Clinton Moves Focus To Super Tuesday

Washington Post: Candidate Looking Beyond S.C. Primary, Turning Attention To 4 Delegate-Rich States

(Washingtonpost.com)  This story was written by Anne E. Kornblut and Shailagh Murray.

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The next Democratic presidential nominating contest will take place in South Carolina on Saturday, but Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has already turned her full attention to places such as this: delegate-rich pockets of states that will vote in a tidal wave of primaries two weeks from now.

Clinton has been focused on California, New York, New Jersey and Arkansas since her defeat in the Iowa caucuses earlier this month, betting that she can sweep states where her name recognition and popularity are strong.

The logic seems simple: She represents New York in the Senate, and New Jersey is next door; she was the first lady of Arkansas for a decade; and California will be the biggest prize when 22 states vote on Feb. 5. But in a system that awards delegates by congressional district, with some worth more than others, the calculation is far from straightforward, and Clinton backers fear that the setup could boost Sen. Barack Obama if he fares well in populous corners of key states.

Her strategists call it a "game of chess," part of the byzantine path to the Democratic nomination in a campaign that has pitted two strong front-runners and a determined third candidate, former senator John Edwards, in a tight battle from one contest to the next.

The approach is demanding. Clinton made a one-day cross-country round trip to visit this vital district, a heavily Hispanic area with a number of less-affluent voters who her advisers believe are likely to support her. She hopes to sweep the entire state of California, and polls have shown her doing well statewide, but it is just as critical that she pick up the five delegates that come with the Salinas area. Under the Democratic nominating rules, 70 percent of California's delegates will be awarded on a district-by-district basis; the remaining 30 percent will go to the candidate who wins statewide.

The same is true for the other big-prize states, forcing the Clinton and Obama campaigns, despite their record fundraising and an avalanche of media attention, to make carefully targeted choices about where to send the contenders and where to place ads.

On this trip, Clinton won the endorsement of the United Farm Workers, the union founded by Cesar Chavez, and tailored her pitch to the area's economic concerns.

"When I talk about what I want to do as your president, it is about you and your families, your jobs, your futures," she told a crowd of cheering supporters, including numerous farmworkers, at Hartnell College.

Clinton strategists think Obama will do better in African American districts while Clinton will fare better in places such as this, with a heavy Hispanic population. It is one piece of a puzzle that the campaign is putting together -- or, in the words of one strategist, paring down -- as it makes budget decisions. "You start out with this huge list of congressional districts and you slowly whittle it down" to ones that are winnable, the adviser said.

Obama is making similar decisions. Although he has opened offices in all 22 states holding contests on Feb. 5, he is zeroing in on specific voter groups in which he believes he has an inherent advantage over Clinton. In New Jersey, one of his targets is independent voters. In Georgia and Alabama, he is seeking to replicate his South Carolina strategy by targeting African Americans.

Clinton denied that she is skating past South Carolina, the first state where African Americans are expected to make up a majority of the Democratic electorate, in order to win states that are set up better for her. Her campaign is already walking a fine line with the black community in its criticisms of Obama, and aides want to avoid the appearance that she is ignoring the concerns of black voters in the South.

In a news conference before she left Washington on Tuesday, Clinton argued that it is "absolutely not fair" to say that she is ceding South Carolina to Obama, who is campaigning there most of this week. After traveling to California and Arizona on Tuesday, she was scheduled to return to Washington late that night and then go to New Jersey on Wednesday.

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"I have a couple of obligations that I have to meet today and tomorrow, but my husband and my daughter are in South Carolina, and we are waging a very vigorous campaign in South Carolina," Clinton said. "We are obviously on the ground, pushing hard."

But Clinton strategists have done the math. More than four in 10 of the delegates awarded on Feb. 5 (the day when half the overall Democratic delegates will be won) lie in the four states at the heart of their plan: California, New York, New Jersey and Arkansas.

Obama, equally aware of the quirky math of the nominating process, began his ground operation months before Clinton. Because of her huge national name-recognition advantage, "it was important to get up and operational early," said Steve Hildebrand, a senior Obama adviser. The one exception is Illinois, Obama's home turf.

The Obama campaign's heavy emphasis on grass-roots organizing, which served it so well in Iowa, has led it to target the six states that will hold caucuses rather than primaries on Feb. 5. These are typically lightly attended affairs, but they could deliver big returns if Obama can follow his Iowa model of identifying a pool of supporters, including nontraditional participants such as college students and independents, and methodically turning them out.

The big three in that category are Colorado, Kansas and Minnesota. But the campaign also is active in North Dakota, where Obama has three offices; Alaska, where he has two; and Idaho, where he has one. To help balance out Clinton's edge with Democratic Party faithful, Obama is seeking endorsements in all six of the caucus states and may be close to securing the nod of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, sources close to the campaign said. (The Clinton team counters that the Feb. 5 caucus states are relatively unimportant, accounting for just 12 percent of the delegates who will be awarded that day.)

To catch the attention of voters who will cast their ballots early, the Obama campaign picked Arizona and California for the airing of its first round of Feb. 5 ads. San Francisco Bay area residents are among the most likely to vote early, and Obama's California ad targets them by addressing his call for alternative energy sources, a major local concern. Obama scored a key Bay Area endorsement, from longtime Rep. George Miller, a close ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The campaign is also tackling the No. 2 prize of New York by congressional district, seeking to capitalize on a rule that would grant Obama two-fifths of all delegates if he can hit the 31 percent mark in each district. "We don't plan to win New York, but we do plan to take a lot of delegates out of there," Hildebrand said. The Clinton team has the same approach in Illinois. That is why Clinton stopped in St. Louis en route from Las Vegas to New York after winning the Nevada caucuses last weekend, making an appearance that would be seen in crossover media markets in Illinois.

