Headlines, North America

POLITICS-US: Primary Win Keeps Clinton Alive

Ali Gharib

WASHINGTON, Apr 23 2008 (IPS) - The six weeks since the last actual vote was cast in the battle for the Democratic nomination have been filled with speculation, but Tuesday’s primary in Pennsylvania finally settled something: this election is far from over.

Coming off of several bad weeks for her rival, Sen. Barack Obama, and backed nearly unanimously by Pennsylvania’s vaunted Democratic machine, Sen. Hillary Clinton stayed alive in the race with her 10-point victory in the primary held across the crucial general election battlefield state.

Her victory ensures that the battle will continue into early June when the last primary votes are cast, and may even last right up until the late August Democratic convention in Denver, Colorado.

The spectre of a protracted campaign worries many Democrats who fear that a divided party will not fare well this autumn against presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain.

More immediately worrisome to Obama supporters, for the first time Clinton exposed some chinks in her rival’s armour by raising doubts about his electability in November and, amid his back-pedaling and gaffes, presented herself as a strong alternative who can withstand the scrutiny of a long campaign.

“Today, here in Pennsylvania, you made your voices heard. And, because of you, the tide is turning,” Clinton told cheering supporters during her victory speech in Philadelphia. “Now, I might stumble and I might get knocked down, but as long as you’ll stand with me, I will always get right back up.”

Clinton contends that she has been vetted by 16 years in the political limelight, during which the Republican attack machine has been unable to bring her down.

In a network televised debate last week, Obama seemed annoyed with repeated questions rehashing controversies from the past few months. The candidate, his surrogates and supporters have since derided the moderators for failing to address the issues, but, nonetheless, the debate was considered a victory for Clinton.

Clinton responded to Obama’s criticism of the debate by saying that the Republicans will be even harsher in the general election and quoted President Harry Truman; “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

But despite his troubles, Obama has continued to set records in fundraising – raising over 40 million dollars last month. Clinton’s latest financial disclosures revealed her campaign to be in the red going into April, but she did see a donation boom immediately after her victory Tuesday night.

Furthermore, Obama’s edge seems to have a limited effect. Although he poured more than twice as much money into the Pennsylvania race, the 10-point margin marked a decisive victory for Clinton.

“The very fact that he can’t shake her off has become her best argument against him. ‘Why can’t he close the deal?’ Hillary taunted at a polling place on Tuesday,” wrote Maureen Dowd in her New York Times column. “Despite all his incandescent gifts, Obama has missed several opportunities to smash the ball over the net and end the game. Again and again, he has seemed stuck at deuce. He complains about the politics of scoring points, but to win, you’ve got to score points.”

Indeed, Clinton seems to be the one scoring points of late, though it is not clear if they will be enough to push her into the nomination.

Because few contests remain, Clinton would have to win by absurd margins to take the lead in the pledged delegate count decided directly by the Democratic primaries and caucuses.

Instead, her camp has focused on wooing Democratic “superdelegates” – party elites and elected officials – and asking them to overturn the pledged delegates at the convention and throw the nomination to Clinton.

But that may require more than questioning Obama’s electability against McCain. In their 24-year history, the superdelegates have never overturned the will of the voters.

Consistent with its strategy since Obama took a significant pledged delegate lead, the Clinton camp has sought to reframe the superdelegate issue in terms of the popular vote. They contend that if she can win that criterion, it provides the superdelegates with the out to catapult her to the nomination.

“By the time we finish this process, Hillary Clinton will move ahead in the popular vote,” Clinton campaign chairman Terry MacAuliffe told MSNBC after the network had called the Pennsylvania primary for Clinton.

Clinton led by more than 200,000 votes in Pennsylvania but remains about half a million votes behind Obama in popular vote totals, according to the website Real Clear Politics. (Though if the results of the nullified Florida primary are counted, Obama’s lead is a mere 200,000 votes.)

While MacAuliffe and the Clinton camp seem confident, Obama leads the polls in several of the remaining contests. Significant swings in vote totals will be difficult to attain with mostly smaller states remaining in the deeply divided electorate.

The divisions were put on display by exit polling in the Tuesday’s race. A CNN poll showed that just over half of all voters in Pennsylvania would only be satisfied if their candidate wins the nomination.

Those divides have many Democrats still calling for Clinton to withdraw from the race – a highly unlikely scenario given her success – or at least to tone down her negative rhetoric.

While noting that Obama responded negatively to Clinton’s attacks, the New York Times published an editorial on Wednesday, titled “The Low Road to Victory”, that called for the superdelegates to step in and force Clinton to ease her attacks.

“Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work,” wrote the editorial board of the Times. “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.”