On the eve of the biggest day of primary voting in history, Harold Meyerson reports from California on Obama's strategy of emphasizing smaller states, and his chances for success in this pivotal state:
Clinton's presence and Obama's absence in California made a certain strategic sense. As recently as 10 days ago, polls in California had Clinton up by close to 20 points. If she could claim victory there as well as in New York and surrounding states on Feb. 5, she could claim frontrunner status. Looking at the same polling numbers, the Obama campaign likely calculated that he'd do better if he had some plausible deniability for losing California: He hadn't had time to campaign there. Far better to rack up a number of victories in smaller states to make Tsunami Tuesday look more like a wash than a loss.
The Obama people certainly knew they were closing the gap with Clinton, both nationally and in California (two polls out Sunday show her lead over him cut to 2 and 3 points, respectively). Apparently, they figured that the chance of his victory in the Golden State was still remote enough that they opted for a small-state, rather than a California-centric, strategy. That may prove to be one of the more important tactical decisions in this year's campaign -- whether a mistake or a masterstroke we'll know soon enough.
Read the rest (and comment) here.
And Dana Goldstein takes a look at the battle for the Latino vote:
Now the challenge for Obama is to chip away at Latino voters' loyalty to the Clinton brand before Super Tuesday. Latinos are expected to make up almost a quarter of the California electorate tomorrow, as well as 37 percent of voters in New Mexico, 17 percent in Arizona, 12 percent in Colorado, 11 percent in New York, 10 percent in New Jersey, and 8 percent in Illinois. But many observers say his campaign is targeting the demographic too late to make up for a lack of name recognition.
Read the rest (and comment) here.
--The Editors
