Marching on
Lebanon Daily News
With a pencil-thin margin of victory in Indiana on Tuesday, Hillary
Clinton=92s campaign lives for another day.
But her drubbing in North Carolina on the same day made her long-shot
bid for the presidency almost impossible.
By virtue of a 10-point win in Pennsylvania two weeks ago and a whirl
of bad press around Barack Obama regarding his former pastor, Clinton
had forged a credible strategy: Woo superdelegates by convincing them
Obama can=92t win the big, im****tant states in November and that she,
not he, was gaining momentum with voters.
It was a plausible strategy the Monday before the most recent
primaries. It=92s much harder to make that same claim now with a
straight face.
Clinton, looking for a groundswell, a change in momentum, has
basically run out of time.
Interestingly enough, we=92re no further along today, in terms of
delegate dynamics, than we were after Super Tuesday in February. Obama
holds a slight edge in delegates, and neither will garner enough to
clinch outright before the Denver convention in August. So now, just
as then, all eyes are on the superdelegates, those party bosses and
insiders who will ultimately decide this election.
If Clinton decides to run all the way to the convention, the lobbying
of superdelegates will be intense. It wouldn=92t be surprising to see
the campaigns spend as much time and money wooing superdelegates as
trying to sway voters.
We can understand why Democratic insiders would prefer that the
nomination be a done deal by the time the delegates gather in Denver
to don silly hats and celebrate the nominee. Conventional wisdom
suggests a protracted fight would damage the ultimate Democratic
victor and give Republican nominee John McCain a chance to idle in the
wings, raising money and selling himself to general-election voters.
But the decision very well may be made on the convention floor.
=46rom a public-policy perspective, the race is a wonderful thing.
Voters are coming out in record numbers. And the public is getting to
know the Democratic candidates better, which may end up being a
benefit for Obama.
The first-term senator from Illinois is getting the op****tunity to
show the country who he is and what he stands for. He seems to have
distanced himself from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy and was
very credible this past week in dismissing both Clinton and McCain=92s
ridiculous gas-tax =93holiday=94 as the gimmick that it really is.
It seems this close race will go on for the time being, and why not?
As political junkies, we=92re enthralled by the daily drama in this
historic campaign and think it=92s good for the republic to get a full
airing of each candidates=92 policy platforms.
We=92ve played the game this long; why not finish it out?
On to West Virginia.
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