The Texas and Ohio Expectations Game: What the Obama Campaign Must Do to Ensure a Win-Win Paradigm Come Tuesday

March 2, 2008 
Category: Keys to Victory

Both the Clinton and Obama campaigns have been playing the expectations game ahead of the crucial Ohio and Texas primaries on Super Tuesday #2. These primaries have universally been recognized as Hillary Clinton’s last stand and her only chance of freezing Barack Obama cold on his tracks.

The problem for Barack Obama, on the other hand, hinges around the potential for overconfidence and the failure to build the right kinds of expectations. In a primary election that has come to be more about perception than real issues, a loss in Texas and Ohio might just as well tip the balance of perception and momentum in Hillary Clinton’s favor, and cause the process to linger on for longer than the Democrats would want.

While it is true that the momentum has been going Obama’s way in the past two weeks, the fact that the current polling in Texas and Ohio is too close to call should give the Obama camp some pause, and cause them to adjust their expectations game accordingly. The lessons gained from the California and New Jersey primaries are there to remind us of the need to keep all the necessary measure when considering a possible Obama knock-out punch in Texas and Ohio. Polls had begun to give California and even New Jersey to Obama ahead of Super Tuesday #1, but the reality proved to be far from what the polls had predicted. Hillary Clinton won both states handily.

This unreliability factor around the credibility of polling, especially when voters are polled about voting for a black candidate, prompts me to believe that the Obama campaign could inadvertently help Hillary Clinton gain her momentum back because of the types of expectations that have been built around the Texas and Ohio primaries. My belief is that when an election is too close to call, then the likely of victory goes to the person who had maintained the lead for the longest time. In spite of the polls, Hillary Clinton should be expected to win both Texas and Ohio because the shift in the polls, that is, in voter intention, has not had enough time to hold and to translate into a credible potential of victory for Barack Obama. Again, this is what was seen in both California and New Jersey and Obama lost because his momentum had not had enough time to solidify voter intention ahead of Super Tuesday #1.

Right now, things are sounding too much as though an Obama victory were certain in Ohio and Texas, and the Obama camp is going too much out of its way asserting the possibility of an upset in Texas. This cockiness is far from the truth, and should be prevented. The current Obama momentum may certainly be enough to bring Obama close enough to Clinton in actual voting results and prevent her from gaining enough pledged delegates to overtake him in delegate count, but it may not be enough to give him outright victory in states in which, just like in New Jersey and California, Clinton had held double-digit leads as large as 10 to 29 points for months.

What the Obama camp must do, therefore, is play the right kind of expectations game. This game entails an ability to lower the expectations and modulate its discourse in a way that emphasizes the facts that:

I strongly believe that if the Obama campaign were to play the expectations game this way, the strategy would ensure that Obama comes out still being perceived as the victor win or lose:

Obama still has two days to adjust and lower his expectations game. He must continue to present Hillary Clinton as the person who was and is still the prohibitive favorite and front-runner in Ohio and Texas, even if the polls have started to tilt Obama’s way.

But because this tilting may not hold because of factors such as voters’ guilt on election day, a very well formulated expectations discourse will lead to a win-win situation for Barack Obama and, thereafter, maintain his momentum as the prohibitive front-runner on the basis of delegate mathematics. The ensuing situation of inevitability would ensure the possibility of the Democratic Party rallying around Barack Obama to push Hillary Clinton out of the race.

 

Dr. Daniel Mengara
The author is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Montclair State University (New Jersey). He is also the leader of Bongo Doit Partir (Bongo Must Go), a movement of expatriated Gabonese citizens opposed and seeking an end to the 40-year-old dictatorial regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Leave a comment or send a note
  1. (required)
  2. (valid email required)
  4. (required)
  5. Answering the security question below
    Examples:
    What color is a could? Answer = white
    1 plus 1 equals what? Answer = 2
  6. Captcha
 

cforms contact form by delicious:days