[l00ker]

These ridiculous posts about Obama living in Indonesia "where Muslims live" are truly stupid. I think there should be some kind of test given before anyone is allowed to vote. Democracy doesn''''t work very well with an ignorant electorate.


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Posted by gretagreen at 06:16 PM : Jan 23, 2008



I feel your pain.

[gce65]

And let''s not forget that while this circus is distracting us other things are going on.

CBS:
Why no news of the Center for Public Integrity report exhaustively documenting 935 falsehoods Bush and his cronies told in the lead-up to and surrounding the start of Iraq war? Wa Post and ABC are covering it. Apparently you ran it yesterday but quickly took it down? What''s up with that?

http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard


A lot of people are talking about holding Bush/Cheney accountable for treasonous behavior. I agree.
Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) has gathered around 225K signatures from an online petition asking for congressional hearings into Cheney''s behavior as possible grounds for impeachment. He only needed 50K signatures, but got almost 5X as many as needed. Still, Rep. JOHN CONYERS (D-MI) is chair of the House Judiciary Committee and is holding things up.
Please contact him at either of these 3 locations if you''d like him to proceed:

2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
[phone]
[phone] Fax

2615 W. Jefferson
Trenton, MI 48183
[phone]
[phone] Fax

669 Federal Building
231 W. Lafayette
Detroit, MI 48226
[phone]
[phone] Fax

[papabc]

How do you know that Hillery is lying?

1. Her mouth is moving

2. Bill''s mouth is moving

[candide777]

The Clintons are going to win because as experienced career politicians, they know how to work the system and they''''re doing it.
Posted by ontheleft at 10:24 PM : Jan 23, 2008

Thank God almighty!!! Finally!!! A democrat who knows how to work the system! I thought we atheist would all be rounded up and marched to the concentration camps before the voice of reason would be heard again in our government.

[speakinup]

witless - imagine me finding you here - eating more of that soros bullsh|t ?

[ontheleft]

The Clintons are going to win because as experienced career politicians, they know how to work the system and they''re doing it.

[tibu987]

All is fair but "unworthy" in love and politics.

[tibu987]

Nepotism like crime does not pay.

[j-whitman]

speakinup,,, Imagine finding you here ?? Spreading more spin ???

[notopennshut]

re:tibu987

You''re right on. She keeps on about her 35 years of experience - in fact, I have more than that!! All that she is NOW doing is breaking up the party. She is not fit to lead this country and the image of an ex-president, face red with anger, wagging his fingers at reporters really has brought the presidency to a new lower, even lower than that of GW. This lust for power by the Clintons goes beyond the pale. Where are the leaders of the national democratic party? We really need new leaders, Edwards and Obama together will be the best of them all.

[facts6]

What kind of woman would stay with a man who treated her like that for decades, then speak of how much he loves her. Sen. Clinton has no self respect.

[tibu987]

Tell me, is it only blondes and l^sb^ans that are voting for Hillary?
Can it be that there are other women out there that will vote for Hillary simply because she is a woman.
Wow! Scary!

All Hillary has done as the First Lady was to plan menus and serve tea. Hillary did not sit in on any important national or international meetings. Yet, she claims to have so much more experience than the other candidates.
DUH! Gimme a break.

[speakinup]

"Clinton Moves Focus To Super Tuesday"

So WHO would name their daughter, "Super Tuesday", that''s what I''d like to know.

[greatdrivew]

Giuliani "moved his focus" to Florida in a pathetic attempt to distance himself from states he knew he was going to lose [every state so far].

Is HillBillary doing to same in South Carolina? Conceding South Carolina?

If so, then this is a very friendly headline and description of HillBillary''s cut and run strategy.

It will however be very interesting to see which states HillBillary believes they can carry on February 5th. Will HillBillary spend time in Alabama or California? If California, then where in California? Beverly Hills and Malibu, or Van Nuys and South Central?

[pepperp1]

Here we go again Senator Obamas campaign chair in SC charged that Senator Clinton and her husband are running a Lee Atwater campaign, for those of you not familiar with Atwater he was Karl Rove mentor and used racist code to inflame white people against blacks in political campaigns. So again the race card is slung and is intently intended to victimize and inflame people against them great harm in this, I would be outraged.

What fun this entertainment the Dem Party has provided to the country%u2026.

[papabc]

Hillery received the backing of the UFW, a group that backs the employment of Illegals into this country.

[l8c6]

fat chance last chance. The right wing extreme would like to believe they''re all just all the same. The right wing cannot handle being accountable.

[godofredo29]

One thing Bill has to watch out for...if he acts indignant, points and wags his finger at the listener (like he did when he said "I did not have *** with that woman") someone might just have to call him on it (not the actual words I was thinking).

[gretagreen]

I want more attention paid to John Edwards. Do you think the media deliberately ignores him because media is owned by corporations and Edwards is concerned about corporations having too much power? (I like Obama and Clinton too, but I think Edwards may be the best choice for our country when all is said and done.)

[l8c6]

I can hear the right wing extremist addicts and whack jobs say, "oh, they all lie, look at Clinton, ("didn''''t inhale" "didn''''t have sexual relations with that woman".),

We as a nation and a people sit heaped in shame and financial burden to working people over the slaughtering of human lives and the destruction of so many written off as cannon fodder, 1/5 of soldiers with permanent brain injuries, untold thousands who have committed suicide, while a few illusive, antisocial war profiteers scoff and snicker.

Right wingers are antisocial killers. They kill and divide societies around the world. It''''s the only way they can beat an otherwise decent humanity and gain their perverse advantage.

So Huckabee, most of humanity is not fundamentally selfish and evil. Huckabee, you need only speak for yourself and other right wingers.

Eat that lastchance.