Clinton-Obama clashes take heat off McCain

It may seem like Hillary Clinton had a victorious night Tuesday, shaking off the vultures and getting back on her feet, but the real winner was John McCain.

He is an obvious winner in clinching his party’s nomination, but that deal was already sealed, really. What McCain benefits from most is Clinton’s comeback. He’s going to get way more out of this than she is. 

A long fight between Clinton and Barack Obama will take the heat off McCain. Already this past weekend Howard Dean, the Democratic Party’s chairman, had to step in and start attacking McCain because neither of the candidates would, or could.

The Democrats will continue to hammer at each other (at least until April 22 when Pennsylvania goes to the polls) instead of putting up a solid front against the Republican attack machine. This scenario will only damage Obama; there is a sort of solid McCain-Clinton front allied against him. 

But Obama will most likely still be the nominee for the Democratic Party, and egos need to be put aside so the party can coalesce behind one person.

One only has to look at the demographics of the upcoming primary states to figure out why.  The next two primaries favor Obama hugely: Wyoming will fall to him just like all the other Western Plains states, and he will take Mississippi, which has a large black population, a group that has supported Obama by margins of 9 to 1.

After these two primaries there will be a tough fight in Pennsylvania and maybe a tough fight in Indiana with Clinton’s blue-collar vote versus Obama’s local connections.  While Indianans go to the polls, so do those in the last big state, North Carolina. This is clearly Obama territory – a southern state with a black population of over 20 percent and a median household income of over $40,000 per year.

In order for Clinton to overtake Obama at this point she would have to win Pennsylvania, and all the following states, by large margins.  This will not happen unless Obama is caught with his pants down.  Yet even that didn’t stop Bill.  Her only recourse is to convince the superdelegates to vote for her at the convention in August even if she doesn’t have the pledged delegates to win.  Or she could manage to seat the Lost Delegates of Michigan and Florida.

Those outcomes would only serve to divide the Democratic Party.  A lot of people would become very jaded if their candidate lost to a Washington insider using her back-room muscle to wrest the nomination from him.

Clinton does seem to have a plan to heal the wounds she would have to inflict to get on top of the Democrat’s ticket, and she hinted at it Wednesday morning on the CBS Early Show: a joint ticket. If Obama joined her as the vice presidential candidate all would be forgotten. 

When Clinton mentioned the possibility, she did say she should be on the top of the ticket (the voters of Ohio proclaimed so, she said).  This illustrates that she needs Obama.  But he doesn’t need her.

Clinton could only hurt Obama’s chances in the general election against McCain.  Hypothetical match-up polls have consistently shown McCain beats Clinton but not Obama. The most recent of these polls by the Washington Post and ABC news does now have both Democrats beating McCain, but Obama wins by double Clinton’s margin.

Clinton is also a divisive person: people tend to love her or hate her, and when they hate her, they really hate her.

This is why there has been no mention from the Obama campaign of a joint ticket.  Clinton may have another angle though, she might think by putting that idea out there she can attract wavering Obama supporters who think it would make him president eight years down the road.

Clinton does not really have the right to start seeding this idea yet though – last night’s results didn’t really give her the strength. Obama still leads in delegates 1,567 to 1,462, according to the Associated Press.

Obama actually only ended up one delegate down in Texas Tuesday, and 12 delegates down for the night.

Texas has both a caucus and a primary, with 65 percent of delegates being awarded through the primary and 35 percent through the caucus. Voters can vote in both, but they cannot vote in the caucus unless they have already voted in the primary.  Clinton won the primary, but Obama took the caucus.

Meanwhile, McCain is hanging out on the White House lawn getting endorsed by the president. His only issue in the coming months will be to not fall out of the spotlight as the Clinton-Obama clashes increase in ferocity.

He will probably do this by sharpening his attacks on Obama, while gaining high-level endorsements from across the conservative spectrum – a spectrum he is going to have to work diligently to unite. But McCain has time.