Legal Commentary

Hillary and Obama Speak at Montana Dems Dinner

By Jeralyn

Update: Hillary's speech focused on policy. More on the dinner is here.

***

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are speaking two hours apart tonight at the Mansfield-Metcalf Democrats Dinner in Butte, Montana. Obama's speech has already concluded.

“I know that there’s some people who have been saying that these caucuses — the caucus states out West with these small populations, they don’t really count all that much,” Obama said in a thinly veiled reference to Clinton.

“I don’t know about you but I think they’re pretty important,” he said to loud applause. “I think it’s important to note that we have seen record number of Americans who turned out for us in Idaho, and in Wyoming, and in Utah, and in Colorado.”

It's not just the size of the states, it's their composition that's the point. There is no chance Montana, Wyoming, Idaho or Utah will go Democratic in November. (More...)

Clinton, a New York senator, said in an interview with the Politico magazine in February that her wins in larger states showed she would be more electable than Obama in a general election race against Republican Sen. John McCain.

She noted that many of the Western states that Obama had carried had voted solidly Republican in the past several general elections. “With all due respect, unless there’s a tsunami change in America, we’re never going to carry Alaska, North Dakota, Idaho,” Clinton told Politico. “It’s just not going to happen.”

“But we have to carry the states that I’m carrying, the primary states, the states that really have to be in the winning Democratic column,” she said.

While some larger states, like CA and NY are expected to go Democratic in November regardless of which Dem is the nominee, others, like Ohio and New Jersey, are considered up for grabs.

And then, there's Florida.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 06, 2008 (boomark / email).