Well, I've been gleefully watching my Obama "donate" thermometer creeping ever-closer to my goal of $1000 -- with $275 coming in tonight alone -- but I can't keep my eyes open anymore. Maybe when I wake up in the morning I'll have gotten that last $105.
The Pennsylvania elections site hasn't finally updated in like after more than an hour, so I'm signing off with 98.91 99.07 percent of precincts reporting and Clinton's lead at 8.6 8.5 percent, which will net her only around 10 delegates.
Of course, I don't know what will happen when that last 1.02 0.93 percent of the votes are counted. Maybe she'll race all the way back up to the 11 percent her internal polling told her she'd get, or the 20+ percent she had a few weeks ago.
Oh wait. That's mathematically impossible.
Maybe I'll quote the editorial board of the New York Times, which seems to be having buyer's remorse on their earlier endorsement of Clinton, and has this to say in tomorrow's edition:
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.
On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.
If that was supposed to bolster Mrs. Clinton’s argument that she is the better prepared to be president in a dangerous world, she sent the opposite message on Tuesday morning by declaring in an interview on ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president: “We would be able to totally obliterate them.”
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.
Or maybe I'll quote Maureen Dowd from tomorrow's New York Times:
“The time has come. The time has come. The time is now. Just go. ... I don’t care how. You can go by foot. You can go by cow. Hillary R. Clinton, will you please go now! You can go on skates. You can go on skis. ... You can go in an old blue shoe.
Just go, go, GO!”
What she said.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is losing and has been since Super Tuesday. Yes, she has had a few victories since then but the fundamental facts remain the same: she is losing and furthermore is in debt and to gain any traction she has to go increasingly negative and do perhaps irreparable damage to the DNC. Her continuation benefits two people: John McCain in the fall and Sen. Clinton in 2012 (be damned Sen. Obama and Democratic Party).
Sen. Clinton is trying to redefine 'win' and to change the rules of the DNC at the end of the game. So lets play by the DNC rather than Clinton-rules. Here are the facts not CNN or FoxNews spin:
1. Sen. Barack Obama STILLs has more pledged delegates; 2. Sen. Obama still has won more states (30-14); 3. Sen. Obama still leads in the popular vote; 4. Sen Obama has closed the gap in superdelegates (and now ADD Oklahoma Governor); Hillary leads by 23. Since Super Tuesday over 80 have joined Sen. Obama and only 5 or 6 have joined Sen. Clinton. 5. Sen Obama and has proven himself to be a fundraising genius.
6. On top of all of that, he has inspired a new generation of democratic voters and reconfigured the electoral and electorate maps.
Sen. Obama is well on his way to securing the nomination for the Democratic Party, despite the spin that only big states or late voting states should count and trump all other states. The NYT's has buyer's remorse. Chris Matthews on msnbc.com said it best last evening: the cable media by their framing and spin are trying to manufacture the belief (he called it delusional) that Sen. Clinton can win. What I have suggested below is, to quote the Clintons, a move beyond Billary-fantasy and toward a "reality-check".
Dowd is right: President and Sen. Clinton GO,GO, GO, quickly. Please!
Posted by: Mel | 23 April 2008 at 12:51 PM