Obamans, it's time to end this.
Wed Feb 06, 2008 at 03:58:13 PM PDT
The results are in: Obama won Tsunami Tuesday. He won more states and more pledged delegates when the original goal of the campaign was to trail Hillary by no more than 100 at the end of the day.
Meanwhile, Hillary's campaign is in disarray. They are in such bad financial straits that some of her senior staff is working without pay and that she has had to loan her campaign $5 million.
But guess what? That doesn't mean it's time to gloat. It means it's time to work even harder. The primary season didn't end tonight, and while the pundits here and elsewhere may say that Obama has the upper hand, he doesn't have it unless we give it to him.
More below.
The bottom line is this: Barack Obama needs your time and your money.
Taking a look at the primary calendar, we may see that we have a slate upcoming that's favorable to Obama, with Washington and Nebraska caucusing this Saturday and Louisana holding a primary, followed by Maine this Sunday, and the Potomac Primary of DC, Maryland and Virginia next Tuesday. Now, it may be true that Obama may be favored to win a large majority of these states, as well as Hawaii and Wisconsin on February 19th. But after that, guess what:
A mini-super-Tuesday on March 4, including Clinton-leaning Texas and Ohio.
Now, we've seen the way this campaign went on Super Tuesday: Clinton spent most of her time and energy focusing on winning larger percentages in the delegate-rich larger states on Super Tuesday, while Obama spent some of his time building up the Democratic Party in places like Boise, Idaho (drawing 14,000 people) and Kansas (see the front-page post by Scout Finch about the situation in Kansas).
The same thing will likely happen on March 4: Clinton will concentrate on her natural advantages in Ohio and Texas, while pretty much leaving Obama to take the delegates in Rhode Island and Vermont, which also decide their delegates that day.
So what does this all mean? Well, given how tight this race is in delegates, the Obama campaign needs to continue to score decisive victories in the states in between now and March 4 to have a shot at mitigating Senator Clinton's natural advantages there and capturing the nomination outright. Furthermore, we've seen how the media likes to talk about the big, delegate rich states and how many networks basically portrayed Super Tuesday as a draw, even though Obama far surpassed expectations and won a majority of states.
What this comes down to is your time and money. Obama needs money to be able to keep his message on the air in some very expensive markets between now and then, especially the DC metro area, which will be decisive in getting votes in Maryland and Northern Virginia in the shorter term, and being able to afford more advertising, direct mail, etc. to close the gap in Texas and Ohio.
He also needs your time. Washington and Louisiana vote this Saturday. That's four days from now, and the campaign needs wins to continue the momentum.
And even though Obama has the support of Washington SEIU and several Seattle endorsements, he needs your efforts to Get Out the Caucus this weekend. You can make calls to either Washington or Lousiana by going here and getting a call list.
Update: If you call Washington, be sure to remind them that the primary doesn't matter! only the caucus matters. See here.
And you can donate here. I gave $100 at the end of January, and I'm ready to up the ante again. Decisive victories in the upcoming states will likely win more endorsements for Obama and swing Superdelegates toward the campaign.
It can be our time, but we have to make it so. Fired up, ready to go!
