By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : With a clean sweep of the ‘Potomac primaries’ – in Maryland, Virginia and the national capital – Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama surged ahead of party frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
Obama, vying to be America’s first black president, stacked his wins on top of a string of victories over the weekend, pushing his record to 8-0 since he and the former first lady ended last week’s Super Tuesday coast to coast battle in 22 states in a virtual dead heat.
Obama’s performance adds to his gathering momentum and increases pressure on Clinton – not too long ago considered the “inevitable” party nominee – to reverse her fortunes in the next two weeks, when Democratic voters in another half-dozen states go to the polls.
In the all-important battle for delegates to next summer’s political conventions, Obama has at least 1,186 after his wins Tuesday in all three Potomac Primary states, according to media estimates.
Those include “separately chosen party and elected officials known as super delegates”. Clinton has an estimated 1,181 delegates. It takes 2,025 delegates to be the Democratic nominee.
“Every week that goes by, people get a little more comfortable with him and he gets a little stronger,” said Paul Maslin, a Democratic pollster unaligned in the race. But, he cautioned, “This thing is not over.”
Despite the closeness of the delegate count, the momentum has decidedly shifted Obama’s way. He drew huge crowds over the last several days and flexed his financial muscle by handily outspending Clinton on TV advertising in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
Over the weekend, he racked up five victories: in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington state, Maine and the Virgin Islands.
Clinton, by contrast, has weathered one of the roughest patches of her campaign. The day after Super Tuesday, she revealed she was forced to loan her campaign $5 million because of a cash squeeze. Online fundraising immediately picked up.
Days later, Clinton jettisoned her friend and campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle in a long-anticipated shake-up that came amid increased grumbling from supporters concerned about the trajectory of the former front-runner’s campaign.
Perhaps more significant, after being shut out since last Tuesday, the Clinton campaign is bracing for more losses next Tuesday in Hawaii, where Obama spent part of his childhood, and Wisconsin, a state with a history of embracing government reform candidates like Obama.
Clinton is pinning her hopes on two big states that vote March 4 – Ohio, with a large number of economically hard-pressed voters of the sort that have rallied to Clinton’s side elsewhere, and Texas, with a large number of Latino voters. In one contest after another, Clinton has beaten Obama handily among Latinos.
On the Republican side, John McCain moved closer to clinching the nomination, winning Maryland and Virginia over former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Texas Representative Ron Paul.
But McCain struggled in Virginia, where a strong turnout of evangelical Christian voters helped buoy Huckabee, a favourite of religious conservatives.
Picking up all 60 delegates in Virginia primary, McCain increased his tally to at least 789 delegates to Huckabee’s 241 and Ron Paul’s 14. His wins in Maryland and the District of Columbia were going to add even more delegates to his total. It takes 1,191 delegates to win the Republican nomination.
McCain was looking Tuesday to recover from a pair of embarrassing weekend losses in Kansas and Louisiana, where Huckabee prevailed even though McCain appears all but certain to win the Republican nod.
McCain scratched out a narrow win in Washington state caucuses, though Huckabee is challenging the results.
The outcome suggests continued resistance to McCain, who has alienated many conservative Republicans by breaking from party orthodoxy on a number of issues.