Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama surged ahead of a faltering Hillary Clinton in the Democratic race Tuesday by decisively sweeping primaries in Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C.
The Battle of the Potomac proved a turning point in the Democratic presidential campaign because it marked the first time that Obama, who had been essentially tied with Clinton, pulled into the lead. After three dozen primaries and caucuses over the last 40 days, Obama is now the undisputed front-runner as measured by states won, number of delegates and combined popular vote.
“Today, the change we seek swept through the Chesapeake and over the Potomac,” Obama said Tuesday night at a raucous rally in Madison, Wis. “We won the state of Maryland. We won commonwealth of Virginia. And though we won in Washington, D.C., this movement won’t stop until there’s change in Washington, D.C.”
Furthermore, Obama demonstrated in Virginia and Maryland that he can win the women’s vote, which had been the bedrock of Clinton’s support. Exit polls in Virginia, for example, showed Obama winning 58 percent of women, compared to 42 percent for Clinton.
Obama also managed to pull almost even with Clinton among white voters in Virginia, winning 48 percent to Clinton’s 51 percent. He even beat her by double digits among Hispanics, a bloc of voters previously considered reliably in Clinton’s corner.
Sensing defeat in advance, Clinton all but wrote off the Potomac primary and is staking her candidacy on winning March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas. But her strategy recalls former GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani’s decision to stake his candidacy on Florida after a string of losses elsewhere.
Clinton has now lost eight straight primaries since Super Tuesday. If she loses Hawaii and Wisconsin next Tuesday, she would be 0-10heading into the March contests.
Further clouding Clinton’s prospects were the margins of her losses. Obama was beating her in Virginia by a margin of 63-36, based on 91 percent of precincts reporting. Exit polls in Maryland showed a similar thumping. With half the precincts reporting in the District, Obama was capturing three-quarters of the vote.
As the bad news poured in, the Clinton campaign announced that deputy campaign manager Mike Henry was stepping down. On Sunday, campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, a Latina, was replaced by Maggie Williams, who is African-American.
On the Republican side, John McCain comfortably defeated Mike Huckabee in Virginia and Maryland. The one discomfiting note for the presumptive GOP nominee was that exit polling in Virginia showed that 52 percent of voters consider McCain insufficiently conservative.
