Obama holds his lead

Debating to a draw suits Barack Obama

IT HARDLY seems possible, but there have been no fewer than 20 televised debates in the long struggle to settle the Democratic nomination. The latest was in Cleveland, Ohio, on Tuesday February 26th. For Hillary Clinton it represented a final chance to unsettle Barack Obama ahead of the next round of primaries, and she failed.

On substance, the two candidates fought each other pretty much to a draw. For 16 long minutes, for instance, they argued about their rival health-care packages, and at the end of it both had defended and attacked with equal vigour, and neither model had obviously prevailed. On NAFTA they essentially agreed—startlingly—that America ought to pull out of the free-trade area unless it is renegotiated, and argued mainly about the favourable things that each of them had said about it in the past. Mrs Clinton, as ever, was vulnerable by reason of her 2002 vote empowering President George Bush to attack Iraq, Mr Obama for his unwise threat to launch air attacks against al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan.

Overall, however, Mr Obama came out of it better. He seemed calm, reasonable and at ease while Mrs Clinton seemed tense and combative, at one point complaining at being asked to reply to too many questions first. He seemed, in fact, more presidential. And besides, given his commanding position, a draw is all that Mr Obama needed. Mrs Clinton's last ditch effort—a series of quite tough attacks on Mr Obama's positions—failed to turn the tide of the game. Both candidates came out of the long debate well, but that was not enough for Mrs Clinton.

There is now just a week to go until “mini Super Tuesday”, on March 4th. Only four states will vote, but two of them, Ohio and Texas, are big ones, and the Texas primary could be decisive. There are no rules, of course: but Mrs Clinton is more than 150 elected delegates down at the moment, with an estimated 1,038 to Mr Obama's 1,193. Texas and Ohio, both states in which she has long had big poll majorities, are her last chance to close that gap. Should she lose either state she would be under great pressure to bow out, and by doing so gracefully she would certainly increase her chances of another crack at the presidency in 2012, should Mr Obama lose the election, or perhaps of becoming Majority Leader of the Senate.

If Mrs Clinton were to win both Ohio and Texas, she would hardly be out of the woods. Ohio still looks like a reliable delegate-getter for her, but Texas has such a quirky delegate-allocation system that even if she wins the most votes, she could actually end up with fewer delegates, or at any rate with nothing like the boost needed to close the gap in any significant way. In that case, would she quit? And if not, would the superdelegates, who would then hold the balance, decide to go with her or Mr Obama? A Clinton victory would then still look wildly implausible, but not completely impossible.

In fact, though, the news from Texas is not good for the former first lady. She is now trailing in some of the polls there. Hispanics, on which the Clinton campaign has been counting for monolithic support, are in fact pretty evenly divided. Young Hispanics are exhibiting the same kind of enthusiasm for Mr Obama as other young people. And there are reports of unprecedented levels of early voting (Texas allows voters two weeks to cast their ballots) in strongly Republican areas but for the Democratic primary. Is this because these voters, who can choose which primary they vote in, are choosing to ventilate their dislike of Mrs Clinton? It's possible.

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