Obama claims delegate lead

Obama claims delegate lead
By: Mike Allen
February 6, 2008 11:09 AM EST

In a surprise twist after a chaotic Super Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) passed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in network tallies of the number of delegates the candidates racked up last night.

The Obama camp now projects topping Clinton by 13 delegates, 847 to 834.

NBC News, which is projecting delegates based on the Democratic Party's complex formula, figures Obama will wind up with 840 to 849 delegates, versus 829 to 838 for Clinton.

Clinton was portrayed in many news accounts as the night’s big winner, but Obama’s campaign says he wound up with a higher total where it really counts — the delegates who will choose the party’s nominee at this summer’s Democratic convention.

With the delegate count still under way, NBC News said Obama appears to have won around 840 delegates in yesterday’s contests, while Clinton earned about 830 — “give or take a few,” Tim Russert, the network’s Washington bureau chief, said on the “Today” show.

The running totals for the two, which includes previous contests and the party officials known as “superdelegates,” are only about 70 delegates apart, Russert said.

The bottom line is that the two are virtually tied.


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Obama won 13 states, some of them smaller, and Clinton won eight.

On Wednesday morning, the battle was on to shape public perceptions about Tuesday.

The Clinton campaign said it was crunching its delegate numbers but was not sure it was correct that Obama got more.

The Obama campaign sent an e-mailed statement titled: “Obama wins Super Tuesday by winning more states and more delegates.”

Campaign Manager David Plouffe said: “By winning a majority of delegates and a majority of the states, Barack Obama won an important Super Tuesday victory over Sen. Clinton in the closest thing we have to a national primary.”

“From Colorado and Utah in the West to Georgia and Alabama in the South to Sen. Clinton’s backyard in Connecticut, Obama showed that he can win the support of Americans of every race, gender and political party in every region of the country,” Plouffe said. “That’s why he’s on track to win Democratic nomination, and that’s why he’s the best candidate to defeat John McCain in November.”

The Obama campaign attached an Excel spreadsheet containing “state-by-state estimates of the pledged delegates we won last night, which total 845 for Obama and 836 for Clinton — bringing the to-date total of delegates to 908 for Obama, 884 for Clinton.”

Super Tuesday...Cheat sheet

Here is the cheat sheet for watching Super Tuesday. MJ

Barnes: States to Watch Today
FRED BARNES
In Super Tuesday

You don't have to pay attention to every state on Super Tuesday. Some are more important than others. So concentrate on those and you'll get a pretty good understanding of what the results mean for the presidential races in both parties.

On the Democratic side, three states stand out in my mind: New Jersey, Missouri, and California. America is a nation of suburbs and New Jersey is a state of suburbs. That's reason enough to pay attention to it. Missouri is a microcosm of America, with big cities, suburbs and lots of rural areas. It's a bellwether state. And California is, well, California. It's important because it's big. If Barack Obama wins all three of these states, he becomes the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. If he wins two of three, he's still in good shape. Winning one would be painful for his campaign. Losing all three - that would be Hillary Clinton's dream come true.

On the Republican side, John McCain should win a majority of the states and the delegates. But he may do more, namely put together a delegate blowout by beating Mitt Romney in the winner-take-all states. That means New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut in the East, plus Missouri and four other states. McCain could pile up such a large lead in delegates that it would sharply reduce Romney's chances of overtaking him. So on the Republican side, the delegate count is the name of the game.

NY Times Sets Up Hillary For A Fall

NY Times Sets Up Hillary For A Fall
CONFEDERATE YANKEEE
In 2005, Bill Clinton accompanied mining financier Frank Giustra to Kazakhstan, provided dictator Nursultan A. Nazarbayev with a propaganda coup that undermined American foreign policy and glossed over Kazakhstan's dismal human rights record. For Clinton's trouble, Giustra walked away with shared mining rights to 1/5 of the world's known uranium reserves.

Clinton subsequently picked up $131 million dollars in donations and pledges from Giustra for the William J. Clinton Foundation as a result, including a donation of $31.3 million within months of the mining deal being finalized.

On the surface, this sounds like peddling influence for cash—and truth be told, I can't easily come up with any other rational explanation.

This is rather a bizarre time to be publishing an accusation of an incident that occurred several years ago, with only days left before Hillary Clinton engages Barack Obama in the Super Tuesday Democratic presidential primaries, and occurring just days after the New York Times publicly endorsed Clinton as their candidate of choice.

Are we to believe that the Times editors were unaware of the pending article on Bill Clinton's apparent influence peddling when they gave Hillary their endorsement less than one full week ago?

In a large news organization it is indeed possible that the editorial staff who wrote Clinton's endorsement was unaware of the pending Bill Clinton/Giustra article... but I doubt it. And it is the Times editors that chose when to publish an article that was not locked into a specific time-sensitive news cycle, but was, as they say, "evergreen." This could have waited until after Super Tuesday, without a loss of importance... but then it would lack the colossal political influence that this story now may have.

Publishing the Clinton/Giustra article on this day, so close to Super Tuesday, seems indicative of ill intent on behalf of the Times.

Perhaps Hillary isn't their real choice for President after all.

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