Barack Obama was expected to win yesterday’s Democratic contests, but I think it’s fair to say he exceeded expectations.
Senator Barack Obama won decisive victories over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington, Louisiana and Nebraska on Saturday, giving him an impressive sweep going into a month when the Democratic nominating contests are expected to favor him.
The successes come just as Mr. Obama is building a strong advantage over Mrs. Clinton in raising money, providing important fuel for the nominating contests ahead. Still, the results were expected to do little to settle the muddle in the delegate race that resulted after the wave of contests last Tuesday in which the two candidates split up states from coast to coast. […]
While Mr. Obama had been expected to win the contests on Saturday, the margin of victories were surprising, particularly in Nebraska and Washington, which offered the day’s biggest trove of delegates. In both states, he captured 68 percent of the vote in caucuses, compared with Mrs. Clinton’s roughly 32 percent.
It was more or less an afterthought, but Obama also appears to have won big in the Virgin Islands, with nearly 90% support.
The Clinton campaign responded to the setbacks with a line officials had been using preemptively in recent days: “The Obama campaign has dramatically outspent our campaign in these three states, saturating the airwaves with 30 and 60 second ads. The Obama campaign has spent $300,000 more in Louisiana on television ads, $190,000 more in Nebraska and $175,000 more in Nebraska.”
All of that is, of course, true. I’m not sure, however, if it’s a compelling spin. In effect, the Clinton campaign is arguing, “We lost these states because we weren’t trying very hard.”
That may be accurate, but it leads to questions about why the Clinton campaign wasn’t making a concerted effort to win these races. At this point, every contest counts.
On a related note, Kevin Drum asked a question I’ve been pondering myself.
…I’m a little puzzled about Obama’s consistent success in caucuses, which usually seems to get chalked up to his background in community organizing. Somehow, though, that doesn’t really seem like a persuasive explanation. After all, I’m sure Hillary Clinton’s team knows perfectly well how to organize in a caucus state. And yet Obama has won every caucus state but one, most of them by wide margins. Does anybody have a good explanation for this? (And no, “Obama is teh awesome” doesn’t count as a good explanation.)
On the one hand, historically, primary victories are considered more impressive than caucus victories, in large part because more people participate in primaries. But Obama’s caucus victories certainly seem impressive, don’t they? After all, the key to winning caucuses is on-the-ground organizational strength and an effective mobilizing strategy. Obama’s been excelling in caucuses in states like Kansas and Nebraska — where there aren’t a lot of minorities or fired-up college students — by very large margins.
Before voting began last month, I was inclined to assume the opposite — that the caucuses would favor Clinton. In caucuses, turnout is generally low, and the process is guided by local party leaders and unions. It’s exactly the kind of landscape that tends to favor the establishment candidate, which, I think it’s fair to say, has been Clinton.
And yet, Obama is winning these caucuses with relative ease, while Clinton is excelling with equal ease in many big primaries. It seems counterintuitive.
(Please don’t look at this as an opportunity to say Clinton lost these caucuses because she’s evil, or Obama won because he’s amazing.)