The Democrats

The challenge in Indiana

Hillary Clinton prepares to lock horns with Barack Obama, yet again

ANOTHER Tuesday, another make-or-break primary: or, in this case, two. Democratic voters in Indiana and North Carolina will troop to the polls on Tuesday May 6th for the latest skirmish in the Democrats' long civil war.

As has consistently been the case since Barack Obama stunned the Clintonians by trouncing her in Iowa, back in January at the start of this cycle, it is Hillary Clinton who has the most to lose. Despite some recent sign that the gap has narrowed, it is expected by all analysts and pollsters that she will lose in North Carolina (by around 7%, according to an average of polls produced by RealClearPolitics, a website), and this result is to some extent discounted. With a large black vote, plus a significant number of “upscale” whites working in the high-tech businesses and academic institutions that make up the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill “research triangle”, this state is strong Obama territory. In Virginia, which has a similar profile, he won by a whopping 29% in February. My Obama's fortunes have waned a bit since that Potomac primary, but no-one expects Mrs Clinton to win. Should, somehow, she manage it, Mr Obama will be in serious trouble, and the Democratic nomination will once again be turned on its head.

Indiana, though, is another matter. It ought to be solid ground for Mrs Clinton. It resembles states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, where she has done well, being somewhat conservative, mostly white and above all relatively poor. Average incomes in Indiana are $36,500, versus $40,000 for Pennsylvania, where Mrs Clinton won by 9.2%. Her appeal has consistently been strongest to voters earning between $15,000 and $100,000 a year.

This expectation carries great danger, though. Should Mrs Clinton stumble in Indiana, her campaign will almost certainly be doomed. Her recent comeback critically depends on maintaining the momentum generated since her breakthrough in Ohio on March 4th, which has allowed her continually to close the gap in the popular vote between her and Mr Obama. If that process goes into reverse, she will lose the most convincing argument that she is able to deploy to the wavering superdelegates who will determine the final outcome because the tally of elected delegates is so finely balanced.

But this time there are some risks for Mr Obama as well. He badly needs a resounding success to counter a period of well over a month in which the news has been unremittingly bad for him. He has lost primary after primary since his big wins in February. He has looked tired and listless. He has been battered by his association with Tony Rezko, a Chicago businessman now on trial for money-laundering and corruption, and hurt far more than that by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. His association with Mr Wright, who takes a bleak and combative view of the state of race relations in America has unsettled many white Americans.

Mr Obama has strongly asserted that his own views are precisely the opposite of Mr Wright's, and everything in his record bears that out. But the fact that he has so closely associated with Mr Wright for two decades is worrying: given that their views are supposedly such polar opposites, it does at the least show odd judgment on Mr Obama's part to have chosen this particular cleric to marry him and his wife and to baptize their two daughters.

If, as the polls predict, Mrs Clinton wins in Indiana, she will continue to argue that Mr Obama is incapable of “closing the deal”. But she, of course, cannot close the deal either. A win in Indiana is unlikely to come as such a boost to Mrs Clinton as her wins in Ohio and Pennsylvania did. Indiana is firmly in the Republican camp in presidential elections, rather than being a crucial swing state like those two. And Mr Obama will probably, through his win in North Carolina, have negated most of the gains, in delegates and popular votes that Mrs Clinton made in Pennsylvania.

The bottom line is that to prevail, Mrs Clinton needs a series of big wins, and she has been getting only moderate ones. With the remaining primaries likely to be fairly evenly divided between the two contenders, in the absence of a shock win in North Carolina, it is increasingly hard to see a plausible path that could carry Mrs Clinton to the nomination. That does not mean, of course, that she will give up trying to find one.