Hillary: The Second Coming

Everyone is trying to scramble to explain Hillary Clinton's turnaround tonight. Negative campaigning. Aggressivness. Elbow grease. NAFTA. Rezko. Saturday Night Live. Lots of stuff.

But the bottom line is that Barack Obama's campaign had some air let out of the balloon this week by a media that began to feel guilty for imbalanced coverage of the two. And Obama's folks lost control of the agenda-setting function that a frontrunner usually has.

After the Wisconsin debate, I thought that Clinton had begun to acquiesce to Obama's surge.

Many on her campaign -- at high levels -- thought this was the case as well. And what I thought was taking place after was a "negotiation" for what the role of the Clinton franchise would be.

That is now a dead narrative. Clinton is back and wants to win. Obama still has a magic aura, but it is a bit more tarnished this week than last.

And the bottom line tonight -- despite the fact that Obama won Vermont and that Texas is so close and the caucus process so mismanaged that it's hard not to believe that a recount won't be demanded -- is that Hillary Clinton "did a McCain" tonight -- and she's back in the race, big time.

In Ohio, Clinton won back support from whites,

women and the working class, setting her up well

for the next big contest in Pennsylvania

Hillary came to the podium in Columbus, Ohio tonight pumping her fist to Bruce Springsteen's The Rising and dressed in warrior red.

"You know what they say: 'as Ohio goes, so goes the nation!'" she shouted hoarsely to the crowd, grinning broadly. "This nation is coming back, and so is this campaign. We're going on, we're going strong and we're going all the way."

The Clinton campaign then laid out a warpath from here to April 22, the day of the Pennsylvania primary.

"They want their turn" she said of the states to come, nodding knowingly. Clinton really means she wants their turn - because if Pennsylvania is anything like Ohio, it is another state waiting to take its turn pulling the lever for Clinton.

What the Clinton campaign hopes for going forward is a Pennsylvania primary that focuses on the economy instead of the Iraq war.

That highlights the crucial gender gap she exploited tonight in Ohio instead of the youth vote that has been so keen on Obama.

And capitalises on the wage differences that swung more Ohio voters (making less) her way and lost fewer of the moneyed numbers that have become more and more politically active in the last 11 contests.

In other words, an electorate that votes as everyone thought it might before Obamamania began sweeping the nation.

There are some surprises here, not least of which is that Democrats - and that includes Obama supporters - polled [PDF] by ABC News and the Washington Post just before tonight's contest maintained that if Hillary were to win even one of tonight's big contests, Ohio or Texas, they wanted her to stick it out. And now she's won both.

Even before former President Clinton predicted Hillary needed an Ohio/Texas booster shot, Ohio was going to be an important get for the campaign from the outset.

But as the primary season wore on, the heated nature of this campaign skewed predictions.

On March 2, Mark Blumenthal over at Pollster.com posted a piece on the demographics of Ohio maintaining that while the turnout for the primary in 2000 was 12% and in 2004 15% of the electorate, the Ohio secretary of state was predicting a 60% to 70% increase in voter turnout.

"What all of this means is that polls are in disagreement about who will vote in Tuesday's primary, and that uncertain composition will likely determine the winner," Blumenthal wrote.

"The polls we have before us can tell us a great deal about how preferences differ across the key demographic and regional groups, but the tools of survey research are simply not powerful enough to predict who will vote with great precision."

That's because big voter turnout thus far has meant near landslide numbers for Obama.

But the voters were a lot less hard to predict than Blumenthal surmised - mostly because they went with long-held conventional wisdom about the Ohio electorate.

CNN reported that 58% of Ohio voters (a state where the median income is $44,532 - for comparison, New Jersey's median income Is $64,470 and New York's is $51,384) listed the economy as the most important issue bringing them into the voting booth.

Compare that with Vermont, for example, firmly in the Obama camp tonight - where seven out of 10 voters listed the war as the most important issue facing voters in November.

(MSNBC is reporting that Vermont's firm anti-war stance is not just based on its liberal reputation, but that the state has faced a disproportionate number of causalities in the last five years.)

In Ohio, Clinton won back her base: women, the working class, whites - all groups that Obama had been making inroads with in the last 11 contests.

Reversing (for now) the trend, the Clinton camp decisively won the all-important white vote in Ohio (65% to 33% in a state where 75% of the voters were white - the state itself is 84% white).

And while Obama swept the black vote, the numbers were too small to make a statistical impact. Women made up 59% of the voters, and Clinton cleaned up here as well, 54% to 45%.

In the cities, Obama kept his margins ahead of Clinton in Columbus (winning Franklin county 56% to 43%) and Cincinnati (61% to 38%), but strangely he barely won Cleveland (51% to 48%) even though it's just that sort of populous urban centre that's been a sure-Obama stronghold elsewhere.

Clinton even won college-educated voters by a reasonable margin and dominated among voters with a high school education.

Perhaps most importantly, however, in addition to winning back her base, Clinton won all the popularity contests, the yearbook quotes - the "most likely to win in November"-style questions.

Ohio voters deemed her the best suited for commander-in-chief and said she was most likely to be picked by last-minute-deciders.

If she can hold these voters - the rural voters, the white voters, the over-40 voters and the women - she will cause problems for the Obama campaign in Pennsylvania.

This may very well mean that the primary season will stretch all the way to Denver. And that's something, in light of John McCain's wrap up tonight, the party should well be dreading - no matter who the final nominee is in August.

tags: hillary clinton  victory  ohio  passion  pressident  2008  

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