Obama fights for every vote to close on Clinton
Only a victory in Pennsylvania in double figures will give Hillary any chance of eating into Obama's delegate lead in the Democratic primary, and the signs at the moment are not good.
I personally expect Hillary to win Pennsylvania but, if I'm honest, it's going to be like the Battle of the Bulge; the last time the Germans ever put the allies under any pressure before their inevitable defeat. Hillary will, I suspect, have her final moment in the sun before her unavoidable collapse. The numbers simply aren't there for her and they haven't been there since March 5th when she failed to win Texas and Ohio by sufficient numbers to have any impact on the final outcome of this race. Since then she's been pointlessly slugging it out with the probable Democratic nominee, essentially doing John McCain's work for him.Obama has emerged ahead of Clinton in a national poll of Democratic voters about the nomination, ahead of both Clinton and Republican rival John McCain in national presidential polls and surveys of the candidates' 'honesty and favourability', while gaining on her in Pennsylvania itself.
Clinton is still expected to win the state, but most polls there now have her at most five per cent ahead, with some predicting a photo-finish and one a long-shot Obama victory.
While Obama is drawing crowds to big events, his campaign team are scrabbling for undecided voters in white rural areas and small towns, until recent weeks solid 'Hillary country'. Their goal is to shrink Clinton's margin of victory to the point where it looks humiliating, even terminal. 'If we're going to keep this in single digits, we've got to mine every vote we can,' said Sean Smith, a spokesman for the Obama campaign.It's impossible to avoid the feeling that we are in the final days of this competition, with Howard Dean calling for Super Delegates to make up their minds sooner rather than later, essentially demanding that they hand Obama the crown before Hillary does any more damage.
And the damage Hillary has done will sully the Clinton brand for a long time.
'Clinton has broken an unwritten rule of politics, which is that you do not disadvantage a member of your own party and side with your opponents,' said Gary Hart, a former Democratic presidential candidate, who has endorsed Obama. Despite answering 'Yes, yes, yes' when asked if Obama was fit for the presidency during their debate last week, Clinton has boosted McCain's credibility by praising his qualifications to become commander-in-chief.
'Hillary Clinton has philosophical differences with McCain, far-right-wingers Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh and the conservative talking heads on Fox TV,' Washington Post columnist Colbert King wrote yesterday. 'But they and Clinton have a common enemy: Obama. Their allegiance to the goal of bringing him down makes them compatriots.
Clinton and her supporters have shown glee at each and every Obama stumble and have often acted as if they have forgotten that we are all on the same side. Their behaviour has often been simply disgraceful, with many of Hillary's supporters at place's like Taylor Marsh's website threatening not to vote Democrat unless Hillary was the nominee.
This kind of behaviour was in many ways inspired by the stances taken by Clinton herself, when she threatened to take the vote all the way to the floor of the convention if she was not given what she wanted.
Given the utter hopelessness of her cause, it's been very hard to work out what exactly Hillary was up to, other than hoping against hope that some scandal might blow along and destroy Obama's campaign for her.
The truth is that, no matter what Hillary has thrown at him, Obama has always appeared to be the better candidate, a fact that Hillary and her supporters find impossible to believe.
Drawing shrieks of laughter from a crowd in Raleigh, as he dived south briefly from Pennsylvania for an event ahead of the North Carolina primary on 6 May, Obama joked about the debate. He bit his lip, gave one of his wide, electric grins, and mimed a hand stabbing with a dagger, saying: 'Hillary looked in her element. Y'know, that's her right, to twist the knife a little bit.'
Then he mimed brushing dirt off each shoulder, a move that Jay-Z, one of his musical heroes, uses to dismiss the negative sentiments of anyone ill-disposed towards him or what he stands for. The crowd went wild and commentators declared it a seminal moment in the campaign, combining his charisma, feel for popular culture, youth and resilience.
The simple truth is that Obama has fought a better campaign than that of the formidable Clinton machine, and his ability to move and inspire crowds has left Hillary floundering, searching for insults to counter his incredible rhetoric and popular appeal.
It will soon be time for her to step to one side and concede the inevitable. She has lost to the better candidate.
Click title for full article.
No comments:
Post a Comment