Obama wins Wyoming big

Sen. Barack Obama ended what has certainly been one of the worst weeks of his campaign (not just because of the losses on Tuesday, but with all the negative media stories too) with a 23-point victory in Wyoming (but because he won there, it's not a state that "matters," right?). On Tuesday, Obama will likely have a similar win in Mississippi and the race will pretty much be back to where it was before Hillary Clinton's recent wins, with Obama retaining a very large pledged delegate lead and Clinton needing to win strongly in the next "big" state of Pennsylvania on April 22nd just not to stay too far behind.

It is really interesting to me how their general election strategies are probably going to be reflective of their current primary strategies (backed up by SurveyUSA polling with some good analysis by Chris Bowers). Clinton is trying to win by winning the biggest states, and will focus on winning Ohio and Florida to win in November. Obama is trying to win by winning a big and diverse majority of states, and will similarly attempt to remake the electoral map in the general. I much prefer the latter. Gore and Kerry tried to the FL/OH strategy in 2000 and 2004 and failed, though I think Hillary probably has a better shot at it this time around. But it does absolutely nothing for party building, and doesn't bring us the winning coalition a president will need to actually get things done. John McCain will focus hard on Florida and Ohio, and I think we have the oppurtunity to come from behind and win states like Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, etc. and actually win a majority of the popular vote which no Democrat has done since LBJ. We need a nominee capable and willing to do that.