Update (4/23): You wouldn’t know it from watching the atrocious TV coverage, but it’s looking like Clinton’s Pennsylvania victory is pretty marginal (thanks again to DailyKos).
Update #2 (4/23): Apparently the Pennsylvania secretary of state’s numbers were wrong in the above link. The actual victory looks to be 9.2 percent, 54.6 to 45.4. And while I’m at it, here’s another DailyKos post analyzing why Obama didn’t win the state yesterday.
DailyKos just posted this, from The New York Times’ editorial board:
The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.
If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.
I suppose to write that Clinton absolutely cannot win the nomination is untrue. She could theoretically come away with the vast majority of the uncommitted superdelegates to overcome Obama’s now unbeatable delegate lead (barring some sort of Huckabee-style miracle). But I can’t imagine she’d have an easy time with McCain if she secured the nomination through this so-called “superdelegate coup.”
Still, Clinton’s campaign website has kicked in high gear; she’s raised more than $500,000 already tonight. And, according to MSNBC, with 82 percent of the results in, she’s got a 55-45 lead. This thing’s only gonna get uglier….
3 responses so far ↓
1 nate // Apr 25, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Every time that it has looked certain that Hillary cannot win, she wins. Before New Hampshire, it looked like it was all over. Before Super Tuesday, it looked like it was all over. Obama was looking strong in the days before Penn and he could have secured the nomination, but then she won. In fact, it seems that she can only win when people do not expect her to win. Back when she seemed to be a sure thing, she lost here in Iowa. So I think that if it looks now like she cannot win the nomination, then, given what has happened so far, maybe she can. Same with the general election.
2 garonsen // Apr 25, 2008 at 3:24 pm
I think a lot of it’s going to come down to how well Clinton does in Indiana, where she’s in a dead heat with Obama, and North Carolina, which Obama will almost certainly win but where the state Republican Party has been airing TV spots linking two state Democratic candidates to Obama and by extension Rev. Wright.
So if Clinton can effectively portray Obama as unelectable through Wright, etc., she may be able to convince enough superdelegates to come to her side. But her negatives and electability numbers as of late have been lagging far behind Obama’s
Also, no one ever expected Obama to come anywhere close to Clinton in Pennsylvania. I think the media’s really overhyping it. Strategically, though, you could be right.
3 Support McKinley Bailey // Apr 29, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Well North Carolina is suppose to be a huge wing state in November
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