Legitimizing The Nominee

(Via Talk Left.)

By Big Tent Democrat

For all the wailing and moaning from NBC, especially Punchline Olbermann, host of the Obama News Hour, and some of the Left blogs about Hillary Clinton staying in the race, one has to wonder what they think of Barack Obama’s failure to win either Ohio or Texas. The desperate ones have now learned the virtue of closed primaries, arguing the Rush Limbaugh tipped Republicans to Clinton in Texas. Todd Beeton points out, apparently Limbaugh holds great sway over Independents as well, who also moved strongly to Clinton. Of course they won’t like my solution, let’s have closed primaries.

I have said this since Super Tuesday - Barack Obama needs to demonstrate he can win a big contested state important in the general election. He has won his home state. He has won heavily African American Georgia. That’s it. It is true he won Wisconsin convincingly and seems to have electoral advantages in Colorado, Nevada (which he lost) and New Mexico. But this election will be won or lost in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida. If Obama can not perform well in these states, it will be extremely difficult for him in November. Luckily, 3 of these 4 states may have contests to allow Obama to prove his mettle and put a stamp of legitimacy on his potential nomination. I’ll explain what I mean by legitimacy on the flip.

Do you know when the pledged delegate count became the single criteria by which a nominee could be crowned? When Obama’s spin about it, which started in Nevada, was swallowed wholesale. Look at this post by Chris Bowers:

On at least three occasions, Clinton had a chance to finish Obama off: Iowa, South Carolina and Super Tuesday. Every time, the voters decided otherwise. On two occasions, Obama had a chance to finish Clinton off: New Hampshire and March 4th. Once again, the voters said “not yet.” On every occasion, the frontrunner failed to finish the job, and the nomination campaign lurched forward

I mostly agree with Chris but I think he misses the fact that Obama had the chance to knock out Clinton on Super Tuesday too. But he lost Massachusetts, New Jersey and California.

Full post here.