The vote margin

I reported on the vote percentages of the candidates yesterday. But I did not mention the raw votes. I went back to the spreadsheet and took a closer look, and was genuinely surprised by what I saw.

At the conclusion of Super Tuesday, Obama's cumulative lead in votes was only 87,799. Now it is 911,657. Wow!

Could Clinton overcome it on the 4 March primaries in Texas and Ohio?

The biggest margin in raw votes anyone has had in this campaign in a state so far is in Illinois, where Obama beat Clinton by over 600,000. Even in New York, a bigger state and one won by their Senator, the margin was only 305,000. In California--vastly larger than Texas--her margin, which was over 9 percentage points, amounted to 398,000 votes.

No, I don't think she can overcome this lead. It's over. At least unless the bionic delegates weigh in for her. Or something truly tectonic happens.

Those populist Democrats have me raging with anger!

Oh, if only a candidate would not be branded a 'populist' every time she or he suggests that the solution to ordinary people's economic woes is not more markets, more orthodoxy...

As if the cautious oh-so-slightly left-of-right approach being advocated by Obama and Clinton were the reincarnation of Peron.

Of course, Edwards was an angry populist (or is that redundant?).

Then again, the first-linked story tells us the voters are angry. So maybe their politicians should be just a little angry, too. Why leave anger to the populists? Al Gore (whose "people vs. the powerful" seemed oh so populist in its day but so timid now--so says the WaPo at the second link) once called himself a "raging moderate." After all, his father had been way too much of an "absolutist."

So, careful there, Barack and Hillary. This populism, anger thing is dangerous. I know because I keep reading it in the liberal media (or is that redundant?).