The Wall Street Journal-20080213-3 More Big Wins for Obama- McCain Also Takes -Potomac Primary-- Clinton Struggles

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3 More Big Wins for Obama; McCain Also Takes 'Potomac Primary'; Clinton Struggles

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WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama notched three more big victories over Hillary Clinton in Democratic presidential-nominating contests in the nation's capital and next-door Virginia and Maryland. John McCain won the Republican primaries, but many conservatives continued to protest the party's presumptive nominee by voting for his remaining rival, Mike Huckabee.

Mr. Obama, the Illinois senator, had been expected to win the Democrats' "Potomac primaries." But he triumphed by landslide margins, just as he had in five contests over the weekend. Sen. Obama likewise is favored in February's final two Democratic votes, in Wisconsin and Hawaii next week. His continued momentum, as Sen. Clinton is distracted by a staff shake-up and lagging fund raising, has some Democrats questioning her campaign's long-run viability.

Yesterday, Sen. Clinton's deputy campaign manager Mike Henry resigned, following Sunday's departure of campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, who had hired him. Mrs. Doyle remains as an adviser while Maggie Williams, a longtime Clinton confidante, takes over to restructure the campaign for a hoped-for comeback next month.

Even before yesterday's polls closed, New York's Sen. Clinton had arrived at a campaign rally in Texas, dramatizing her assertion that she will rebound in the big-state Texas and Ohio contests March 4. At an El Paso rally last night, she tested an increasingly populist message, attacking big companies and promising a sharp boost in the minimum wage.

At a victory rally in Madison, Wisc., Sen. Obama also used such rhetoric, telling a cheering crowd, "We need a president who will listen not just to Wall Street, but to Main Street."

In the Republican primaries, Arizona's longtime Sen. McCain defeated Mr. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist minister. In Virginia and the District of Columbia, that gave him all 76 convention delegates up for grabs in those winner-take-all contests; in Maryland, most of the 34 delegates are allocated to the winners of each congressional district.

Still, the closeness of the outcome in Virginia was a worrisome sign for the party's November prospects.

Mr. Huckabee has drawn support especially among the party's most conservative voters since the nominating race began Jan. 3 with Iowa's caucuses, which he won. The fact that Sen. McCain continues to do poorly with such voters, after he effectively wrapped up the nomination last week on Super Tuesday, is a sign of weakness that underscores how divided the party is over its likely standard-bearer.

Sen. McCain badly needed yesterday's victories after losing to Mr. Huckabee over the weekend in Louisiana and Kansas. Mr. Huckabee is challenging the results in Washington state, which were called for Sen. McCain before all votes were tallied.

In a victory speech in Arlington, Va., last night that was heavy on a national security theme, Sen. McCain previewed his attacks on the ultimate Democratic nominee. "They will paint a picture of the world in which America's mistakes are a greater threat to our security than the malevolent intentions of an enemy that despises us and our ideals," he said.

Virginia's Republican primary was open to independent voters, a group that has supported Sen. McCain in the past. As the home to the Pentagon, naval bases and shipbuilding centers, Virginia has long been a stronghold for pro-military conservatives. As a former Navy pilot, Vietnam prisoner of war and high-profile supporter of the Iraq war, Sen. McCain had hoped to do well in that eastern stretch of the state, and voting returns suggested he had.

But the state also is home, especially in the west, to many Christian conservatives -- a group that has opposed the party maverick for his more moderate Senate record on a range of issues from campaign finance to illegal immigration. If Sen. McCain can't unite the party base behind him in states such as Virginia, which have been moving less Republican in recent years as moderate suburbanites reject the party's conservatism on many social issues, he and the party are at risk of losing those states in November.

Another potentially ill portent for Republicans was further evidence of the huge gap in voter enthusiasm between the fired-up Democrats and Republicans demoralized by the party's and President Bush's unpopularity. In Virginia, with nearly all votes in, Sen. Obama had more than 600,000 votes -- far more than all six Republicans on the ballot, and roughly a third more votes than Messrs. McCain and Huckabee got combined.

In the Democratic race, Sen. Obama benefited from large populations of black voters, who have consistently given him more than 80% of their votes in recent state contests. Exit polls showed he had topped even that in the two states, besting Sen. Clinton by margins of up to 90% to 10% among black voters.

Black voters were about a third of the electorate in Virginia, and slightly less than that in Maryland, according to the exit polls. In both states, Sen. Clinton narrowly edged Sen. Obama among white voters, on the strength of her appeal among female voters. But among white men, Sen. Obama had a double-digit edge, according to exit polls, and that margin fueled his victories in the states.

The two states and Washington, D.C., held a combined 168 delegates for the Democrats and 110 for the Republicans. Sen. McCain's victories are expected to boost his accumulated tally of delegates to 789, according to the Associated Press, about two-thirds of the 1,191 needed for nomination; Mr. Huckabee has 241.

Despite Sen. Obama's recent string of victories, the two Democratic rivals remain close in convention delegates. In large measure, that is due to party rules that require states to allocate delegates in ways that reflect each candidates' support. So even though Sen. Clinton lost the popular vote by wide margins last night, she still picked up some delegates.

Delegate counts vary, but by all accounts, Sen. Obama leads Sen. Clinton in so-called pledged delegates, which are those awarded after state primaries or caucuses. She has more commitments from super- delegates, the party leaders, governors and members of Congress who can vote for the candidate of their choice at the convention.

She apparently has slightly more than 1,200 delegates toward the 2,025 needed for the nomination, while Sen. Obama appears to have slightly less than that.

Just as on the night of last month's South Carolina primary, when Sen. Clinton expected to lose to Sen. Obama -- and did, by an unexpectedly big margin -- she left yesterday before the final votes and moved on to Texas to campaign in El Paso last night. She has three Texas stops today, in South Texas and San Antonio, centers of Hispanic population that she counts on to win.

The Clinton campaign is effectively ceding the Hawaii caucuses and Wisconsin primary next week, and focusing on Texas and Ohio, with 334 delegates at stake between them. Hawaii is Sen. Obama's childhood home, and Wisconsin is a politically progressive state historically, where Sen. Obama's message of change and new leadership is resonating, according to polls and Democrats there.

Last week on "Super Tuesday," the Democratic senators fought more or less to a draw for convention delegates in the 22 states that voted that day. But if Sen. Obama's sweeps the subsequent February contests, with the momentum from that 10-event string he could threaten Sen. Clinton even in Texas and Ohio.

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