Surging in California

There are two pieces of conventional wisdom that seem to be floating around the political world this Super Bowl Sunday: one, that Obama may be surging in California and two, that an Obama win in California would be the beginning of the end for Hillary Clinton. Call me crazy, but I tend to believe in both of these notions.

Today, a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll has Obama with 45%, Clinton wil 41%, and 15% undecided. The sample, 1,141 likely voters, has a margin of error of 2.9%. A Rasmussen poll from yesterday has 798 likely voters split between Obama with 45%, Clinton with 44%. And while these polls certainly don't give Obama an overwhelming poll advantage, his numbers have certainly ticked upward in recent weeks/days.

With 441 delegates at stake, California is certainly a trophy. A week ago, with Obama running a distant second to Clinton in the state, the pundits were saying that California did matter, just not that much. If Obama were to win, however, the story would certainly change.

Frontrunners are expected to win California. The first California primary of signifigance came in 1968 when RFK famously won and then was famously assasinated. In '72, McGovern won the primary. In '76, it was favorite son Jerry Brown. In '80, another Kennedy (the same one now working day and night for Obama) beat out the favorite. In '84, the insurgent Gary Hart split the California-New York prize. In '88, Dukakis swept the state. Clinton ran the state in '92 and '96 and Gore and Kerry rounded out the last two primaries. All in all, the party favorite (Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry) is less likely to win the California primary than the insurgent (RFK, McGovern, Brown, EMK, Hart) by a margin of 5-4.

Can the insurgent of 2008 defeat the party favorite or will the favorite tie the score?

This morning, on Meet the Press, Clintonite James Carville was asked what would happen in Clinton lost California:

MR. RUSSERT:  What would happen if Hillary Clinton lost California?

MR. CARVILLE:  It would be bad.  It would be really bad.

MR. RUSSERT:  Really bad.

MR. CARVILLE:  Yeah, it really would.  

How could Obama have come back from being down in CA?

MR. SHRUM:  Well, let me make clear, I'm not writing her off.  What I think happened on Monday was that Ted Kennedy had a huge impact in giving Obama a new chance, a new entry into this race and no other person could have had the same impact that he had.  But I'm not writing her off.  I think it could break toward her, it could break toward him.

MR. MURPHY:  But in--it--she was anything but written off till she started losing primaries.  What happened was that great comeback in New Hampshire made it a real race.  I think the Kennedy thing has one other dimension.  He's clearly a big battleship, huge power in the Democratic Party, to the extent endorsements matter.  But he may be the key to unlocking the Latino vote, which is where Obama's had trouble, and that's another thing to watch in California if it does go Obama's way.  I think Kennedy could get a lot of credit for moving in those numbers.

MR. RUSSERT:  And those are exactly the congressional districts that Kennedy campaigned in over the weekend.

MR. MURPHY:  Exactly.  They know it, and they're playing that strategy.

No one out there can deny the signifigance of Ted Kennedy's California invasion on behalf of getting Latino voters to move towards Obama. Many a wise person has speculated that this, if anything, will be what pushed Obama over the top.

But if Obama wins, does that mean he is our nominee? I think so. Do you?