A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on February 13th, 2008 in Campaign News

Barack Obama can, for now, console himself as the front-runner. He isn’t supposed to be in this race. He’s supposed to be getting buried by the coronation of Hillary Clinton. Well, he put an end to that.

Or did he? Obama needs another 810 delegates to win the nomination. 1316 delegates await being awarded. That means, in order to lock up the nomination before the convention, he has to hold Hillary Clinton to less than 506 delegates.

Next Tuesday, Hawaii and Wisconsin will hold their contests, and with Hillary Clinton abandoning the field to work in Texas and Ohio, Obama should pick up the lion’s share of delegates. But he won’t likely shut her out in either place. With 29 delegates in Hawaii and 92 in Wisconsin, Obama may pick up as many as 100 delegates. But that leaves 21 for HRC to pick up. Her magic number - the number needed to force a brokered convention - would thus fall to 485.

March 4 will be the big test for Obama. With both Ohio (161 delegates) and Texas (228 delegates) being decided, it will be hard to keep Hillary Clinton below two hundred delegates on the night. Polling shows Obama closing the gap in both places, but Texas is a difficult state to win. Not only is it huge - almost like running a second nationwide campaign - but their screwy rules makes it difficult to figure out who will even vote, much less who they will vote for. If Obama is going to close the deal before the convention, he will have to hold her below 200 on the night. If he manages to hold her to exactly, 200, then her magic number is only 285.

The next big contest will be Pennsylvania, which holds its primary on April 22. 188 delegates are up for grabs that night. After that will be North Carolina, which is the last big prize on May 6, with 134 delegates. Again, Obama has to hold Clinton to less than 200 delegates between the two states. That puts pressure on Obama to do well in Pennsylvania - if he can take a majority of the delegates, then he just might eek out a nomination with the delegate counts. If HRC can take 2/3 of the delegates in Pennsylvania, however, then she might just have enough to stop him just short. It won’t be easy for HRC to pick up another 85 delegates in the small states, but it isn’t impossible, either.

Look for late states to get a lot of attention - Montana and South Dakota may be the final bricks in the wall on June 3.

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