Yesterday, Obama won the “Potomac Primary”, putting Virginia, Maryland and D.C. in his win category by large majorities. Today, both candidates are in Wisconsin for next Tuesday’s contest, Hillary having given up on Hawaii (?). A Republican Party sponsored poll by Strategic Vision shows Obama slightly leading in Wisconsin.

She says she’ll catch back up on March 4 in Ohio and Texas or, at the least, by Pennsylvania in April. We don’t yet know if North Carolina will “count”. One of my mainstays is a site called “Real Clear Politics” — it has real clear polling and real conservative commentary. It accumulates polls and data from other sources and does a rolling track of the average of the reports. It presently shows Obama leading: 1. In earned delegates; 2. In total delegates: 3. In total votes; 4. In total votes including Florida; 5. in the national polls against Sen. Clinton; and, 6. in the national polls against Sen. McCain.

Most of the pundits are starting to count her out and, it seemed to me, Obama made a “pivot” during the past week and is now running for president and not the nomination. Today, he “framed” an economic issue: he stood in a GM plant in Wisconsin and told them not to look for applause lines because he was announcing a new jobs creation program. He proposes to spend $210 billion over 10 years on two programs, one that creates environmental “green collar” jobs and another that restores infrastructure such as bridges and highways. I think this is an extraordinarily good idea in that it kills two birds with one stone, but I’ll save that discussion for another day. For now, let’s just say that over the past week or so he has been putting more and more substantive policy positions in his speeches, he’s been looking across the party divide at the presumptive GOP nominee and doing less of the rah-rah stuff.

That’s actually pretty classic “underdog” stuff in a campaign. First, it’s the warm and fuzzy introductions and getting to know you speeches and ads and only later the specifics of policy differences and ending with negatives on the other guy and a “hey, let’s all get along together” close. All along, he’s been ignoring Hillary, in a way, because the GOP has been beating Al Gore and John Kerry by “defining” those two guys in a year-long “narrative” of the campaign. Now, they won’t do that so easily with Obama because he’s “pre-framed” himself and defined his own identity. The GOP has also pre-“framed” the debate, but for the past 15 years against Hillary, their favorite punching bag. I think at first the GOP went after Hillary because Bill was “bulletproof” and going after his wife was a way of getting under his skin (we’ve seen that he can lose his head in her defense just this year.) This is all also very much in harmony with Obama’s 50 state campaign, going for delegates and wins even in the “red” states. Now, even GOP voters in the red states have seen the soft and conciliatory image ads Obama has run in those states. Republicans also know who Obama is, but on his terms and not Rush Limbaugh’s.

Obama’s jobs program also helps him sew up the raw gashes in the party. For a long time, supporters of Hillary, especially older white women, have complained that Obama doesn’t have the “policy heft” of Hillary, who can list 35 proposals she favors at the drop of an issue category. This “movement” stuff just doesn’t grab them, they want specific legislative goals that advance the people who sit at the kitchen table and pay the bills. It’s an old fight in the Democratic Party that goes back to the 19th Century. It’s the “process progressives” versus the “program progressives.” Without giving a history lesson, it’s the difference between those who emphasize fair housing and those who insist on building low cost/low income housing first. This is Obama trying to fill the gap between those positions, putting the environment as a big national goal (movement) and backing that up with “green collar” jobs that move away from energy dependence (global warming, the war in Iraq) and give people jobs to help us work out of the recession that Bush is leaving us with. There’s an extra special little Wisconsin spin on all that: the infrastructure jobs proposal is front and center in a state that remembers the collapsed bridge next door in Minn. better than we do here in Oklahoma (Is Minn. an even later primary state?).

From another perspective, Obama makes a major jobs policy speech and rips the horserace questions off the front pages to a certain extent because all those stories are about her and not him.

Meanwhile, there’s Hillary’s electoral “firewall” in Ohio and Texas to talk about. Again, I’ll try to be brief and I’m going to leave out Ohio all together for today and focus on Texas. (Last month, a poll showed Sen. Clinton ahead 23 in Ohio and this month’s only poll shows her 17 points ahead.) First, Texas has a very wierd election this time (for an extremely detailed explanation of the Texas election, I’m indebted to the texas obama blogger who is wonked into this.) : it’s part primary (daytime) and then turns into caucus (after 7 p.m.). No place but Texas has such a thing as far as I know and I can’t really figure out how that’s going to work exactly, but I’ll say this: it seems to me that Obama’s excellent “ground” organization and his upper educated and upper financial class block seems to me to give him some advantages over Hillary’s blue collar, high school grads. Next, let us not forget the shitty deal that Tom Delay pulled in Texas with redistricting. I still think it’s unconstitutional, but that’s another argument. Almost all the urban blacks in Texas have been crowded into a very few congressional districts as have the heavily Latino congressional districts along the southern border. If there really is a black/brown divide, the two will cancel out in the porportional delegate scheme of the Democrats. I don’t see it in the papers or even on the ‘net, but there’s an “understory”: Texas, more than most states, has a very deep “hate Hillary” strand and it even infects the Democrats. It’s an open primary, so independents will also be able to come to the caucuses and I think they will to vote against Sen. Clinton; they hate her just that much. My conclusion is that while the pundocricy says that Sen. Clinton “must” have all three of her firewall states, I think Texas is a place where Obama may surprise. If she “must’ win by more than 5 percent or more than 15 percent (in order to get the delegates she needs to catch up in earned delegates), then I don’t see her doing it in Texas. In fact, I’m persuaded by this anonymously blogged piece on Talking Points Memo that she’s dead in the water.

A final caveat: Hillary leads the only poll available to me by 12 points in Texas, and never let it be said she can’t fight and couldn’t win with that kind of “leg up”. Obama may not cruise without a good fight. I think she knows these 5 things she needs to win.

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