In 2 Battlegrounds, Voters Say, Not Yet

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: March 5, 2008
News Analysis
In 2 Battlegrounds, Voters Say, Not Yet
By PATRICK HEALY

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s victories in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday night not only shook off the vapors of impending defeat, but also showed that — in spite of his delegate lead — Senator Barack Obama was still losing to her in the big states.

Those two states were the battlegrounds where Mr. Obama was going to bury the last opponent to his history-making nomination, finally delivering on his message of hope while dashing the hopes of a Clinton presidential dynasty. Yet then the excited, divided American electorate weighed in once more, throwing Mrs. Clinton the sort of political lifeline that New Hampshire did in early January after her third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.

For Mrs. Clinton, the battle ahead is not so much against Mr. Obama as it is against a Democratic Party establishment that had once been ready to coalesce behind her but has been drifting toward Mr. Obama. The party wants a standard-bearer now to wage the war against the newly minted leader of the Republicans, Senator John McCain, who enjoys a head start with every day that the Democrats lack a nominee of their own.

Clinton advisers said her decisive victory in Ohio and her narrow one in Texas — where exit polls showed her winning the votes of women, whites and Hispanics in an extremely close race — were more than enough to argue that she should go forward to the April 22 primary in the Ohio-esque Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, even if Mr. Obama has more delegates after Tuesday night.

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, appeared likely to accumulate enough delegates from Texas and Ohio (as well as from his victory in Vermont) to strengthen his mathematical edge for the nomination and portray Mrs. Clinton as a spoiler to a unified party. Yet the results on Tuesday also bring fresh questions about his electability in crucial swing states like Ohio that Democrats are eager to carry in the November election....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/us/politics/05assess.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

[LulaMay]

1. Finally, attention is being paid to the significance of the states she is winning. It's worth A LOT

more than a slim margin of delegates, and I think party leaders will know it.

Obama clearly knows it.

[Psychedelic_Tourist]

2. Clinton has ensured ....

A McCain Presidency. Watch millions of "Reagan Democrats" vote for McCain

[AdHocSolver]

3. Clinton's winning a Democratic contest in states that will probably vote Republican...

anyway does note bode well for any Democratic candidate in the general election. Her wins would only be significant if those who voted for Clinton would vote Republican if she were NOT the candidate. If that is the case, then we lost already.

Obama attracts new voters who are not diehard Democratics. That is the significance of Obama's wins in the other states. Clinton's negative ads may have won her more Democrats to vote for her in Ohio and Texas, but they will certainly turn off new voters in a general election if she is the candidate.

While Obama is an unknown quantity, Bill Clinton was a corporate shill (NAFTA, media deregulation, signed off on repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, pushed through so-called "welfare reform", for starters), and it is likely Hillary would be the same. I don't trust Hillary, and her own statements during the debates put her LAST on my preferred list of candidates.

Moreover, Hillary has one significant negative that NONE of the other candidates had. She was demonized for 16 years by the right wing, to the extent that no amount of "washing" could remove the taint that she carries. Just as Pavlov's experiment showed, once the dog's were trained to salivate to the ringing of a bell, it was super difficult to untrain them.

Clinton contends that her being a right-wing target for so many years has "toughened" her up. It is irrelevant how tough she is. It is the reaction of voters to the demonizing that counts, and if many independents as well as Democrats are turned off by her and won't vote for her, she can be tough as nails and still lose the election.

[FedoraLV]

4. Ah, it's the "Big State" spin, again

Alas, we aren't Canada -- or the square acreage of our voting territories would be the only thing we needed to consider when determining a candidate's political viability.

-FedoraLV