Saturday, March 29, 2008

Obama Campaign Calls It: Obama Takes Texas On Step Two

Taking a look at the Obama campaign website this evening, Christopher Hass has called Texas for Obama. This was way back when 31.26% of the 284 county conventions reporting in results, with Obama projected to net 9 delegates over Hillary Clinton, just as projected from early caucus results that came out in the days after the March 4th primary/precinct conventions.

They are closely watching Burnt Orange Report’s timely posting of results as they are reported in by phone or email. BOR, incidentally, has reported record pageloads this evening as the entire nation tunes in to the same website that Barack Obama’s people are listening to.

That number, by the way has changed somewhat since Obama’s first report of results from Texas. At the time of their report, at 7:28 CDT, they had Obama by 55% to 45%. At this writing, with 42.96% of the conventions reporting (122), it is Obama by 57% to 43%, this despite a huge win by Clinton in the Hispanic dominated western-most counties in and around El Paso.

The fat lady, however, doesn’t sing until the state convention this June. That’s the rule here in wild and wooly Texas. It’s not who you vote for, but who shows up, who goes to their daughter’s soccer game this morning instead, and who goes home too early. And it all gets to be replayed in June.

And then there are all the challenges that Clinton supporters are lodging against Obama delegates . . .

As Ollie used to say to Stan, “Well, that’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into”. In this case, though, the mess is truly fine. Despite all the pain and toil, despite the reports of conventions that ranged widely from calm to calamity, Texas is showing the rest of the country how to get media attention on an otherwise ho-hum presidential campaign day.

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