas vote next on March 4 — 370 convention delegates in all — and even some of Clinton’s supporters concede she must win one, and possibly both, to remain competitive. Two smaller states, Vermont and Rhode Island, also have primaries that day.
With the votes counted in all but one of Wisconsin’s 3,570 precincts, Obama won 58 percent of the vote to 41 percent for Clinton.
With 100 percent of the vote counted in Hawaii, Obama had 76 percent to Clinton’s 24 percent.
Wisconsin offered 74 national convention delegates. There were 20 delegates at stake in Hawaii, where Obama spent much of his youth.
Washington Democrats voted in a primary, too, but their delegates were picked earlier in the month in caucuses won by Obama.
The Illinois senator’s Wisconsin victory left him with 1,303 delegates in The Associated Press’ count, compared with 1,233 for Clinton, a margin that masks his 145-delegate lead among those picked in primaries or caucuses.
It takes 2,025 to win the nomination at the party’s national convention in Denver. Allocation of the 20 Hawaii delegates was not being calculated until later Wednesday.
I bet Hillary Clinton is furious about how this whole thing is playing out. She never dreamed that someone else in the party would swoop in and snatch the nomination away from her.
She’s going to be desperate during Thursday’s debate. Maybe she should pledge to start surrendering in Iraq within the first 5-minutes of her administration instead of 60-days.
Even better, she can promise to bring a cell phone to her inauguration and the moment she’s sworn in she will call General Petreaus and tell him to start waving the white flag.
In reality, Hillary Clinton is not going to get the nomination. However, she can at least take comfort in the fact that Barack Obama is gonna be chewed up in the general election.
All that rhetoric and soaring oratory is not going to be enough at the end of the day. Obama gives a hell of a speech, but he’s an empty suit with no record at all.
The man has been a politician on the national stage for about 5-minutes and thinks he knows enough to be President. That “my friends” (to steal John McCain’s line) is nothing but a “fairy tale.” (<–plagiarizing Bill Clinton)
-Chris Jones
