For those of you who have been sleeping or have given little attention to presidential politics over the last several months, let's review how Barack Obama became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. There were plenty of candidates in the race, but only Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd had a realistic shot at the nomination.
Clinton had entered the race as the prohibitive favorite and remained the frontrunner throughout 2007, although her lead over Obama in the polls steadily shrunk as the year progressed. Clinton's poll numbers in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina were the first to begin to slip, while her lead nationally and in most of the larger states remained solid much longer. By the end of 2007, polls showed her in a three-way statistical tie with Obama and Edwards in Iowa and virtually tied with Obama in New Hampshire. Still, she led in the super delegate chase by about 100 over Obama even before the first nominating contest was held.
Because it was a caucus state, Iowa was always a concern for Clinton, whose campaign staff had more expertise in primaries. Some members of that staff reportedly tried to convince her to pull out of Iowa during the summer of 2007. As it turned out, it did prove problematic for Clinton, who finished third there, behind Obama and Edwards, to open the primary/caucus season. Obama won big, finishing a surprising eight percentage points ahead of Edwards. Not only did Obama grab the momentum with his Iowa win, he got the legitimacy he needed among African-American voters, who liked him but were not sure if he could actually win the nomination. Winning an almost all-white state like Iowa gave him the credibility he needed. Biden and Dodd received almost no support in the Iowa Caucuses and were finished. Richardson received very little but decided to fight on.
Right after his win in Iowa, Obama pulled ahead in all the New Hampshire polls and remained at the top all the way through primary day. Most exit polls even projected him to be the winner. However, Clinton defied all the pundits and managed to pull off a shocking come-from-behind win in New Hampshire. Had the polls been right, the nomination battle would probably have been over by early February. Clinton was apparently able to connect with women voters at the last minute to get the victory, and thereby rescue and re-energize her campaign. Edwards could not take advantage of his second-place finish in Iowa and came in a distant third. Richardson had another weak performance and was soon out of the race.
The next stop on the primary calendar was Michigan, which had been rendered meaningless back in the summer of 2007. At that time, the Democratic National Committee had stripped it of all of its convention delegates for violating party rules by moving its primary up too early in the season. Clinton won with over 50% of the vote, but Obama and Edwards had already removed their names from the ballot. This win did not provide Clinton with any real momentum.
Clinton then moved ahead of Obama 2-1 in wins that counted by edging him out in the Nevada Caucuses. This was in spite of the fact Obama had the official support of the major service workers' labor union based in Las Vegas. This was one of few caucuses that Clinton was able to win. However, her margin was extremely slim and Obama actually ended with one more delegate from that contest than did she. Edwards had hoped do well in Nevada, but he performed very poorly, garnering only a miniscule portion of the vote.
Obama, aided by a strong show of support from African-American voters (approximately 90%), scored a surprisingly lopsided victory a week later in South Carolina. That pulled him even (2-2) with Clinton in victories that counted in the standings and allowed him to recapture the momentum he had lost in New Hampshire and Nevada. Edwards, who finished a disappointing third, was expected to do much better since South Carolina is the state of his birth and the one state that he won when he ran in 2004. As result, he dropped out of the race a few days latter, leaving a two-person race the rest of the way between Clinton and Obama.
Next up was Florida, where Clinton trounced Obama by 17 percentage points. However, like Michigan, it had suffered the penalty of losing all of its convention delegates for moving up its primary. Neither candidate had campaigned there and, although Clinton tried to play up her victory to gain momentum for Super Tuesday, it was generally viewed as another meaningless primary and largely ignored by most media outlets.
From the beginning, Clinton had hoped to be able to put away all of her foes on Super Tuesday. That didn't happen. She and Obama, for all intents and purposes, battled to a standoff on that biggest primary day of the season. Obama won 12 contests to her 10, with the delegate count mostly even. Clinton's wins California, New York (the state she represents in the Senate), New Jersey, Massachusetts, Arkansas (where her husband was the governor for many years), Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arizona, and New Mexico. Obama's wins included his home state of Illinois along with Georgia, Alabama, Connecticut, Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado, Utah and several smaller caucus states. Obama's attention to those caucus states, compared to Clinton's apparent indifference toward them, is what helped keep him even with her on Super Tuesday.
