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Correction: Barack won Saturday, Mar 8, 2008 By John Brummett You may have received incorrect information about what happened in the Democratic presidential race the other night. There is the widespread impression that Hillary Clinton won Texas. It looks like Barack Obama may well have. I'll explain in a minute, but first, the larger picture: After all is said and done, it appears that Hillary will have gained maybe a half-dozen or so delegates nationally Tuesday night. It appears that she remains behind Obama somewhere between 140 and 150 in earned delegates. And now she doesn't have so many big friendly states in which to make up that ground. Her only hope is to make such a splash with a big win in Pennsylvania, and big wins in do-overs in Florida and Michigan, that the super delegates will go for her. They would catapult her past Obama's lead in delegates won via the voters - meaning, you know, the democratic way. In other words, the white bosses would have kept down the black people again. It's not at all clear that the Democratic Party wants to do that - disenfranchise black people, I mean. It is true that Hillary won three of the four primaries Tuesday, including the one in Texas. It is true that she has momentum. It is true that she has picked up her fundraising. You have to give her credit. Like the monster in a horror movie, she only looked dead. It's the classic movie scene: Obama drew a breath of relief, but, then, the sudden blare of ominous music portended that Hillary had risen to loom behind him - like Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction," kind of, only without the knife and the boiled pet rabbit and the extramarital sex. But one thing Hillary didn't really do is win Texas. Here's why. First, the over-all statewide vote in the primary, which she took by 51-48, meant nothing. It was as irrelevant as the nationwide vote in a presidential race - the one Al Gore won. Delegates were apportioned according to margins in state senate districts. And some of these state senatorial districts had more delegates than others, on account of their having had more democratic votes cast in them in recent elections. Anyway, this primary only counted for two-thirds of the delegates. Hillary appears from that primary to have copped four more Texas delegates than Obama. The other third of the delegates come from the caucuses that took place immediately after the polls closed. Apparently these were wild affairs. Hillary's campaign says the Obama people cheated by locking out Hillary supporters or absconding with the official records or other devious means. Obama's people say Hillary's people are sore losers. It's obvious by now that Obama voters are either more fervent or possessed of more gumption, because they keep winning caucuses. At this writing, not all the Texas caucuses had been accounted for. Some of the record-keepers apparently went home with the official ledgers. Anyway, the point of the caucuses was to elect delegates to a next step, which are conventions at the end of this month. We may not fully know how the caucuses came out until delegates get seated at those conventions. But this we do know: With about half the caucuses counted, Obama appeared to have picked up seven delegates, erasing his four-delegate deficit from the primary. That moved him ahead of Hillary in Texas by three delegates. If the trend generally holds for the other half of the caucuses, he'll move up three more delegates, putting him up on her in Texas by six. That's sort of like winning. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
