Obamomentum: 'W' Tuesday Postgame Analysis

Washington, Wisconsin, and HaWaii (it's a stretch, I know, but work with me) all held nominating contests today, and as David Knowles noted earlier, Barack Obama carried Wisconsin by a wide margin, his 9th victory in a row, and has taken Hawaii as expected, 76%-24%. John McCain carried the state by a huge 18 point spread over rival Mike Huckabee, and more than doubled Huckabee's vote total in Washington.


The Washington State Democratic Primary is being described as a "beauty contest", since the state has already pledged its delegates based on the results of a February 9 caucus, which Obama won by more than double, 68%-31%. Despite that fact, Washington is shaping up to be the lone bright spot for Hillary Clinton. With record turnout expected, Clinton has made up incredible ground in the state, allowing her campaign to point to the contest as a momentum-stopper for Barack Obama, and to challenge the validity of his caucus state wins in the court of public opinion.


On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee picked up no delegates, as both contests were "Winner take all." Huck shows no sign of dropping out, but at this point, McCain is at least benefiting from headlines of wide victories, rather than sitting quietly with a secured nomination. The headline for Clinton is, "We made up 33 points in Washington." They can point to the disparity between the caucus result and the primary result as an indicator that all of Obama's caucus wins are less valid as expressions of the popular will.

Of course, the rest of the world will be talking about Obamomentum, as these contests were his 9th and 10th victories in a row, 11th if you count Washington. In exit polls, 54% of voters found that Clinton had been more unfair to Obama in campaigning, compared with 34% for Obama, indicating that it will be increasingly difficult for Clinton to benefit from negative campaigning.

Another symbolically bad moment for Clinton occurred when, during her speech, MSNBC and other outlets cut away to Barack Obama's victory speech. There seems to be no way Clinton will drop out before Texas, but the writing appears to be on the wall.

The highlight of the coverage was this clip, of Chris Matthews embarassing an Obama backer. It's the kind of clip that gets forwarded around in emails, and fair or not, it does play neatly into the popular line of attack against Obama.