Clinton Pulls Out Texas

According to CBS. And everybody just followed suit. Wow. It's going to be tight, but it looks like she'll pull it out with around a 50,000 vote victory. That, of course, is the raw popular count. Once the delegates get weighted by State Senate district, and THEN once you add in the caucus totals, it could be a "Clinton wins popular vote, Obama wins delegates" scenario. Which of course looks terrible.

There's absolutely no reason for Clinton to get out of the race at this point. Obama needed a knockout punch and had a legitimate chance, and he didn't put it together despite a money advantage (which has meant NOTHING this primary season, by the way). Sure, he got his nose bloodied with some tough ads and one major gaffe, but you know, he'd get worse thrown at him in the general election, and if he can't stand up to it now, he won't be able to then. The "Ohio doesn't matter" spin is ridiculous and just as bad as Mark Penn.

If I'm a superdelegate I'd wait to announce until after Pennsylvania, and I think that's what you'll see. There's no need to pull Obama out of the fire right now. The delegate count is going to wind up pretty even, but the Ohio/Texas firewall did its job. I really thought Obama's ground game would rule the day in Texas, but no sale. He won early voting but the late deciders all broke for Clinton. That's true across the board, and it's not a good sign, considering she ran John McCain's campaign the last three days.

Obama is being TESTED here, and that's a good thing. Seven more weeks of primary could be brutal and divisive, but in the end both candidates will actually be stronger for it. And we'll have an incredible volunteer network built in Pennsylvania. The bad news, of course, it seven weeks of John McCain, footloose and fancy free.

Yes, there's still the pesky delegate problem. You're probably looking at an even distribution from tonight. Honestly, at this point the DNC has to find a way to get a revote of some sort in Florida and Michigan to legitimize the process. Hillary still doesn't have a real mathematical path to the nomination without that (and even with it), but to me, Obama needs a knockout blow in Pennsylvania to end the race.

On to Wyoming (this weekend) and Mississippi (next week).

UPDATE: The delegate counts appear to be dead even. Obama is +3 in Vermont, Clinton either +3 or +5 in Rhode Island. Ohio looks to be a +9 for Clinton. The Texas primary is +2 for Clinton, but the caucuses could wind up +7 or +9 for Obama. If you add all that up, it's around a four-delegate victory for Clinton among 370 total delegates at stake.

Doesn't SOUND like a clear victory, and yet it was.