The role of 795 super delegates will now become central to who wins the Democratic nomination, writes Denis Staunton
HILLARY CLINTON'S victories in three out of four primaries on Tuesday have won her campaign a last-minute reprieve and opened the way for the Democratic presidential race to continue at least until the last state votes in June.
Despite her big margins in Ohio and Rhode Island, Clinton's first wins in almost a month have done little to dent Barack Obama's lead among pledged delegates and she is still trailing in the popular vote. The Democratic system of proportional representation makes it almost impossible for Clinton to close the gap among pledged delegates unless she wins the remaining contests by massive margins.
Neither candidate is now likely to reach the threshold of 2025 through pledged delegates alone, making the role of 795 super delegates - elected officials and other Democratic party notables - central to the contest from now on. Just over half of the super delegates have declared for a candidate, with about 241 backing Clinton, compared to about 202 for Obama. During the past month, however, Obama has picked up a few dozen super delegate endorsements, while Clinton has lost five.
During the seven weeks before Pennsylvania's primary on 22 April, Clinton will be calling undecided super delegates, asking them to endorse her - or at least to wait a few weeks before backing Obama.
Clinton will argue that Texas and Ohio have shown, once again, that she can win the big, battleground states and highlighted Obama's weaknesses as a candidate. She will point out that the race remains close, with a delegate gap of only 2 per cent and a gap of only 600,000 in the popular vote - which shrinks to just 32,000 if you count the disputed votes in Florida and Michigan.
"In the primaries, Hillary has demonstrated that she is the best positioned candidate to carry the core battleground states essential to a general election victory - particularly the large industrial states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and the critical swing contests in Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, and New Jersey," Clinton strategists Mark Penn and Harold Ickes wrote in a memo yesterday.
Penn and Ickes argue that many of the deeply Republican states Obama won, including Utah, Idaho and Alaska, will not be in play in November, while Clinton's core constituency of women, Hispanic voters, the elderly and those earning less than $75,000 a year are the voters Democrats most need to win.
"The two groups that fuelled President Bush's victory in 2004 were women and Hispanics, and they are among Hillary Clinton's strongest supporters. From 2000 to 2004, Bush's support among Hispanics rose from 35 per cent to 44 per cent. And Bush's support among women rose from 43 per cent to 48 per cent. That five point gain among women and nine point gain among Latinos gave Bush his victory in 2004.
Women reached an all-time presidential election high of 54 per cent of voters in 2004. As a factual matter, an outpouring of women for the first woman president alone can win the election," they wrote.
The Clinton campaign believes that, after months of easy treatment from the media, Obama is only now being vetted as he faces questions about his relationship with Tony Rezko, a Chicago businessman now on trial for corruption. Clinton's advisers are also convinced that their aggressive tactics in recent days - including a controversial TV ad suggesting that only Clinton could keep America safe if the phone rang in the White House at 3am - helped them to win Texas and Ohio. In a significant shift, the Clinton campaign is no longer insisting that the results of the unauthorised Florida and Michigan primaries should be accepted but is now open to the idea of holding those primaries again - possibly after June 7th, when Puerto Rico is due to hold the last primary. Clinton is confident that she can replicate her convincing Ohio win in Michigan, a state with a similar economic and demographic profile and that she will also carry Florida comfortably.
The former first lady's path to the nomination remains perilous, however, not least because her campaign is in debt while Obama continues to vacuum up millions of dollars on the internet each week. Clinton raised an impressive $35 million in February but Obama raised $50 million in the same period and, unlike her donors, most of Obama's have still not given the maximum donation allowed.
Obama has shown himself to be a remarkably resilient candidate who, like Clinton, has followed each setback in the campaign so far with a rebound. And as the Clinton campaign prepares to bash Obama and to raise questions about his integrity, the Obama campaign is getting ready to hit back.
"They're very quick to ask questions but we still don't have the tax returns. We still don't have the records from the Clinton library," Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod said yesterday.
"There are many questions that they haven't answered for all their yammering about how unfairly they've been treated. What's good for the goose is good for the gander."