Keep Your Expectations In Check

There is a lot of excitement over Obama's recent surge and the shrinking gap with Hillary. Still, it's important that supporters keep their expectations in line with the reality of the situation. The Clintons still have an enormous advantage among voters and are still the favorites to win just about every state (save Illinois and Georgia). Winning California, despite the recent Zogby polls, would be a miracle. Keep New Hampshire in mind. As one prominent blogger stated: "Obama has been slowly building up, and has had to overcome huge advantages enjoyed by the Clintons. It's about the calendar, and how it plays to Obama's strengths later in the month. There's no need to bet everything on tomorrow. It's all about how well he loses. The narrower the loss, the bigger his actual victory."

Here's what Obama's staff said yesterday about the situation:

Our path to the nomination never factored in a big day for us on February 5. Rather, we always planned to stay close enough in the delegate count so that we could proceed to individually focus on the states in the next set of contests. We fully expect Senator Clinton to earn more delegates on February 5th and also to win more states.

If we were to be within 100 delegates on that day and win a number of states, we will have met our threshold for success and will be best positioned to win the nomination in the coming months.