One Night, Two Victories

The only thing better than one electoral victory is two, and the progressive movement had two such victories yesterday. Barack Obama continued his march to the nomination with overwhelming wins in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C., and Donna Edwards won her Democratic primary battle against corporate incumbent Al Wynn in Maryland's 4th Congressional District.

As an enthusiastic Obama supporter (his is the first political campaign I've contributed to), I am naturally pleased by his victories. But the real excitement, with an eye towards November, comes from looking at the overall totals of the Democrats vs. the Republicans. In Virginia, which has trended blue but was still a Bush state in 2000 and 2004, Barack Obama received more than 619,000 votes, Hillary Clinton received more than 345,000 votes, and Republican winner John McCain received just under 243,000 votes. That's very good news for Democrats.

Well, it's good news for most Democrats. I do think Hillary Clinton is in real trouble. First, look at those results from the Potomac primaries again. Men, women, black, white, young, old... Obama Obama Obama. Then look at this photo from Obama's speech last night in Wisconsin:

This is a campaign that has people excited. It was good to see Senator Obama use this excitement last night to aim some of his firepower at his likely Republican opponent:

When I am the nominee, I will offer a clear choice. John McCain won't be able to say that I ever supported this war in Iraq, because I opposed it from the beginning. Senator McCain said the other day that we might be mired for a hundred years in Iraq, which is reason enough to not give him four years in the White House.

If we had chosen a different path, the right path, we could have finished the job in Afghanistan, and put more resources into the fight against bin Laden; and instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Baghdad, we could have put that money into our schools and hospitals, our road and bridges - and that's what the American people need us to do right now.

And I admired Senator McCain when he stood up and said that it offended his "conscience" to support the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in a time of war; that he couldn't support a tax cut where "so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate." But somewhere along the road to the Republican nomination, the Straight Talk Express lost its wheels, because now he's all for them.

John McCain is in real trouble too.

As if this was not enough, the other excellent news coming out of yesterday's contests was the Democratic Congressional primary in MD-4, where Donna Edwards has finally unseated the corporate-owned Al Wynn. Matt Stoller over at Open Left has been deeply involved in that campaign, and will certainly have thoughts on what the victory means for progressives, netroots, and the contests ahead. For the moment, check out these photos of some very happy people in Maryland last night.