Clinton “Wins” Pennsylvania

Hillary Clinton earned a trip to the next round of the presidential tournament, I mean election. Clinton managed to hold on to a victory in a highly-contested race despite being outspent 2-1.

The win keeps her in the race, but the fact remains that each day that passes makes it less likely that Clinton will pull out an out-right victory. Clinton now has to win each of the remaining contests by even larger margins. It doesn’t appear to me that she can reach 70% of the vote in the remaining states. Even in her strongest states, Clinton has not been able to able to reach that threshold.

Though Pennsylvania was certainly a win, let’s not lose sight of a few key points. There was little change in the actual delegate count. Clinton had only very minimal gains in delegates, which means that time is running out and she has to win the remaining states by HUGE margins.

It’s also interesting to note that many pundits have charachterized her win as “surviving” to the next state. It doesn’t mean much, but it is a very interesting charachterization.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, the Clinton victory was a much-needed victory to be sure, but there is an important point to remember. She’s SUPPOSED to win Pennsylvania. She had a huge double digit lead and Obama was able to cut that lead in half. The reason that is so important is because Pennsylvania is an area that Hillary Clinton should be able to win. It’s her area of strength. They are the old-school traditional blue collar Democrats. Even though that is here traditional strength, she still escaped with only a modest victory. She attracted the “traditional” Democrats and Obama has attracted new Democrats and independents.

That makes Obama the more electable. The traditional Democrats can and will support the nominee. What the party needs is someone who can win not only the traditional Democrats, but someone who can win the independents and bring in new blood to the party.

I am a little bothered by the chatter among the pundits about how this win means that Hillary now has an “argument” she can make to the super delegates. Seems to me that Hillary needs to do more than bank on an “argument” to win the nomination and should be focusing on qualifications, campaign performance, and what the hell happened to her experience argument.

No matter how you slice it, the only way she wins is by a backroom deal in which the candidate with the most votes and most delegates gets screwed over. 

It’s time for people, locally here in El Paso and nationally, to stop trying to divide, distract, and distort the important issues of the campaign!