On Saturday January 5, 2008, at a debate in New Hampshire, the smug Barack Obama nailed it when he said, "You're likable enough, Hillary."
Last night, Hillary proved him right. Voters in Pennsylvania overwhelmingly found her likable.
From the New York Times:
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton scored a decisive victory over Senator Barack Obama on Tuesday in the Pennsylvania primary, giving her candidacy a critical boost as she struggles to raise money and persuade party leaders to let the Democratic nominating fight go on.
If Mrs. Clinton did not emerge from the bruising six-week campaign with a race-turning landslide — she still trails Mr. Obama in the popular vote and the delegate count — her victory nonetheless gives her a strong rationale for continuing her candidacy in spite of those Democrats who would prefer to coalesce around Mr. Obama.
Indeed, in her victory speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, Mrs. Clinton used the words “fight,” “fighter” and “fighting” repeatedly — not only to promise financially struggling Americans that she would protect them, but also to convey that she had the resolve and confidence to stay in the race.
As for Mr. Obama, the loss only hardened the determination of his advisers to overwhelm Mrs. Clinton’s campaign with his substantial financial advantage — he took in $42 million in March to her $21 million — and with the cold calculus that he is still solidly ahead in their pursuit of the 2,025 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. In his concession speech, he kept the focus on the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, a subject Mrs. Clinton avoided in her address.
...And she also defiantly acknowledged the Democrats and the pundits who have called on her to end her candidacy.
“Some people counted me out and said to drop out, but the American people don’t quit, and they deserve a president who doesn’t quit either,” Mrs. Clinton said to fervent cheers and applause at her victory party, where she was joined by former President Bill Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, as well as two key supporters in the state, Gov. Edward G. Rendell and Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia.
While Mrs. Clinton repeatedly sounded economically populist notes in her speech, Mr. Obama touched on those themes but was also more expansive in his remarks on Tuesday night, sharply criticizing Mr. McCain, as offering “more of the same” of President Bush’s policies. Mr. Obama left Pennsylvania late Tuesday to make his remarks in Indiana, which holds its primary on May 6, along with North Carolina.
Hillary trounced Obama with her 55 percent to 45 percent victory.
No wonder Obama put the focus on John McCain in his post-PA primary remarks. He didn't want to focus on his BITTER defeat. In effect, by zeroing in on McCain, he was saying that he's got the nomination. He can't be bothered wasting more time on Hillary.
Yes, it's a long shot for Hillary; but this race is not over yet.
In spite of so many high profile endorsements for Obama and calls from them for Hillary to drop out, American voters aren't abandoning her.
The libs are beginning to get nervous.
The New York Times sounds a warning in its editorial, "The Low Road to Victory."
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.
...By staying on the attack and not engaging Mr. Obama on the substance of issues like terrorism, the economy and how to organize an orderly exit from Iraq, Mrs. Clinton does more than just turn off voters who don’t like negative campaigning. She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama.
Mr. Obama is not blameless when it comes to the negative and vapid nature of this campaign. He is increasingly rising to Mrs. Clinton’s bait, undercutting his own claims that he is offering a higher more inclusive form of politics. When she criticized his comments about “bitter” voters, Mr. Obama mocked her as an Annie Oakley wannabe. All that does is remind Americans who are on the fence about his relative youth and inexperience.
Yes, the Dems have a real mess on their hands.
I think it's wrong to slam Hillary for being "mostly responsible" for the negativity. She's had to raise issues about Obama that the lib media have failed to raise. It's not Hillary's fault that the media aren't doing their jobs because so many of them have that bizarre infatuation with Obama.
The Times calls for the super delegates to step in, and soon.
...It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs.
The super delegates can wait. Let the voices of the American people be heard.
"Call off the dogs"?
The lib media are the dogs. When they went starry-eyed and started swooning over Obama and turning on Hillary, she had a choice: respond or quit.
She didn't quit.
Furthermore, this editorial fails to acknowledge that Hillary has won over nearly as many of the voters as Obama. The popular vote is very tight.
I think the party elders screwed up when they went with the flavor of the month Obama and allowed themselves to be swept up in Obama-mania.
Obama isn't the savior of the Dems that he seemed to be just a couple of months back. He carries a lot of negative baggage, too. Hillary isn't the only one with problems in that area.
Though Hillary won big and Obama lost big last night, I think the real winner is John McCain.
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