Obama Campaign Plans for Next Primary

In a memo released to the press yesterday, Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe tried to manage expectations for tonight's returns:

Two weeks ago, a Clinton campaign adviser told CBS News that they believed they could “wrap up” the nomination on February 5th. As the “inevitable” national frontrunner, tomorrow should be the day when she sews up the nomination or builds a formidable delegate lead. But because of Obama’s growing momentum across the country, the Clinton campaign is now unlikely to reach their stated goals of wrapping up the nomination tomorrow.

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.

To stay viable beyond today, Obama need only break even, or come close in the delegate count. His campaign has far more money than Clinton's, and with the next set of primaries spread out, time-wise, he's got plenty of time to campaign. Furthermore, a long primary benefits Obama; the longer he stays in the race, the more credible he looks against Hillary Clinton's "inevitability" strategy.