Obama aide: Clinton will 'fail' Tuesday

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe predicted flatly Friday that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) will “fail” to make meaningful progress toward the presidential nomination in the big Ohio and Texas primaries on Tuesday.

“They have a huge task in front of them, which is to try to erase this pledged delegate lead,” Plouffe said on a conference call with reporters. “They are going to fail by that measure. … This isn’t whether they can skate by and win the popular vote narrowly.”


Plouffe’s tough talk also showed the Obama campaign is going to hit back hard at Clinton for her new ad designed to tap into voters’ fears about national security.



“It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep,” the male narrator says. “But there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing. Something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call.”

The ad has echoes of a famous “ red telephone” spot that Roy Spence, now a Clinton adviser, made in 1984 for former Vice President Walter Mondale when he was seeking the Democratic nomination against Gary Hart.

Plouffe said dismissively: “Senator Clinton has already had her red phone moment, and it was the [2002] decision whether to allow George Bush to invade Iraq. She answered affirmatively. She did not read the National Intelligence Estimate, so she didn’t do her homework either.”

Plouffe repeated the “red phone” comment several times, saying voters will choose based on judgment. “Do they trust the judgment of these candidates on not just red-phone issues, but generally, … both domestically and internationally?” he asked.

At the start of the call, Plouffe read back predictions by Clinton campaign officials that they would be nearly tied – or even ahead – in the delegate count after March 4, an eventuality that now seems unlikely even if Clinton has a strong day.

“Those are their own benchmarks,” Plouffe said. “The Clinton campaign has to begin winning big states by big margins to have any hope of erasing this delegate deficit. … The most likely outcome Tuesday is not a huge delegate swing either way.”

The latest CBS News delegate count has Obama at 1,373 and Clinton at 1,265. That includes the party insiders known as superdelegates. The count for pledged delegates – those allocated based on primaries and caucuses – is Obama at 1,192 and Clinton at 1,035.

Plouffe said that if the Ohio vote is close – say, less than 5 percent – the leader will pick up only three delegates. He referred to the press role as “referees” of how the results will be interpreted, and he sought to convince reporters that even if Clinton wins the popular vote in one of the states, she is likely to still face an insurmountable deficit in the delegate count.

After the call, the Clinton campaign e-mailed a memo titled, "Obama Must-Wins": "The media has anointed Barack Obama the presumptive nominee and he's playing the part. With an eleven-state winning streak coming out of February, Senator Obama is riding a surge of momentum that has enabled him to pour unprecedented resources into Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont. ... Senator Obama has campaigned hard in these states. He has spent time meeting editorial boards, courting endorsers, holding rallies, and - of course - making speeches. If he cannot win all of these states with all this effort, there's a problem."