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Sen. Barack Obama faces an uphill battle now that Democratic voters have given him a big, white elephant.
By Dan Sweeney
February 20, 2008


With an eight-for-eight post-Super Tuesday run, Sen. Barack Obama is the front-runner in the Democratic presidential campaign. Hell, it’ll be 10-for-10 by the time you read this, as Obama will pick up Wisconsin and Hawaii before this hits the racks Wednesday. But if this primary has taught us anything, it’s that Obama’s campaign is now surely doomed to failure and disgrace.

Front-runner status in the 2008 primary has become a horrific white elephant, the blood of dead campaigns smeared across its tusks. Rudy Giuliani was a front-runner once. So were Mitt Romney and Sen. Hillary Clinton. And the old white elephant metaphor is even more apt than usual here.

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Last week, former President Bill Clinton claimed his wife has been the underdog since she came in third place in Iowa. At the same time, Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, claimed the only way Hillary Clinton could overcome Obama’s lead in pledged delegates after the man’s gorgeous string of victories throughout February would be if she won the rest of the contests by 25 to 30 points. Fearing the jinx, the campaign has released all statements since then through political consultant David Axelrod, who was largely responsible for the online-media blitz that gave birth to the Illinois senator’s candidacy. Plouffe has not been heard from in days. His family begins to grow worried.Front-runner status isn’t merely a white elephant, fuck no. It is the kiss of sweet death. And yet … and yet …

Plouffe has a point. The only way Clinton can come back is by overtaking Obama in superdelegates if neither side has the requisite 2,025 total delegates by the convention in August. If she wins in Texas and Ohio March 4, that’s a very real possibility. There are only two contests between March 4 and the next big deal, Pennsylvania, on April 22, in which, like Texas and Ohio, Clinton is still ahead in the polls. Of those two primaries, Obama has a sure-thing win in Mississippi, but the closed primary in Wyoming could go Clinton. And after Pennsylvania, the combination of closed and open primaries seems as if it could keep this thing close.

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