So after Hillary’s win in PA, the new spin from her supporters, bloggers and politicans alike, is that she’s winning in the popular vote and therefore, she should be the nomiee for president. Obviously, only she can win the big states. He’s faltered now that the pressure is on him. Blah, blah, blah. You know what I say? This is a Pyrrhic victory for Clinton. She may have won the battle, but she won’t win the war.
Let’s look at a few bits of analysis from around the tubes. First, this interesting theory from Kos:
It’s my theory that no endorsement matters except those that deliver a machine. Senators have no machine, so they’re pretty worthless (like Bob Casey). Mayors and machine-state governors, like Nutter and Rendell, matter. Gavin Newsom in San Francisco, who has no machine, didn’t matter, but Antonio Villaraigosa in Los Angeles, who has one of the biggest machines in the planet, delivered strong for Clinton. Obama won Connecticut in large part thanks to New Haven’s mayor John Destefano’s efforts. In Pennsylvania, Clinton had the state’s machine working on her behalf, and it clearly helped cut Obama’s margins in the Philly metro area.
That will even work in a place like here in NJ, where the state government is one big giant machine, and we already know Jon Corzine is cuckoo for Hillary. I’m on his email list and he’s put out several emails in support of Hillary.
Then, we have the reality of the numbers, as explained by Charlie Cook:
But today, she is 133 delegates behind Obama, 1,728 to 1,595, according to NBC News. At this point last week, she trailed by 136 delegates. Since then Clinton has scored a net gain of 10 delegates in Pennsylvania, according to NBC, but has lost a few more superdelegates, so she has made little headway.
Let’s not forget that her projections of primary vote include Michigan and Florida, the two races that don’t count because they broke the DNC’s primary rules. Besides, it’s not about the votes that matters. It’s all about the delegates stupid! More from Cook:
But you can’t change how the game is played once it has begun. The Democrats have decided that the nominee will be determined by the number of delegates won, not by the popular vote, and that primaries held in direct violation of party rules (in this case, Florida’s and Michigan’s) don’t count. End of discussion.
So now that we have that down pat, let’s reexamine her victory. First off, she was projected to win the state by more than 20 points. She won it by 9. She netted 10 delegates from the victory, but hasn’t dented Obama’s lead. She’s not favored to win in North Carolina’s primary on May 6th, and Indiana is a tossup that can easily go Obama’s way if he campaigns strongly there. If she loses both of those, what then?
The most important thing is that this prolonged primary is souring a lot of people and is letting John McCain sit pretty and keep building his positive poll numbers. So yes, Clinton won PA, but at what cost to herself and the party in general? Sounds a lot like a Pyhrric victory to me.
Technorati Tags: hillary clinton, pennsylvania primary, pyhrric victory
