With all the talk about how well Obama did against Hillary in the so-called "Patomac Primaries", there's an interesting story being underreported on how soundly he beat McCain. According to Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone, Obama got 25% as many Republican votes as McCain in the state of Virginia. And he got nearly four times as many independent votes as McCain in that same state. And while he was at it, he got 140,000 more total votes than all Republicans combined in that primary. Given that Virginia is increasingly being seen as a swing state, this is an enormous victory in a very good test case for how well Obama will run against McCain.
Meanwhile, just across the Patomac River, Chris Bowers has an interesting and related story about a primary victory of progressive Democratic Congressional candidate Donna Edwards against incumbent LieberCrat Albert Wynn. Obama voters, and particularly first-time voters who voted for Obama, broke heavily for Edwards. Netroots blogger Chris Bowers, who has hardly been a cheerleader for either Obama or Clinton, had this to say:
[T]he new primary voters who are coming out for Barack Obama are also going to result in the first progressive displacement of a centrist, corporate, congressional Democrat via a primary in years.
So, to sum up, Obama can trounce McCain on total votes, trounce him on Independent votes, and even compete with him on Republican votes, in an historically red state, while simultaneously helping to elect a progressive Democrat against a well-funded incumbent down-ticket.
If this trend continues, there will be no fight over superdelegates. No Democratic official in his or her right mind could possibly walk away from success like this.
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