With March 4th Behind Them, What's Next for Hillary and Obama?

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 10:25 AM on March 5, 2008.

Hillary Clinton, you've just won the Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island primaries. What are you going to do now? "I'm going to Wyoming!"

Sure, the political world was eyeing the March 4 contests for weeks, but those contests are so yesterday's news. What's next?

We have two contests in the next six days -- the Wyoming caucuses on Saturday and the Mississippi primary on Tuesday. If Barack Obama is looking to pick up a few much-needed victories, and get the bitter taste out of his mouth after Texas and Ohio, he'll probably enjoy the next week.

As March progresses, though, Clinton still has a tough climb, and Obama retains a formidable position.

The two contests this month -- Wyoming and Mississippi -- play to Obama's strengths. One is a small Western caucus; the other has the most heavily African-American primary electorate in the nation.

Neither state offers huge delegate totals, but given that Obama is expected to win both fairly easily, it should help him pad his delegate lead a little.

After Mississippi, there are five full weeks in which nothing happens at all, except furious campaigning in Pennsylvania, which host its primary on April 22. Clinton goes into the contest favored, but God only knows what's going to happen between now and then.

Clinton and Obama will constantly be battling for position, of course, but there are rumors that Obama has a couple of tricks up his sleeve.

For example, the Obama campaign never did get around to announcing exactly how much money it raised in February. Expect some kind of announcement this week that will be intended to help give Obama some positive press for a change.

Also, there may be some big superdelegate news on the horizon.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Tuesday morning, Tom Brokaw dropped a bombshell on Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman.

"Somebody very close to the Obama campaign told me yesterday that they've got 50 [superdelegates] that they've identified who are ready to go public before too long," Brokaw said. Off-camera, someone else from the show (it sounds like host Joe Scarborough) can be heard exclaiming, "Wow." [...]

If this is true, it would represent a major coup for Barack Obama's campaign. The Associated Press' delegate count has Obama and Clinton separated by just 100 total delegates, included pledged and superdelegates.

And then there's the question about what kind of campaign tone Obama's team may embrace moving forward. We talked earlier about some of the relentless attacks Clinton directed at Obama, but I noticed at least one hint that the Obama campaign is prepared to start playing by his opponent's rules.

"We have not hesitated to draw distinctions between the candidates and we'll continue to do that," said Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod. "If Sen. Clinton wants to take the debate to various places, we'll join that debate. We'll do it on our terms and in our own way but if she wants to make issues like ethics and disclosure and law firms and real estate deals and all that stuff issues, as I've said before I don't know why they'd want to go there, but I guess that's where they'll take the race."

And in case you're really curious, after Pennsylvania, Guam will vote on May 3, Indiana and North Carolina on May 6, West Virginia on May 13, Kentucky and Oregon on May 20, Montana and South Dakota on June 3, and Puerto Rico on June. Every contest except Guam and Puerto Rico is a primary, not a caucus. It's a landscape that appears to give Obama a slight edge, but at this point, the delegate shift isn't likely to matter much anyway.

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Tagged as: clinton, obama, mississippi, wyoming, superdelegates, pennsylvania

Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the Guardian.