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A Titanic Mood in the Clinton Camp

Obama Landslide in Weekend Primaries

By Marc Pitzke in New York

Barack Obama had a good weekend: He won all four primaries in Washington, Louisiana, Nebraska and even Maine, where he had been running far behind in polls. Reeling over her losses, Hillary Clinton pulled the emergency brakes and fired her campaign manager.

As if things weren't bad enough already: After a campaign appearance in Manassas, a historic town in Virginia, Hillary Clinton was forced to spend her afternoon Saturday at Dulles Airport in Washington waiting to take a charter jet to her next stump speech. But gale force winds of up to 100 kilometers per hour grounded flights out of the airport. Clinton's flight was also cancelled, along with her next event. It was a bad way to end a miserable primary weekend -- one in which her opponent Barack Obama had cleaned up at the polls.

Obama scored victories this weekend all across the country -- on the West Coast, the East Coast, the Gulf Coast and in the heartland. On Saturday, he notched up victories in Washington state, Louisiana and Nebraska. A day later, he also scored a victory in Maine -- a state previously thought to be a bastion of Clinton supporters. But even there the results were surprisingly clear, with Obama taking 59 percent compared to Clinton's 40.

It was a spectacular failure. And as Clinton sat at the airport with the press corp, a more dramatic storm brewed behind the scenes. On the same afternoon, Clinton not only cancelled her final appearance of the evening, but also accepted the resignation tendered by her campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle.

Clinton denied that the dismissal was in any way related to the weekend's five primary defeats. "We are doing great," said Clinton spokesperson Mo Elleithee. "It's a competitive race."

"Though personnel shifts happen throughout campaigns, the timing of this one -- as Clinton fights for her political life, following a clean Obama sweep by big margins in the weekend contests -- will inevitably raise eyebrows," New York University political scientist Rogan Kersh told Bloomberg.

An Indirect Hometeam Advantage

This weekend's state votes could mark a turning point in the Democratic primary season: Clinton is now, suddenly, under tremendous pressure. Meanwhile Obama's famous "momentum" currently appears unstoppable. As of Sunday, he had won 19 out of 32 state primaries. His weekend wins may only have been the political equivalent of winning a stage in a cycling race, but it also means that Obama now has almost as many delegates as Clinton, who was once considered unbeatable in the race for the Democratic nomination. Depending on the method used to calculate delegates, Obama may already be ahead.

In Washington state, the biggest trophy in the most recent round of primaries with its 97 delegates, Obama thwarted Clinton with 68 percent of the vote compared to her 31, far higher than he had hoped. This despite the fact that Bill and Hillary Clinton had campaigned intensively in the state and that Washington is 88 percent Caucasian. And despite the fact that Hillary Clinton flooded the state with TV ads praising her greatest strength -- her plan for healthcare reform.

Obama himself spared no pain, having visited the unpredictable state often in recent weeks. Tens of thousands of fans gathered to cheer him on at his campaign events. Obama also profited from the fact that Washington -- like Nebraska and Maine -- holds an open caucus rather than conducting votes in private polling booths. As a general rule, Obama has fared better in open caucuses. He was also aided by extremely high voter turnout -- almost double that of the last election in 2004, and despite a non-stop downpouring of rain.

In Nebraska, where 93 percent of the population is Caucasian, Obama out-distanced Clinton even further: 68 percent compared to 32. However, his landslide victory didn't come entirely as a surprise -- his mother is from neighboring Kansas, which brought him an indirect hometeam advantage.

A Half-Hearted Blitz Visit

Clinton didn't even bother to actively campaign in the state -- instead leaving the task to her daughter Chelsea. This, in fact, may have been the mistake that led to Doyle's departure. Delegates in Nebraska are doled out proportionately -- and even the loser gains delegates depending on how many votes that candidate scored.

The sheer magnitude of Clinton's error was already clear on election day. The onslaught of voters at the caucus sites was so massive that organizers in some places were forced to allow people to vote on improvised voting slips after they ran out of official ballots, with voters putting their check marks in provisional boxes drawn on paper. In one precinct, where 27,000 voters turned out instead of the anticipated 3,000, a massive traffic jam ensued on a nearby highway, slowing voters' journey to the ballot box.

A similar strategy in Louisiana also failed for Clinton. Despite the symbolic importance of the state in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Clinton appeared to have given up on it before the primary had even begun. Apparently she thought she had no chance against Obama in a state where almost half of Democratic voters are African-American.

But the state's residents, already feeling left in the lurch after Katrina, expressed their resentment. Exit polls found that hurricane victims in particular turned away from Clinton and instead cast votes for Obama -- a bad omen for the big vote in November. Not even a half-hearted, last-minute blitz visit from Clinton could change that.