By Brendan Loy
Correction: Hillary Clinton may not have won by double digits, after all. Her actual margin rounds to either 8%, 9%,or 10%, depending on whom you believe. (Mark Halperin and Josh Marshall have more.)
Meanwhile, TNR's Jonathan Cohn argues that the general-election polling indicates there is "no reason to panic." He also speculates that 45% may be McCain's "ceiling."
Also at TNR, Josh Patashnik rebuts the idea that "Obama's likely nomination is somehow
illegitimate unless he wins over Hillary's demographic groups--even if
his coalition is a narrow majority" with a basketball analogy (my apologies in advance to Jay):
If a basketball team has held a lead of, say,
six or seven points for the entire second half, the fact that the lead
isn't getting any bigger as the clock ticks below a minute left doesn't
mean that the team is any less likely to win. On the contrary, it makes
the "frontrunner's" small lead nearly insurmountable, absent some
dreadful foul shooting. Then again, those urging Hillary to drop out
might want to ask John Calipari what he thinks of the idea.
Heh.
Elsewhere on the Internets, the Huffington Post's Sam Stein points out that Obama actually did cut into Hillary's demographics -- just not enough. Of course, that's according to the exit polls, and I think Mickey Kaus has a point when he writes, "If the exit polls are this unreliable for press'
result-predicting purposes, why aren't they also unreliable for all the
scholarly purposes they are supposedly put to? Garbage is garbage, no?" I suppose the answer is that they're retroactively "weighted" once the real results are known, but that has to be a somewhat imprecise process. I'm skeptical.
Kevin Drum says Hillary "seems to have won by roughly the same margin she would have won by
even if she and Barack Obama hadn't just spent $40 million there. In other words, the campaign was not only pointless, but pointless and wildly expensive. On to North Carolina!"
Mark Ambinder notes that Clinton winning the pledged delegate count is now "more than next to impossible." It's well and truly impossible. Dick Morris says that means last night's victory is "too little, too late" for Hillary: "The Democratic superdelegates aren't about to risk a massive and
sanguinary civil war by taking the nomination away from the candidate
who won more elected delegates. If they ever tried it, we'd see a
repeat of the demonstrations that smashed the 1968 Chicago convention
and ruined Hubert Humphrey's chances of victory."
John Cole says "Hillary's vanity campaign will continue on, trailing in delegates,
trailing in the popular vote, trailing in enthusiasm and money, but not
lacking in the firm resolve that only Hillary can save us all from our
selves." (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)
Speaking of Sullivan, he writes:
It's worth recalling what this primary came to be about, because of
a self-conscious decision by the Clintons to adopt the tactics and
politics of the people who persecuted and hounded them in the 1990s. It
was indeed in the end about smearing and labeling Obama as a far-left,
atheist, elite, pansy Godless snob fraud. That was almost all it came
to be about. It was the Clintons' core message and core belief. And if
anywhere would have proved its salience, it would surely have been
beleaguered and depressed central and western Pennsylvania; and it
would surely have worked with white ethnic voters over 50.
It did work, it seems to me. It will work, to some extent. It's
valid in the sense that Rove is not stupid. But it works less and less
the younger the vote is; and it is obviously losing some of its
divisive salience even among the older generation. It is fading as a
tool. Used by Democrats, legitimized by Democrats, embraced by
Democrats, the Rove-Atwater gambits have been paid the highest
compliment by the Clintons these past few weeks. But a single digit win
against a young black man in a polarized race suggests that this
compliment was past its sell-by date. It was an act of desperation, and
one last grab back to the past. It didn't quite do what it was supposed
to do. Nearly, but not quite.
And the New York Times, which endorsed Clinton back in the day, echoes Sully by lambasting her for taking the "low road to victory" in Pennsylvania: "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."
Last but not least, Ron Paul lives! Say it with me, Paultards: "WE'RE #2! WE'RE #2!" ;)
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