May 22, 2008 11:03 am US/Eastern
"On Second Thought": Obama, Clinton Visit Florida
CBS4 Reporter Michael Williams' Take On The Politics Of Florida
ORLANDO (CBS4) ―
THURSDAY, MAY 22 Odds and ends from my trip across Florida with the Barack Obama campaign - the one that includes lots of bus rides with sleepy reporters, lots and lots of waiting, and an interesting glimpse of this historic campaign. One that also brings Obama to South Florida today. I'll be there.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are back, and how. The long political drought in Florida is finally over. Okay, it wasn't that long, and for all the hype it wasn't really a drought. It was more of a deep freeze that lasted all winter and deep into spring because of Democratic Party squabbles over whether Florida's primary vote should count.
Truth is, Florida always matters and all of us know it. All that is left is figuring out the formula for making delegates count, and they will. You just can't ignore the biggest swing state in presidential politics and get away with it. So what do we have now? We have one Democrat who has a huge crowd in Tampa doing the "wave" and another telling us not to let party officials wave away the Florida vote.
A confident Barack Obama is trying to mend fences and make up political ground here ahead of the battle he expects against John McCain. His supporters, black, white, and Hispanic as I saw firsthand in Tampa and Orlando, are confident he can break the color barrier in presidential politics. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, knows counting the Florida vote, and Michigan's for that matter, won't give her enough delegates to win her party's nomination.
However - and yes there is always a however in politics - she hopes to make one final argument to superdelegates, (come on, you knew I'd have to mention them) that she is more electable than Senator Obama. It is a really, really huge longshot, but speculators have come to Florida for a long time betting with a lot less. In any event, remember the relative quiet of the past few months on the campaign trail in our state. Sky-high gas prices are not about to keep Democrats and Republicans from coming your way frequently from now until November.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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