(Cross-posted at The Field.)
Kornblut and Murray of the Washington Post offer a must-read analysis of Senator Hillary Clinton's four-state strategy for Tsunami Tuesday.
Clinton has left the building in South Carolina (leaving Bill behind to take credit or blame for what happens there next Tuesday) and is focusing her attention on four of the 23 states to vote on February 5: California, New York, New Jersey and Arkansas, which, together, constitute 40 percent of the delegates at stake that day.
More at the jump...
"The logic seems simple: She represents New York in the Senate, and New Jersey is next door; she was the first lady of Arkansas for a decade; and California will be the biggest prize when 22 states vote on Feb. 5. But in a system that awards delegates by congressional district, with some worth more than others, the calculation is far from straightforward, and Clinton backers fear that the setup could boost Sen. Barack Obama if he fares well in populous corners of key states...
Populous corners? That's Washington Post-speak for cities that have large African-American populations and younger professionals that favor Obama, but they're missing one of the real stories to come out of the three states that have already voted - Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada - which is that Obama won the rural vote.
Obama is winning in rural America in part because his campaign got in early and out-organized in places that Democrats too often ignore. Rural Democrats and Independents are surrounded by Republicans in areas that voted for George W. Bush and thus are less over-confident and more focused on how Democrats can win in November, and they've seen from their neighbors Obama's appeal to folks they thought would never vote Democratic in years of living alongside them.
(To watch Republicans suddenly waking up to the same factor - it's fun... and good for you, too! - see National Review's Byron York, reporting from South Carolina, compare new GOP fear of Obama to the moment in the Jaws movie when the hunters realize the size and force of the shark they stalk and determine, "we need a bigger boat.")
Kornblut and Murray look at the ways that the Obama campaign, by getting in earlier with field organization, will pick off delegates in Clinton's four targetted states while working around the edges in the places that the Clinton campaign has written off: Rural caucus states...
Obama, equally aware of the quirky math of the nominating process, began his ground operation months before Clinton. Because of her huge national name-recognition advantage, "it was important to get up and operational early," said Steve Hildebrand, a senior Obama adviser. The one exception is Illinois, Obama's home turf.
The Obama campaign's heavy emphasis on grass-roots organizing, which served it so well in Iowa, has led it to target the six states that will hold caucuses rather than primaries on Feb. 5. These are typically lightly attended affairs, but they could deliver big returns if Obama can follow his Iowa model of identifying a pool of supporters, including nontraditional participants such as college students and independents, and methodically turning them out.
The big three in that category are Colorado, Kansas and Minnesota. But the campaign also is active in North Dakota, where Obama has three offices; Alaska, where he has two; and Idaho, where he has one. To help balance out Clinton's edge with Democratic Party faithful, Obama is seeking endorsements in all six of the caucus states and may be close to securing the nod of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, sources close to the campaign said.
Whoa. Rewind the tape. Governor Sebelius (in the photo, above), 59, a rising Democratic party superstar, may be about to endorse Obama? (Field Note: Didn't we tease that possibility earlier this month? "Toto, I've got a feeling we're back in Kansas again!") Aside from being on the short list of possible vice presidential running mates for Obama (midwestern woman chief executive from a "red" state), her presence on such a national ticket would also remind that Obama himself is the product of a white woman from Kansas: symbolically, as Paul Simon might sing, "well I would not give you false hope, on this strange and mournful day, but a mother and child reunion is only a motion away."
Truth is, at 12 points ahead in the California polls, and being a "favorite daughter" of Arkansas, New York and to a lesser extent New Jersey (ever in the shadow of Manhattan), there's not much chance Clinton loses any of the states she's targeted. The devil will be in the delegate count details. (In California, if Obama could find a path to expand his support among Hispanic-Americans from the 25 percent he received in Nevada to, say, the 36 percent that Jesse Jackson garnered in 1988 in the California primary, he'll flip enough delegates there to substantially limit Clinton's delegate take from the Golden State: I published a story on CounterPunch today with some more detailed thoughts on that challenge.)
Clinton's abandonment of South Carolina this week, and her staff's smirky dismissal of the February rural contests - "The Clinton team counters that the Feb. 5 caucus states are relatively unimportant, accounting for just 12 percent of the delegates who will be awarded that day," note the Post reporters - could be just what the doctor ordered to cause the national media to pay attention to rural voters as its own important constituency and voting group.
Rural voters were so ignored by the Clinton team in Nevada - and prioritized by the Obama team there - that Obama won more Democratic National Convention delegates there than the downstate winner.
Clinton did not "ignore" rural Nevada in terms of advertising dollars or public appearances (like Obama and Edwards, Clinton went to Reno and Elko, too). But her campaign simply did not invest in field organization in those places. Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised to see, between now and February 5, quick "toe touch" appearances in Massachusetts or Arizona or New Mexico (and as Halperin reports, the Clinton campaign is buying TV ads in those three states plus Connecticut, Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Utah), but perhaps the campaign's own internal polling is showing that what happened in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada - rural voters coalesce around Obama no matter what Clinton does - and is therefore writing them off.
If so, has the Clinton campaign learned the lesson of Nevada (and Iowa and New Hampshire before it) that a rural voter strategy makes for more delegates at the end of the day? Or are they repeating the mistakes of Democratic campaigns past, ignoring rural voters in the same ways that always come back to bite them on the rear end come November?