Obama must really be kicking himself over the decision to take his name off the ballot.  He probably thought that without the opportunity to campaign, there was no way he'd be within striking distance.

It says something about Obama that only voters that know him vote for him.  It also says something about Clinton that only voters that know Obama vote for him.

You say "it's remarkable how quicky momentum fades this year" as though that were disturbing. I think it is marvelous that none of the states contested to this point in the primary race are voting according to plan, or allowing themselves to be influenced by "momentum". Otherwise, you may as well nominate the winner of Iowa, and save everyone's time and money. Refreshingly the results also seem immune to polls and pundits. Wouldn't it be a marvelous election, devoid of undue influence from pollsters and media hacks?

wouldn't it be ironic if the only Obama could win the nomination would be to follow through on the disenfranchisement of millions of African Americans in Michigan.

be a added on the side of the NV Dem Party as a defendant... siding against the law-suit brought by the Clintons when they didn't receive the Culinary Workers endorsement.

http://ruralvotes.com/thefield/?p=229

In Other News, Hillary Lost convincingly the youth and black vote to no one.

Since MyDD has become a franchise for the Hillary campaign, why not just rename the site to "Clinton Camelot 2.0"? Or we could just call it "Dynasty Rebooted"  Terrah, terrah, terrah.. Hill will protect us all.

How can anyone tell anything from the voters in Michigan.  I'm a Clinton person, but I don't give any credence to the polls with good info for her like this or the ones with bad like the African American vote.

As I just posted in a comment at OpenLeft, I think folks extrapolate from these results at their peril.  The turnout was very low.  Given the circumstances, you'd have to be an incredibly committed voter to bother going out into the snow to vote for Clinton over uncommitted?  Or uncommitted over Clinton?  And there were no GOTV efforts by the candidates (unless you count Conyers and other Obama/Edwards supporters pushing uncommitted).  As for African Americans, I fully expect Obama to carry them, but it also seems to me that those most angry at Clinton might have more of a reason to show up than other African American voters.  Or maybe not.  Who knows?

If we've learned nothing else from Iowa and NH, it's that turnout matters.  Who shows up is what is determining this race and we've been getting huge turnouts in contested states.  Trying to take a state where almost no one voted and extrapolating that to states with advertising, mailings, GOTV efforts, and campaign stops seems dicey at best.

I think the only thing this primary means is that if Michigan gets delegates, Clinton is going to get the majority of them but the remainder will be up for grabs since uncommitted got more than 15%.

Believe me, I want to know who the nominee is going to be as much as anyone, and speculation and poll parsing can be fun, but we're just going to have to wait this year until folks actually vote.  Frustrating isn't it?

Remarkably, no candidate has yet had a back-to-back win (not counting Michigan as a true win for Clinton...,)

Not counting Michigan, there have only been two contests!

so it's unclear, even with these two wins, whether Obama can overcome Clinton for what's starting to look like Clinton's nomination to lose,

I would think that the stalemate (though uneven) between the latter two remains until there are no significant other candidates left.  And then support for one or the other will break down.

Anecdotally and in some polling analyses, some Edwards support seems to be bleeding over to Clinton and Obama in the past week or so.  In a week or two we might see a consensus emerge that the race has become a two person contest.

In this election season, its fairly stupid to make any kind of assumptions.  

Probably... In hindsight, it was a mistake...even if I don't think it will mean anything.  Frankly, he should have gotten them to pull out of both... the media really neutralized michigan on the Dem sides.  All the stories are about Romney's win.

Shouldn't it tell us something that 35% of the people who voted would have voted for Obama? That if all the candidates were on the ballot Hillary couldn't have topped her national poll average by a significant amount.

Obama's supporters had absolutely no reason to vote today. They knew he wouldn't be on the ballot and Democratic turnout was low tonight. That 10% of people who voted for Hillary didn't want to is bad news for her. 55% of the vote in a basically uncontested election is not good for her.

I'd agree that Hillary is still the most likely nominee and that Obama really needs to both NV and SC, but as an Obama supporter I'm heartened that Hillary couldn't outperform her national average in the exit poll, among people who showed up to vote for her.

Yea, sounds like something I might have tried to tell the Obama strategists here about it being a huge mistake...

Actually, I think the Michigan results are more indicative of the way the race will go than Iowa or New Hampshire. Remember, the candidates had about a year to prepare their cases in Iowa (for 1% of the voters) and spent about half their overall budget prior to the Iowa vote. Then New Hamphire followed hot on Iowa's heels, with basically the same information, for another 1% or so of the final delegates.

In Michigan there was no on hands campaigning, and little media effort. The will be much closer to the situation in the remaining states since the candidates have just a few months, and perhaps $50 million max, to spend for the remaining 95% of the voters and delegates. The longer the race drags on, the more inclined people will be to settle back into their original inclinations, barring some dramatic collapse by one of the candidates.

Guys exit polls are bunk. Just ask John Kerry. It's clear from the exit poll though that the electors knew who the candidates were and if they wanted to vote against her they could. In fact about 40% voted uncommitted, Clinton got 56% of the vote. What's being missed here is that MI is a much more typical primary situ than IA or NH and therefore a much more accurate barometer of what we're likely to see in FL and on super Tuesday. This vote tells me she's going to pull just north of 50% in most of them.    

If the antiHillary (Obama, Edwards, kucinich)still tops 50%, it is evident that Hillary has a long way to go, and that way is not likely to be up as more and more people learn what it is she stands for. Clintonism may have worked in the 90s, but today, by proposing to continue a soft Reagan-Bush agenda will not work.

You can fool some of the people all of the time....and so forth.

otto, hillary is in good shape going into Super Tuesday. Obama needs to win the next two I believe in order to garner momentum into Super Tuesday.

Hillary remains the favorite in this race.

Really, the big target for Obama has to be CA.  Without CA, I don't see any path for him.  With CA, if he can limit the damages in NY and NJ and take IL and a couple others, it's still on.  To get the necessary momentum (since Clinton is currently ahead in CA), I think Obama needs to not just win but win impressively in SC.  In order to accomplish that, he may need to win NV as well, but I'm not 100% convinced.  NV's whole situation is so f-ed up that it may be easy to write off a loss as well if his SC lead isn't affected.

A second thought here: how can the polls determine what the results would have been if all candidates were on the ballot, if a lot of voters just did not show up to vote. Since Hillary was on the ballot, one would suspect that Hillary supporters did show up and would indicate a perference for Hillary on an ideal ballot which showed all of the candidates.

The result is therefore a hypothetical result if most of the voters who showed up were Hillary supporters. Nothing more.

South Carolina is a big time must win for Obama. Nevada will make or break no one, unless Edwards can take a stunning upset (polls are relatively close). One super tuesday Hillary has a lock on New York, New Jersey and Arkansas. Obama has Illinios. Obama would be favored in southern states like Georgia and Alabama if he wins South Carolina, but California will still be the edge to Clinton. It's very hard for me to see Obama take that state. It must be close for him to have a chance.