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John Nichols: A Baldwin shift to Obama could send crucial message

John Nichols  —  4/30/2008 11:53 am

Drive down the streets of Madison and its suburbs and you will still find plenty of those blue-and-white "Barack Obama for President" signs.

The senator from Illinois is exceptionally popular in the city, its suburbs, the rural areas beyond and, indeed, across all of Wisconsin's 2nd Congressional District.

Obama did not just win the Feb. 19 Democratic presidential primary voting in the south-central Wisconsin district by a 2-1 margin over New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Obama beat everyone.

Add up all the votes for all the other candidates in the Democratic and Republican primaries -- Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and all the dropped-out Democrats whose names were still on the ballot, plus campaigning Republicans John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul and all the Republicans who quit the race too late to get their names off their party's primary list -- and you get 101,401 votes.

Obama got 119,619 votes in the district.

So 54 percent of the universe of voters on Feb. 19 cast their ballots for Obama.

Everybody else got 46 percent.

In the 2nd, Obama's vote total was higher than what he got in any of the state's seven other U.S. House districts. And it was higher by a lot; the next closest district, the Milwaukee-based 4th, produced 23,000 fewer Obama votes than did the 2nd.

Here's one way of looking at the numbers: Of the 645,054 Obama votes cast statewide, one in five came from the 2nd District.

Here's another way: Most of Obama's landslide statewide margin over Clinton in the Democratic primary came from one district: the 2nd.

OK, it's established. The 2nd District is Obama country.

Yet U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, the Madison Democrat who has represented the district ably since her election in 1998, is not an Obama backer.

Baldwin co-chaired the Clinton campaign in Wisconsin. And, despite the often-unsettling evolution of the New York senator's campaign over the two months since Wisconsin voted, she is still expected to give her "superdelegate" vote to Clinton at this summer's Democratic National Convention.

Superdelegates -- elected officials and party elders -- are not required to pledge their support to a particular candidate on the basis of primary voting. Unless, of course, they are House members who choose to vote as their district did.

Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a longtime Clinton backer, did just that when he announced weeks ago that he would follow the lead of his overwhelmingly African-American district in the Atlanta area district and cast his superdelegate vote for Obama.

Lewis was not the first House member to switch. But he was surely the most high-profile Clinton backer to do so, explaining, "Something's happening in America, something some of us did not see coming. Barack Obama has tapped into something that is extraordinary."

So far, Baldwin has resisted switching, as is her right.

Baldwin's taken some hits for this. But she remains extremely well regarded by her Democratic constituents, so she knows she does not have to switch in order to "protect herself" politically.

Still, Baldwin, as someone who has always taken seriously the sentiments of her district, now has an opportunity to communicate an important message to Clinton. If Baldwin were to switch her support to Obama, at a point when it is increasingly evident that he will be the nominee but when Clinton's continued candidacy can still do him harm politically, she would not just help her party in what will be a tough fall contest for the presidency. Baldwin could -- as she has done so frequently and so well on so many issues -- carry the wisdom of the 2nd District to the national stage.

John Nichols is associate editor of The Capital Times.

John Nichols  —  4/30/2008 11:53 am