6 February 2008
An energized and feisty Hillary Clinton celebrated her better-than-expected finishes in Super Tuesday battleground states by starting the rest of her race for the Democratic nomination.
It will be a race. Clinton and Barack Obama split the wins--and the delegates--on the busiest night of the nominating contest.
But while Clinton still has a fight for the Democratic nomination to win, she was talking like the November contender she might well be.
"I know the Republicans won't give up the White House without a fight," Clinton declared Tuesday night. "Together we're going to take back America."
Again and again in a spirited and often poetic speech--the best she has delivered since her win in New Hampshire almost a month ago--Clinton portrayed herself as the Democrat who is best prepared to carry the party's banner in the fall.
Referencing the Republican attacks that Democratic nominee John Kerry never quite countered in 2004, she said, "I won't let anyone 'Swift Boat' this country's future."
Clinton was not just spinning rhetoric.
She was not just striking an election-night pose.
The senator was genuinely excited by the results that she and her supporters celebrated in New York. And rightly so.
Super Tuesday did not "close the deal" for Hillary Clinton, as her campaign had once predicted that it would.
But nor did it set her back, as Barack Obama's supporters had predicted in the closing days of a contest where he was winning most of the endorsements and seemed to have the momentum.
Clinton's solid victories in the biggest state voting on the biggest primary and caucus day, California, was accompanied by wins in Massachusetts and New Jersey. Those are states that Obama had worked hard to win -- and where some polls had predicted he would prevail. She also won the western battleground state of Arizona.
In the great midwestern battleground state, Missouri, Clinton and Obama were virtually tied.
Clinton won her home state of New York by a comfortable margin, upsetting suggestions that she would face a fight there with a surging Obama.
The mid-south states of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee were Clinton's as well.
Beyond the list of state's won was this interesting twist. Exit polls show that the Super Tuesday momentum was with Clinton--late-deciding voters in a number of states went for her rather than Obama.
Another twist: Hispanics in New Jersey, Arizona and California went overwhelmingly for Clinton. In California, she was collecting 65 percent of the Latino vote.
It certainly wasn't all bad news for Obama, who delivered another stellar speech as the votes continued to be counted in California.
"This time we have to turn the page," the Illinois senator told supporters in Chicago. "This time we have to write a new chapter in American history."
And he certainly was not surrending the claim to be the agent of change in the Democratic contest--or the prospect that he will be the nominee.
The challenges will not be resolved "even on a super-duper Tuesday," he declared.
And he suggested that his "Yes We Can" campaign offers Democrats the better message for November.
"It's a choice between having a debate with the other party about who has the most experience in Washington versus who is most likely to change Washington," he declared, on a night when exit polls from around the country found that voters favored change over experience by a 2-1 margin.
The Illinois senator won big in Georgia and Illinois. He's also won Alabama, Alaska, Minnesota, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Utah, Kansas, North Dakota and Idaho.
Obama did not win so many of the batteground states. But his was still a remarkable list of victories.
Clinton got bragging rights, and wins in the big states.
Obama got bragging rights, and a longer list of small-state wins.
Democrats got a race that will go on to Maryland and Virginia on February 12, to Wisconsin on February 19, very probably to Ohio and Texas on March 4 and perhaps beyond.
As Obama said, "Let's go to work."
Posted by John Nichols
