Don’t order the lilies for Senator Clinton just yet

The conventional wisdom is now proclaiming Senator Clinton’s campaign for President to be all but over.  Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson has called for her to drop out, as has her leading defender in the Virginia blogosphere, Ben Tribbett.  I can understand how they (and many others) would be so sure that this race is over.  After all, yesterday’s Post poll put the race between Clinton and Obama even in Texas (Clinton’s lead is within the margin of error), while Obama is within seven points of her in Ohio.  The analysis looks simple: one more push and Clinton loses Texas (and perhaps Ohio) and she is done.

In reality, things are very different, and here’s why.

There are no more pushes left: Between today and March 4 (primary day in Texas and Ohio), the number of primaries on the Democratic side is a big, round, and fat zero - meaning no more victories Obama can use for momentum, no more contests for him to exploit with 45-minute victory speeches, and no more Clinton concession-but-not-really speeches (when she looks and sounds her worst).  The Clinton campaign has hit its national nadir, yet she is still ahead in Ohio (significantly) and Texas (insignificantly).  We now have a pause for the next week and a half, giving Clinton time to bring her organization to bear on these critical states.

Obama is finally getting some scrutiny: When a columnist says this about your campaign - “on issue after issue - immigration, the economy, global warming - he has offered boilerplate policies that evade the underlying causes of the stalemates . . . The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation’s major problems when, so far, he isn’t” - it’s not good. When the columnist writes for the Washington Post, it’s a sure sign that the bloom is off the rose.  Obama is being forced to give actual answers to questions, and already he’s stumbling.  His assertion that American forces have to engage in dangerous raids against the Taliban to acquire weapons was refuted by his very source (Weekly Standard Blog).  If things like this continue, Obama will start to slide in the polls.

The second-look effect: It happens to every perceived front-runner.  Supporters start to wonder if they made the right call, and undecideds suddenly shift to the nearest viable opponent.  It’s already happening in national Democratic polling (Gallup has Clinton ahead by one point nationally).  To a well-rounded and ready candidate, second-look effects are no big deal.  With Obama, we’re not really sure.  The bigger problem, however, is that Obama will suffer the second-look effect in states where he is not ahead (Ohio and Texas), meaning that even if he recovers, he will be lucky to return to the status quo ante, when he was already trailing.

The Republicans actually have a race in Texas: Mike Huckabee has put all his chips in there, meaning John McCain will be trying very hard to pull independents into the GOP primary (Texas’ primary is semi-closed, a voter walks in, asks for a ballot, and is registered as a member of that party from that day forward for one year).  This will depress independent voter turnout in the Democratic race, which is bad news for Obama.

If Clinton does win Texas and Ohio, the momentum is completely reversed: This is being billed as Clinton’s last stand.  However, if she pulls off the two-fer, she’ll be the Comeback Kid all over again.  Then she will have the momentum heading into Pennsylvania in April.

Finally, if Clinton can win in Pennsylvania, too, she will have won every major state outside of Illinois.  This will easily be enough justification for the “superdelegates” to rally to her side at the August convention, especially considering her three big wins between now and then.

Am I say Clinton should be favored to win?  No, I’m saying no one should be favored to win on the Democratic side.  What is clear is that Senator Clinton is not finished, not by a long shot.