Shrillary Saw Her Shadow,....

Damn,.....six more weeks of belligerence, braying and bulls**t!

Texas Caucus Count Takes Wind Out of Clinton’s Wins
by FOXNews.com
Wednesday, March 5, 2008



Late-breaking numbers out of Texas’ odd two-phase voting system put an asterisk on Hillary Clinton’s Tuesday night victory speech, showing gains made by Barack Obama in the delegate grab race had all but numerically canceled out her big win in Ohio.

Although Clinton got a major boost in morale by winning more raw votes than Obama in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island (she lost to Obama in Vermont), an Associated Press count of the delegates shows Clinton only reduced her opponent’s lead in delegates by 12.

In the overall race for the nomination, Obama had 1,562 delegates, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as superdelegates. Clinton had 1,461. It takes 2,025 delegates to secure the Democratic nomination.

For the night, Clinton won at least 185 delegates and Obama won at least 173.

Clinton’s victory in Ohio won her only 9 more delegates than Obama, with two delegates still to be awarded. In Texas, Clinton won four more delegates than Obama in the primary. But Obama trimmed Clinton’s lead to a single Texas delegate in the party caucuses. Ten delegates are still to be awarded in the caucuses.

The candidates vied for 370 delegates in four states: Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont. But the Democrats’ system of awarding delegates proportionally made it hard for either candidate to post big gains.

Also, Texas had a two-step system, with about two-thirds of its delegates awarded in a primary, and the rest in party caucuses.

Click here for the Texas Democratic exit poll.

Click here for the Ohio Democratic exit poll.

Clinton is pointing to Ohio as her biggest win from Tuesday, where she beat Obama 54-44 percent. She won the Texas vote by a slimmer 51-47 margin. Clinton won Rhode Island 58-40 percent, but Obama took Vermont by an even wider margin, 60 percent to Clinton’s 38 percent.

The result is that all eyes next focus on Saturday’s contest in Wyoming and other states holding contests well into June.

Wyoming has long been off the Democrats’ radar. In 2004, the state favored George Bush over John Kerry by more than 2-to-1. Only 70,000 Wyoming Democrats cast ballots in that general election, and this year it yields a scant 12 pledged delegates. Contrast that with Tuesday’s Western state vote in Texas, where about 2.8 million Democrats cast ballots in a battle for 193 pledged delegates.

But this year, every delegate is being fought over, grabbed at and wooed, even in down-ballot states such as Wyoming, Mississippi, North Carolina and Montana. The biggest delegate prize of the remaining 12 nomination contests is seven weeks away, on April 22, when 158 pledged delegates are up for grabs in Pennsylvania.

Obama still maintains a numeric lead in the delegate count, making it nearly a statistical impossibility for Clinton to make an outright win before the August Democratic convention. Only 611 pledged delegates are still up for grabs.

Both Clinton and Obama were bracing themselves for a renewed fight on Wednesday.

“What’s happening in this election is that people are starting to ask themselves, you know, the questions that’ll be asked during the general election,” Clinton said, speaking with FOX News.

She added: “I think every election’s a confluence of events. You know, that’s why they’re not static. That’s why this process should go on over a period of time because, you know, new information comes out. People begin to look at the candidates differently. They ask themselves, you know, the questions about who can really be the best nominee, who can win the nomination.”

Obama, also speaking with FOX News, predicted success.

“The bottom line … is we come out of the evening with essentially the same leads in delegates as we had going in and so, we still feel very confident that — we’re going to be going to Wyoming and Mississippi this week; we think we’ll do well there. And on to Pennsylvania, North Carolina and other states after that. … We feel we’re in a very strong position to end up getting the nomination.”

But with few predictions of this race still standing, the Super Tuesday II developments could mean any number of things.

One scenario could provide a strengthened bid for Republican John McCain, who could benefit from a protracted battle between Clinton and Obama. But the reverse could be true, too, as he drops from the news headlines and the Democrats work out their weaknesses before facing the Republican machine heading into November.

Another scenario could mean a bitter end-run at the August Democratic convention. Clinton’s camp is resolute in continuing the fight, and while she still trails in the race for convention delegates, she could make a last-minute grab for the nomination on the convention floor — if it gets that far.She and some of her top surrogates — including former President Bill Clinton and daughter, Chelsea — have been placing personal calls to maintain support among the so-called superdelegates, who aren’t bound to their state nomination contests.

But at the same time, Obama has laid the groundwork to fend off such an onslaught and is said to have a few of the superdelegates quietly on his side, at the ready to parry Clinton’s attempts to play the numbers.

For now, the contest moves on.

After Saturday’s face-off in Wyoming, next Tuesday, Mississippi Democrats head to the polls. After a voting lull, it picks up again in The Keystone State in late April and continues on in May with contests in Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky and Oregon. The June contests are in Montana and South Dakota. Democrats also have yet to vote in Guam and Puerto Rico.