Obama Wins?

Well, it certainly didn't feel like a victorious night yesterday, but initial reactions can be deceiving. While Obama wasn't able to pick up some of the Democratic strongholds on the East and West coast, it appears as if, on a delegate basis, he was victorious.

The Obama camp projects topping Clinton by nine delegates, 845 to 836.

NBC News, which is projecting delegates based on the Democratic Party's complex formula, figures Obama will wind up with 840 to 849 delegates, versus 829 to 838 for Clinton.

In terms of states won, Obama was the clear winner, picking up 14 to Hillary's 8. She won American Samoa (a whopping 285 people voted) and he (may have?) won Democrats Abroad (which does apportion delegates).

CLINTON: AR, AZ, CA, MA, NY, NJ, OK, TN
OBAMA: AK, AL, CT, CO, DE, GA, ID, IL, KS, MN, MO, ND, NM, UT

Ultimately, he was able to win some Democratic states such as Connecticut and Delaware, and some that have been trending Democratic such as Colorado, New Mexico* and Missouri.

In Tennessee, the results were reverse of the states trend. He was able to win handily the Democratic strongholds of Shelby and Davidson (also Hamilton...which Ford also did well in), but lost most of the other counties.

Yesterday I stood on the corner of Rosa and Jefferson doing visibility, and it sunk in that while I think Obama could win the general election...he ain't likely to carry much of the Southeast. To be sure, I don't think Hillary will either (except perhaps Arkansas), but some of the reactions from the white drivers really disgusted me to my core.

A couple of the guys shouted out of their windows "Barack HUSSEIN Obama," one even taking it so far as to bow up and down and scream, "Allah, Allah!". One woman, stopped in a left-turn lane, motioned for me to come into the street to answer a question...reluctantly I did. Her question, "I heard Obama has Muslim blood." I had heard people say he's a Muslim, I've heard people say he's a "closet" muslim or "pseudo-Muslim," but honestly, this is the first I've heard someone say he's got "Muslim blood."

So here I am, not a very religious person, explaining to this relatively nice middle aged women the concept of Christian salvation, and that there is no such thing as Muslim or Christian blood. Surprisingly, she seemed fairly receptive to my responses to her question, unlike some others who steadfastly refuse to hear any suggestion that Obama is not a Muslim.

There is going to be a lot of work to do in some of the sub-cultures around the South and other parts of the country, where word-of-mouth and talk radio are more authoritative sources of information than TV and Newspapers.

*New Mexico still has 17,000 provisional ballots left to be counted...which means this election is still a toss-up.