Odds and ends

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!" ;)

Comments

[ResumeMan]

I don't know where Kevin Drum gets the idea that Hillary would have won by the same margin without all the campaigning. Just a few weeks ago she was up by 19.

In contrast you can see Florida, where he didn't campaign at all, and her lead remained constant.

Now, I find all of this stuff a huge waste of money (especially in a primary), but you can't argue that it didn't change anything from before the campaign heated up.

[stan]

The exit polls are a mess, so this is seat of the pants speculation. I wouldn't be surprised, if it turned out there was a bit of migration of Obama and Clinton voters in Pa which netted out around zero. That is, I'm not sure that all the money, campaigning and gaffes resulted in no change among the voters -- just that the voters who changed sides were equal in number.

Over the long haul, the voters who shifted to Hillary are the ones that Obama cannot afford to lose in the general election. The ones who shifted to Barack were his in November in any event.

[Joe Mama]

So all that is wrong with the Clintons is that they're acting like Republicans . . . Sullivan's hate-ons are comical. He just can't help himself. Republicans accused the Clintons of many things in the 90s, but I don't remember elitism, snobbery or Godless atheism being among them (the Man from Hope an elitist snob, are you kidding?!)

[B. Minich]

This is going on waaayyy too long.

STOP THE MUSIC!!!! I WANT TO GET OFF!!!

[stan]

I realize that political junkies and commentators always obsess over the latest poll as if it reflects something relevant, but Jonathon Cohn's piece is particularly clueless. Those in the mushy middle who will decide between McCain and Obama in November are not paying attention now. They don't know much about the candidates and even less about their positions. To expect that Obama's disdain for the white working class should immediately translate into movement in the polls is to demonstrate a monumental failure to understand the voters.

[justin]

One thing I think some people are over looking is that even if Obamas campaign netted him no gain in margin, it did serve as a very effective arms race. I'm not sure this was calculated on his part, but ot seems to have been pretty effective as the Clinton campaign was broke by last night. It makes me wonder if, based on McCains money troubles this isn't an additional arguement Obama can make to super delegates: "I can put so many states into play, McCain will be broke by early fall"

[yea]

lol! clinton claims the popular vote lead. the spin is getting comicle at this point.

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/23/131539/929/684/501732

[Andrew]

I just wrote a big long post about how Cohn, Drum, Kaus, and Stein are all idiots, while Morris is dead-on (from a pragmatic standpoint), and Sullivan is simply a whiny bitch. But now it's lost, and I'm too tired to re-type everything. Suffice it to say, Cohn hasn't a clue about how to read polls, nor does he understand which kinds of polls give you what data, while Stein, Drum, and Kaus are all effectively whistling past the graveyard because yesterday's results are providing a ton of actionable data about Obama's true electability. From a horse-race POV, Morris is right that there's almost no way HRC can win the nomination -- but that's been true for the last month, and everyone knew that nothing that happened yesterday was going to seriously alter that fact. But primaries are more than just horse races, and Obama's performance yesterday should raise a ton of concerns for Democrats who think he's more electable than HRC.