Easy victory for Obama in Mississippi: Democrats already look toward Pennsylvania

Published 9:42 pm Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama rolled up an easy victory Tuesday in the Mississippi primary, gaining steam ahead of next month’s big Democratic showdown in Pennsylvania, where both candidates appeared Tuesday.

Returns from 98 percent of Mississippi’s precincts showed Obama with 60 percent to 38 percent for Clinton. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who clinched the Republican nomination last week, racked up more delegates by taking Mississippi by 79 percent to former candidate Mike Huckabee’s 12 percent.

The Democratic results in Mississippi reflected a stark racial divide; more than nine in 10 blacks voted for Obama, while Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York won the votes of 7 in 10 whites, according to exit polls. Black voters accounted for roughly half the turnout.

The win is the second in four days for the Illinois senator, who bested Clinton in Saturday’s Wyoming caucuses.

The Democratic presidential race, which seemed nearly settled, was thrown wide open last week when Clinton bounced back from an 11-contest losing streak to beat Obama in three of four contests, including crucial wins in Texas and Ohio.

In an appearance on CNN after the Mississippi results started to come in, Obama said he believed he remained on a course to victory.

“What we tried to do is steadily make sure that in each state, we are making the case about the need for change in this country,” he said. “Obviously, the people in Mississippi responded.”

In Mississippi, early exit polls suggested that Obama’s supporters had a more favorable opinion of Clinton than hers did of him. Slightly more than half of those who voted for Obama said he should pick her as his running mate if he wins the nomination, while slightly less than half of Clinton’s supporters said she should choose him.

Delegate math

The next six weeks will be devoted to Pennsylvania, which votes April 22 and offers 158 pledged delegates, the biggest prize left on the Democrats’ dwindling campaign calendar.

As of Tuesday night, more than three-quarters of the states had voted, allocating more than 80 percent of the delegates to the Democrats’ national nominating convention in August.

Given the math, it seems nearly certain that the party’s superdelegates — Democratic leaders who get automatic entry to the convention — will settle the nominating fight.

Obama won at least 17 delegates Tuesday and Clinton won at least 11, with five delegates still to be awarded. There were 33 at stake in Mississippi.

In the overall race for the nomination, Obama had 1,596 delegates, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as superdelegates. Clinton had 1,484, according to an Associated Press count, which includes estimates of the unpledged delegates.

It takes 2,025 delegates to secure the Democratic nomination at the party’s national convention.

Meanwhile the Texas Democratic Party announced Tuesday that the official results from March 4 caucuses won’t be available until March 29. The last reported results — from 41 percent of the precinct caucuses — show Obama has won at least 31 delegates from the caucuses and Clinton has won at least 27. The remaining nine delegates will be awarded after the official results are announced at the end of the month.

A huge turnout played havoc with the caucuses, creating confusion, long waits and even a few calls to the police to calm frustrations.

Charges, rebuttals

Early Tuesday, Clinton attacked Obama during a Pennsylvania campaign stop, contrasting his rhetoric and his actions on issues such as Iraq and free trade.

“If you’re going to talk, you ought to mean what you say, so people can count on it,” Clinton said at a rally in Harrisburg, Pa.

On energy policy, Clinton disparaged Obama for promoting wind energy but voting for the Bush administration’s 2005 energy bill. On the Iraq war, she faulted him for pledging to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq while his former foreign-policy adviser told European audiences that pledge was open to re-evaluation. And on trade policy, she contended, Obama pledged to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement while a top economic adviser assured Canadians his promise was campaign rhetoric.

The Obama campaign responded immediately, saying Clinton was trying to score “cheap political points” with “a kitchen sink of distorted and discredited attacks that she knows aren’t true.”

Noting that Obama was visiting a wind plant Tuesday to highlight his support for the industry, spokesman Bill Burton said: “If Senator Clinton wants to have an honest debate about why she voted against that bill, we’re happy to have it, but she owes the voters of Pennsylvania more than the same old attack politics that Americans have already rejected across the country.”