Wisconsin is the new Alamo

My good friend Luke Hayes, who was in Nevada for Obama starting in the summer, was shipped to South Carolina right after caucus day, then up to Bridgeport, Connecticut. Luke spent two months in Austin with me on the Mayor’s campaign in 2006, so when I asked him, after Super Tuesday, if he was on his way down to Texas, I was shocked (and admittedly a little dismayed) when he told me they were sending him to Waukesha, Wisconsin. Didn’t they realize how important Texas was going to be, and didn’t they want to take advantage of Luke’s experience and network in Austin? “Well,” reasoned Luke, “they seem to think Wisconsin is critical.”

Now, ten days later, it looks like they may have been right. Hillary’s people seem to have initially shared my position, but a few days ago they started competing more fiercely for the cheese-heads, realizing they couldn’t just punt and hope to make a stand in Texas and Ohio. Fourteen days after Wisconsin might be too little too late. Let’s take a look at why:

The states that have voted so far contribute 2171 of the 3249 pledged delegates to be awarded, or 66.8%. That’s a lot – more than 2/3, already weighed in. Estimates continue to vary (though less and less so), and some news outlets prefer to wait to award the caucus delegates, but I think we are pretty close if we say that Obama has 1134, Clinton has 995, 26 went to Edwards, and 16 of those 2171 are yet to be awarded. What sequence of events could lead to Hillary having more pledged delegates than Barack when the polls close in Puerto Rico on June 7th?

(For the purposes of this post, we’re going to assume two things. First, those Michigan and Florida delegates may get a seat at the convention, but only if there’s a clear nominee. To count them for Hillary would probably be illegal. Second – and this is much more open to debate – it is looking less and less likely that the loser of the pledged delegate race will be able to convince enough superdelegates that the founding fathers, the gods of democracy, and their constituents would be cool with them swinging the election his or her way. This is a development of my post on this subject last week – “Delegate Math.” From the start, this question has been framed in the news as “will the party elite reverse the will of the people.” I just don’t think so right now, but again, that could change. So for the purposes of this post, the important question is who will get the most pledged delegates.)

Let’s say that Barack wins Wisconsin 52-48 and cleans up in his native state of Hawaii, and then rides this uninterrupted wave of momentum to lose by only 5 or 6 points in both Texas and Ohio. Let’s also say that he loses Rhode Island 45-55 and wins Vermont by the same margin. Under that scenario, his lead would be cut to about 120-125 from its current 139, with Wyoming and Mississippi set to vote on March 8th and 10th, and then nothing until PA on April 22nd. (I’m also giving him Democrats Abroad, who have voted but not yet returned results.) Assuming he continues to be strong in the interior mountain west and southern states with large black populations, and thus wins MS and WY by significant margins, she would have to beat him by 20 points in all the remaining states except for SD and MT, where she could draw him, and Puerto Rico, which she would have to win by 30. Keep in mind, her largest margin of victory in any state other than the one she represents in the Senate (17 points), the one of which she was First Lady (43 points), or Oklahoma (24 points – I have no idea), has been 15 points. So it would be some kind of trick for her to wipe him out that badly – ie, to hold him under 40% - in PA, NC, IN, WV, OR, and KY, all while being outspent. Impossible, basically, without something game-changing happening.

If she can win WI, on the other hand, and turn the tide in her favor, and then beat him up a lot on March 4th, she might be able to capture enough momentum to power through to big wins in April and May. It would still take big wins, though; 15 to 18 point wins, consistently, and there is a long time between March 10th and April 22nd. In that scenario, her hope might still only be that the superdelegates might be able to go against the pledged delegate count if it’s close and if the momentum is clearly with her. In other words, the numbers say that she really can’t win the pledged delegate count without a very strong showing on March 4th, and it sure seems like she can’t have big wins – really big wins – in TX and OH without something that breaks his momentum before then. That has to be Wisconsin.

My last post about predictions and how foolish they are notwithstanding, if she doesn’t outright win WI and then rough him up on March 4th, there are going to start to be a lot of Democratic Party insiders – ie, superdelegates – telling her that her arithmetic window has closed, that their support is firmly with Obama, and that no one wants to wait until April 22nd to have a nominee, let alone August 25th.