Obama Takes Mississippi

Wow, my first post writing M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I!

I'm excited, but not so much for Barack Obama, who won the Mississippi primary tonight.

Frankly, I'd say the shady socialist's got the nomination in the tank, and for all of my ribbing of Hillary Clinton, I'd rather see her as the nominee - mainly because I expect she'd be more likely to moderate back to a traditional liberal internationalist foreign policy than is Obama.

(I don't love some of the antiwar elements of such a foreign policy orientation, but it is internationalist, free-trading, and - in the right hands - recognizes the primacy of power in world politics, which is preferable to an international policy of cozying up with dictators).

But check the New York Times background on Obama in Mississippi:

Senator Barack Obama won Mississippi’s Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday, building his delegate lead over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the final contest before the nominating fight heads to Pennsylvania for a six-week showdown.

Mr. Obama’s victory was built on a wave of support among blacks, who made up half of those who turned out to vote, according to exit polls conducted by television networks and The Associated Press. The polls found that roughly 90 percent of black voters supported Mr. Obama, but only a third of white voters did.

With 92 percent of precincts reporting across Mississippi, Mr. Obama led Mrs. Clinton 59 percent to 39 percent.

“It’s just another win in our column, and we are getting more delegates,” Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said in declaring victory in an interview on CNN from Chicago, where he arrived Tuesday evening after spending the day in Mississippi and Pennsylvania. “I am grateful to the people of Mississippi for the wonderful support. What we’ve tried to do is steadily make sure that in each state we are making the case about the need for change in this country.”

Hillary Clinton's obviously still solidly in the race, and it's not out of the question for her to win the nomination via the "nuclear option," i.e., by leveraging the superdelegate vote, which she'll be able to do more credibly if she can win a couple more of the remaining primaries on the Democratic calendar.

No matter what happens, Clinton's aggressive policy of taking the nomination to the convention's going to harken to 1968, particulary if she indeed secures the party's nod, alienating the left's hardline antiwar base.

Stay tuned for more updates on these developments.