Obama Adds to Victory Streak
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama handily defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Wisconsin primary Tuesday, extending an unbroken streak of victories since Super Tuesday and propelling him toward what could be a final showdown in two weeks.
Obama broke into Clinton’s base, splitting whites and women about evenly while he swamped her among men and African-Americans, according to surveys of voters as they left polling places. That could boost him in Texas and Ohio, the mega-states that vote March 4 and have been seen as friendly territory, even firewalls, for Clinton.
"Houston, I think we’ve achieved liftoff here," Obama told a cheering, overflow rally in Houston, but he cautioned that there were "months and miles" to go.
Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, likened the state’s primary to the football competition that can consume the campus. "It feels like the end of the regular season in Madison," he said, "and they’ll be moving on to the championship games in Texas and Ohio."
After 96% of precincts were counted, Obama had 58% of the vote and Clinton had 41%.
Among Republicans, Arizona Sen. John McCain carried the Badger State over his chief remaining rival, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. McCain is likely to reach the 1,191 delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination in the contests March 4 — a benchmark Huckabee says must be reached before he’ll consider calling it quits.
The Democratic delegate count remains close, and neither contender is near the 2,025 delegates needed for the nomination; 74 delegates were at stake in Wisconsin.
Clinton shows no signs of giving up. She delivered a tough speech to supporters Tuesday night in Youngstown, Ohio, that portrayed Obama as too inexperienced to win the election or handle the Oval Office. "Only one of us is ready on Day One to be commander in chief, ready to manage our economy and ready to defeat the Republicans," the New York senator said.
Obama’s campaign tried to squelch several controversies, including accusations by the Clinton camp that he was breaking a pledge to eschew private fundraising in the general election if his Republican opponent did the same — a commitment he made in a questionnaire sent to the Midwest Democracy Network last fall. Obama calls the discussion "premature."
In a USA TODAY op-ed today, Obama promises to pursue a "meaningful agreement in good faith that results in real spending limits." He details a series of conditions likely to make an accord hard to reach, however, perhaps even including limits on what McCain could spend when the Republican nomination race is settled and the Democratic one continues.
Elsewhere, Democrats held caucuses in Hawaii, where 20 delegates were at stake. In Washington state, McCain won the Republican primary, in which 19 delegates were at stake.