The Michigan Messenger

With the Democratic National Committee rules committee preparing to make decisions today on the Michigan and Florida delegate seating crisis, East Lansing-based Democratic consultant Mark Grebner said the race for the Democratic nomination is over — and Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois, is the winner.

“The nomination struggle is over,” Grebner said Friday in a phone interview. “All they are doing is playing out little strategic moves. There is no doubt about it, that he is going to be the nominee.”

Grebner, who runs Practical Political Consultants in East Lansing, said even the bet makers have laid the odds heavily in favor of Obama, rating Obama as having more than a 90 percent probability of taking the nomination, while giving New York Sen. Hillary Clinton about a 3 percentage-point edge on the nomination.

Continued – Practical Political Consulting does everything from provide mailing lists of up-to-date identified voters to campaign coordination. Grebner’s mailing lists are considered the best in the state by some and nearly every Democrat up and down a ticket will use his voter lists at some point in a campaign for office.

Of Obama’s scheduled Troy, Mich., appearance on Monday, Grebner said Obama and his team clearly think Michigan is important in their national, general campaign strategy.

“In Obama’s case he has to worry about winning the electoral college. He needs 271. There is some analysis that shows Michigan is critical,” Grebner said. “I think Michigan is going to be more Democratic than people give it credit for. Ohio will be more a problem. It is more a Republican, southern Applachian region.”

A recent poll by EPIC-MRA poll done for the Detroit News and television stations WILX, WXYZ, WOOD and WJRT shows McCain edging out Obama in a head-to-head match in the state at 44-40 percent. The poll was conducted May 19-22 and featured 600 likely voters. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. An April poll by the same Lansing-based opinion research group found Obama trumping McCain 43-41 percent.

But Grebner said the polls are pretty worthless in his opinion.

The polls, he said, tend to inflame already divided Democratic loyalties by asking who identified Democrats supported, Clinton or Obama, then asking if they would vote for the other on the top of the ticket. He said that many people are still deeply loyal to either Clinton or Obama and as a result say they won’t vote for one or the other. The reality, however, is somewhat different he said, pointing to Detroit.

“In 2004, George Bush got 4 percent in Detroit, about 1.5 percent of the black vote. Twenty-five percent are now saying they don’t know if they will vote for Hillary,” he said. “Will they really vote for McCain? How many (registered voters in Detroit) voted in the Republican primary (In January)? Like 3,000 people. Yet they are saying they don’t know if they would support Hillary. Of course they will.”

On the other hand, Grebner said if you want a real feel, look at the crowds Obama and McCain are pulling for their events. He talked about a Thursday event where McCain drew overflow crowds to a 1,000-seat auditorium and compared it with Obama’s appearance in Grand Rapids, Mich., or Portland, Ore., where he drew 15,000 and 75,000 people, respectively.

“It tells you that Obama is a completely different candidate in the minds of his supporters than McCain is in the minds of his supporters,” Grebner said.