We thought it'd be over by now, but here we sit - it's March 6 and we have no idea who will be the Democratic nominee for president. After losing 11 contests in a row and seemingly losing momentum, Hillary Clinton won two huge states last night and is crowning herself as the comeback kid. But what does this really mean? Actually, not much.
Prior to March 4, Obama led by 159 pledged delegates. When all the votes are counted, it looks like yesterday's victories for Clinton will have cut that lead by about 10 delegates. Whoopdie freakin' doo - he's still up by 150 delegates, and, considering the next two primaries in Wyoming and Mississippi favor Obama, by this time next week we'll be exactly where we started.
This also means that negative campaigning worked for Clinton. Although negative ads failed here in Wisconsin, hitting Obama hard on NAFTA gave her a significant portion of the late-breaking Ohio voters.
After both Clinton and Obama agreed in the Feb. 26 debate that NAFTA needed to be renegotiated, a leaked Canadian memo supposedly claimed an Obama official, Austan Goolsbee, had told Canadian Consul General Georges Rioux not to worry.
He cautioned that this message should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans,"" the memo stated, according to the Canadian Broadcast Corporation.
This charge allowed both John McCain and Clinton to attack Obama for saying one thing to Ohio voters and then saying something else behind their backs; a charge that, if true, was completely legitimate. Unfortunately, the story was false.
On Monday, the Canadian Embassy released a statement saying the memo was inaccurate, and ""there was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private, including about NAFTA.""
According to MSNBC exit polls, 63 percent of those who decided who to vote for in the three days prior to the election voted for Clinton. Of those who decided the day of the election, she won 54 percent. This false NAFTA story had a lot to do with that, and you have to wonder what the results would have been if the record was set straight from the beginning.
Ultimately, the Clinton campaign can talk about her wins in Ohio and Texas as ""buyer's remorse"" all they want, but that doesn't change the delegate math. After the Wisconsin primary, there were approximately 1,000 pledged delegates yet to be apportioned. After Tuesday, only two-thirds of those delegates are left, and there's still been no change.
Her victories may have kept her afloat, and kept us watching, but a recent Rasmussen poll in Pennsylvania put Clinton up by just four delegates. With seven weeks left until the primary, Obama's ground game can surely make that
up.
Rumor has it Obama raised $50 million in February, and with his recent losses, I wouldn't be surprised to see more in March. Also, Tom Brokaw suggested on MSNBC Monday that Obama had 50 superdelegates up his sleeve that are about to go public. This would give him the lead in superdelegates as well, which Clinton led by more than 90 on Feb. 5.
Considering all these circumstances, the next seven weeks are sure to be entertaining and probably rather dirty. It started Wednesday when Clinton's stepped up her criticism of the Tony Rezko scandal and Obama called her out for not releasing her tax returns.
The race we all thought would be over by now heads to Pennsylvania where we'll see seven more weeks of the same story day after day. And what will change after that? Most likely, not much, but ... wait, what's that? Florida and Michigan might have a do-over in June? And the endless primary goes on...
Erik Opsal is a senior majoring in journalism and political science. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
