Obama Sweeps Weekend Primaries

By Kevin Robinson in News on Feb 11, 2008 5:30PM

Obama's landslide victories in the "Significant Saturday" contests - including Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington and the Virgin Islands, and his Sunday win in the Maine caucuses, could break the deadlock over pledged delegates for the Democratic nomination. Obama is hoping that these wins will generate the momentum that he needs to carry Ohio and Texas on March 4. Rhode Island and Vermont hold their primaries that day, too. Obama's wins this weekend were bad news for Hillary Clinton, who tried to inject a ray of optimism by announcing that her campaign had raised $10 million from over 10,000 donors. Obama's campaign quickly announced that over 350,000 donors had already contributed this year.

In the GOP primaries, conservatives in Kansas and Louisiana demonstrated that they weren't ready to embrace McCain just yet, as Mike Huckabee crushed him in this weekend's votes. Those losses only barely cut into McCain's overwhelming delegate lead, and there is little doubt that he is the party's presumptive nominee. In fact, Tuesday's contest in Virginia will probably mark the end of Huckabee's run, as McCain is expected to win in a southern state, eliminating Huckabee's last remaining argument.

Although McCain still has a lot of work to do to win over the hard-core conservatives in the party, he has plenty of time left. With the Republican nomination likely sewn up after tomorrow's Potomac Primary, he'll have more than nine months to win over conservatives. And he'll probably be able to do that without many independents or moderates noticing. McCain also has the opportunity to take the GOP back from some of the more extreme elements of the party's fundamentalist Christian base.

The Democrats have a more difficult road to travel in the near future. Wins in upcoming votes mean more delegates, and will lure undecided and weakly committed superdelegates over to Obama at this summer's convention in Denver. If Clinton is able to knock out some significant wins in the coming primaries, the probability of a brokered convention becomes more likely.

Image via Barack Obama