The Bill 'n' Hill machine purrs along, but there are doubts about delegates

It's hard not to agree with the acid comments of Sarah Baxter in her London Times analysis of Clinton's (or rather the Clintons') victory in Nevada.

The way Hillary Clinton has been spinning her victory in Nevada, it was as if she was the underdog against Barack Obama’s formidable political machine. Her advisers are claiming, “We won a huge victory by overcoming institutional hurdles and one of the worst negative ads in recent memory.” Bill Clinton went so far as to call his wife the “insurgent” candidate.

There is a lot of preposterous rewriting of history going on. It was certainly an important victory for Mrs Clinton, but she was always the favourite to win in Nevada after locking up the support of key Democrats in the state, including the son of Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, and the brother of Cesar Chavez, the Hispanic labour hero, even though Mr Obama won the support of the Culinary Workers’ Union.

After all the hoopla, Clinton is simply back to where she was in the first place as the favourite to win the Democratic nomination – we’re just a lot clearer after a particularly nasty race about how badly she and Bill want to return to the White House. We can now expect them to put the squeeze on African-American voters ahead of South Carolina’s Democratic primary this Saturday and start collecting on all the IOU’s they hold.

Formidable, indomitable, and inevitable are the words also used during George W. Bush's ascent to the presidency in 2000.  Just a reminder that the Rove gene is a factor in the makeup of both Clintons.  It's hard sometimes to avoid thinking that they are paying America back for dissing them during the '90's. It must annoy them that they came out of Nevada with fewer delegates than Obama.

Adam Nagourney writes in the New York Times:

Mr. Obama, of Illinois, and Mrs. Clinton, of New York, have increasingly been viewing the coming contests as a long-running battle for delegates. No longer do Democrats see much chance of either candidate stringing together a few quick victories and consolidating the support of the party. The possibility of building steam that carries from one contest to the next seems much in question.

Onward to California and the sense that Clinton is clinching the Hispanic vote.  The Washington Post summary of the Nevada results has this:

The Nevada results contained some worrisome signs for Obama along demographic lines. The heavy support that Clinton won among Hispanics suggested that he could face an uphill climb to win that important group in California, New York and New Jersey, the three most populous states with primaries on Feb. 5. In the first contest in which race has played an important role, white caucusgoers in Nevada backed Clinton over Obama, 52 percent to 34 percent, and nearly two-thirds of Latinos chose Clinton. Black voters broke heavily for Obama over Clinton, 83 percent to 14 percent.

In the two weeks since her stinging third-place defeat in Iowa, Clinton has sharpened her differences with Obama to emphasize her experience and the economy, while honing in on her advantage among Latino voters. Yet even as she campaigned in Nevada -- and played down expectations for how she would do here, with her advisers predicting as late as Saturday morning that the setup would favor Obama -- Clinton kept an eye on California, detouring for a day of campaigning there and ramping up her statewide operation.

Comments

[John]

Clinton is proving a superb campaigner if nothing else. What's being missed in all this basically anti Clinton pontificating is that she's now won three out of four contests and it's with the classic Democratic coalition of women, registered democrats, trade unionists, hispanics and older people. In two of these elections she's broken 50% which is incredibly hard to do when you have three or more serious candidates. Whatever one thinks of her it looks like a coalition that will enable to win virtually every primary from Florida onwards. Unfortunately far too many of these commentaries from bloggers and journalists in the MSM aren't based on a realistic analysis of the factS but rather reflect their authors personal wishes and prejudices. It may be personally satisfying but it bears no relation to what's really happening out there.

[PW]

"What's really happening" according to whom?!