Obama gains momentum, rolls to Wisconsin win

Clinton looks to Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania to halt Illinois senator's relentless march

Photo of Carolyn Lochhead

No matter what Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton throws at Sen. Barack Obama, and no matter where she throws it, she has not found a way to stop his relentless accumulation of victories and delegates to secure the Democratic nomination for president.

Obama's double-digit win in Wisconsin and his expected victory in Hawaii hand the Illinois newcomer an unbroken string of 10 victories and a huge tailwind heading into what could be decisive contests in Ohio and Texas on March 4.

With 334 delegates at stake, both are must-wins for Clinton, even by her own campaign's calculations. "A defeat would be decisive in those states," said Tad Devine, who ran the campaigns of previous Democratic nominees Al Gore and John Kerry. "I think if he wins either one, she has a really hard time explaining why she should be the nominee."

When Hawaii's votes are counted, Obama is expected to have a lead of more than 150 pledged delegates, the ones elected by voters in primaries and caucuses. Because Democratic delegates are awarded according to the proportion of the vote each candidate wins, Obama's lead is increasingly difficult to close. Clinton needs to swamp Obama in Texas and Ohio as well as in Pennsylvania on April 22 to accumulate enough delegates to even up the race. A close Clinton win in either state still would give a lot of delegates to Obama and preserve his advantage.

If Obama wins Ohio or Texas, "I don't see how she would be able to hold off forces that would then begin to build behind his candidacy, including a huge number of the superdelegates," Devine said. "I think all the institutional party apparatus and others would say, 'Look, we need to unite behind this guy.' "

Wisconsin and its 74 delegates seemed to hold an advantage for Clinton. The state is 90 percent white and more than 50 percent female and has large numbers of working-class voters stung by the slowing economy. Yet exit polls showed Obama made inroads into Clinton's base among all those groups and won by double digits despite the dearth of African Americans in the state.

Clinton made few gains among Obama's supporters among youth and men. Clinton's sharply escalated negative attacks failed to dent Obama's message, while her recast theme of solutions versus speeches failed to gain traction.

Republican Sen. John McCain, now the presumptive GOP nominee, also won in Wisconsin, beating former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Obama delivered a victory speech to a huge Houston rally, hitting issues ranging from taxes to foreign policy as if to answer charges that he is high on hope but thin on substance. Yet his sense that the presidency is within his grasp was unmistakable. "Houston, I think we've achieved liftoff here," he said to a roaring crowd.

The Democratic turnout numbers preview a daunting uphill climb for McCain. Obama's votes outran McCain's almost 3-1, while Clinton won 2 votes for every 1 that went to McCain, following a nationwide pattern.

Obama's challenge now is to keep his momentum rolling as he assumes the role of likely Democratic nominee. As the last week has already shown, Obama will be under heavier media scrutiny as a front-runner and will be subjected to more pointed and more frequent attacks from McCain as well as Clinton.

Two critical debates are coming up Thursday in Texas and Tuesday in Ohio. The Democratic rivals have had just a single one-on-one debate so far, in Los Angeles last month. Many observers think Clinton won that round, and she has been begging for a rematch ever since. Debates showcase Clinton's commanding policy grasp and deny Obama his advantage in inspirational speeches.

Debates also open the possibility of landing zingers or making mistakes that can move voters and alter the direction of a campaign, including Walter Mondale's "Where's the beef?" line against Gary Hart and Ronald Reagan's jokes about Mondale's inexperience and youth.

Clinton was late to wake up to the fact that Obama was piling up pledged delegates in small states after Super Tuesday on Feb. 5. Her big-state strategy worked on that day, including a 10-point margin in California, but it left her devoid of wins and short on delegates in the 10 contests that followed. Clinton, now banking her quest for the presidency on Ohio and Texas, still leads in both, but polls are tightening rapidly.

A new Survey USA poll in Ohio shows that Clinton's 17-point lead of a week ago has been cut in half. The poll shows Clinton leading 52-43. In Texas, a new CNN poll puts Clinton just two points ahead of Obama, at 50-48.

Clinton is heavily courting Latinos in the South, with whom she has a long history going back to her work in the Rio Grande Valley as a young Democratic organizer.

But unlike California, where Clinton's lopsided margins among Latinos helped give her a 10-point victory in the nation's biggest state, Texas also has a large African American population. Heavy black turnout in recent elections means that heavily African American districts have more delegates by population than predominantly Hispanic districts, whose past turnout has been lower. That would allow Obama's near lock on black voters to offset Clinton's grip on Texas Latinos.

Ken Heineman, a political historian at Ohio University in Lancaster, said Clinton's Ohio prospects rest on the poorer northern part of the state and a heavy turnout among seniors.

Heineman said Ohio is more like two different states, where Clinton territory is "the northern fringe: Cleveland, Toledo and those areas that have been in economic distress since the 1970s, quite honestly. Whereas central and southern Ohio have largely avoided dislocations and managed to rebuild on services, retail, high tech and education." He said that's one reason Republicans have been able to dominate Ohio for so long.

Clinton "may still pull it off, but a lot is going to depend on voter turnout outside of Cleveland, and that's going to depend how much snow and ice there is. There is so much reliance on senior citizens to carry through, and they're not going to turn out if the driving conditions are bad."

After almost writing off the state a week ago, Clinton spent much of last weekend in Wisconsin, joining her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and daughter, Chelsea. She sharply escalated her attacks, hitting Obama with charges that he had lifted some of his best lines from his friend and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. She joined McCain in accusing Obama of backing away from his promise to forgo private campaign contributions in favor of public financing. McCain's wife Cindy also jumped on Obama's wife Michelle's comment that now is the first time she's been proud of her country.

McCain previewed his coming attacks in his victory speech, focusing his words on Obama without naming him, saying his opponent had said he would bomb "our ally Pakistan" and "sit down without precondition" with enemies who support terrorists. McCain heavily emphasized national security, his strong suit, and argued for "the right changes" on the economy, his admitted weakness. McCain called for a balanced budget and preventing government "from spending your money on things it shouldn't."

Obama declared to his audience in Texas, where Democrats are more conservative than in other states, that he believes in free markets, free trade and self-reliance. But he at the same time slammed corporate executives who "are making more in 10 minutes than what ordinary workers make in a year."

The 71-year-old McCain addressed his age, saying, "I'm not the youngest candidate, but I am the most experienced." Obama was born in 1961; McCain in 1936.

Both Clinton and Obama had escalated their populist appeals, a warm-up act for industrial Ohio. Obama wrapped the NAFTA free trade pact, pushed through by former President Clinton, around his wife's neck. Both candidates rolled out economic blueprints, promising expensive new programs to help downscale voters, from Obama's revamping of community colleges to Clinton's infrastructure investments and push to create "green collar" jobs to wean the country from petroleum.

Wisconsin's open primary, which allowed same-day registration, gave heavy weighting to the independents who have done so much to power Obama's campaign.

Wisconsin has a storied tradition in Democratic Party primaries. The Badger State is where former President John F. Kennedy defeated Hubert Humphrey. In 1968, Eugene McCarthy's anti-war movement forced President Lyndon Johnson to end his re-election bid. In 1972, Alabama Gov. George Wallace, an ardent segregationist, came in second in Wisconsin; and in 1976, former President Jimmy Carter forced Morris Udall out of the nomination contest.