One thing that benefited Obama immensely on Super Tuesday was the fact that delegates from the Democratic primaries are awarded proportionally. Had they been awarded using a winner-take-all format, like many of the Republican primaries use, Clinton could very easily have taken a commanding lead in the nomination race on Super Tuesday. Her victories in California and New York, for example, would have given her large delegate windfalls. This would have overcome any benefit Obama would have gotten from taking all of the delegates in the states that he won. With the exception of Illinois, the states that he won generally offered fewer delegates than those that she won. As it turned out, most of Clinton's victories in those large states where by small margins, so the proportional system awarded Obama almost as many delegates from each, thus allowing his larger victories in the smaller states to keep him even with her.
After failing to clinch to the nomination – or least take command of the race -- on Super Tuesday, the Clinton campaign seemed uncertain as to how to proceed. Added to this uncertainty was the fact that Clinton lacked funds after spending so much on the Super Tuesday states. Therefore, she didn't go all out in the states that immediately followed. As a result, during one stretch in mid-February, Obama defeated her in eleven consecutive contests. And he won many of them, including primaries in Maryland, Virginia, and Wisconsin, by inexplicably large margins. Some of those other contests were caucuses which, as noted earlier, Clinton seemed ill-prepared for. This is when Obama began to pull away in the pledged delegate count for good. All in all, he netted 123 more pledged delegates than did Clinton during this winning streak. Even the super delegates, which were previously flocking to Clinton, began to reverse themselves and start going Obama's way.
Clinton finally righted her ship on March 4, when she won primaries in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island compared to Obama's lone victory in Vermont. However, Texas proved to be a pyrrhic victory, as she lost the caucus there and took away fewer delegates from that state overall than did Obama. Her old caucus bugaboo had proved costly again. Obama then won in Wyoming and Mississippi during the week that followed.
After a quirky seven-week hiatus in the primary calendar, Clinton came out strong with a huge and stinging victory over Obama in Pennsylvania. At that point, it appeared that Clinton could be on her way to a comeback. Her task was to keep her momentum going for two more weeks so she could perform well in Indiana and North Carolina. An impressive win in Indiana coupled with a win or narrow loss in North Carolina might have convinced to super delegates to turn back to her. That was her only chance of capturing the nomination at that point, since Obama had built an insurmountable lead in the pledged delegate count.
However, her newfound momentum came to a screeching halt on May 6, when she barely squeaked by in Indiana while being solidly drubbed by Obama in North Carolina. Any hope for a super delegate reversal had been lost, although Clinton vowed to fight on amid calls for her to drop out. Though she didn't realize it, her fate was likely sealed right then and there. The late Tim Russert stated as much in so many words. Shortly thereafter, Obama passed her in the super delegate count for the first time. Even though the super delegates had been trending to him since mid-February, he had still been behind because Clinton had held such a large early lead. But now he was ahead in both pledged delegates and super delegates.
Clinton won big in West Virginia a week later, but even that victory was marred by the fact that John Edwards endorsed Obama the very next day. That seemed to overshadow the news of Clinton's West Virginia victory. A week after that, Clinton and Obama split a primary doubleheader, with Clinton winning big in Kentucky and Obama getting a solid win in Oregon.
On the last day of May, the Rules Committee of the Democratic Party voted to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida. Clinton had been pushing for them to be counted since she won the heretofore "meaningless" primaries in those states. However, she did not get everything she wanted. They were 0nly granted one-half vote each. On top of that, the uncommitted delegates in Michigan were awarded to Obama (since he was not on the ballot there) and a handful of the delegates Clinton thought she had earned in the primary were given to him as well. This addition of delegates to the convention moved the number of delegates needed for the nomination up by nearly 100. However, Obama was still well within striking distance, with three more primaries left and nearly 200 super delegates yet to state their allegiance.
Clinton won by a wide margin in Puerto Rico on June 1. Then the candidates split the final two primaries on June 3, with Clinton taking South Dakota and Obama taking Montana. However, the big news of the day was the fact that more super delegates had committed to Obama. They, along with the delegates he won in South Dakota and Montana had put him over the top and made him the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Clinton was noncommittal at first, but finally bowed out and endorsed him the following Saturday.
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