Well, that was an exciting 6 weeks or so. . .

And after a hard-fought battle, Hillary has pulled out the win. As everyone has been saying, it will come down to spin. Obama is focusing on the fact that he closed the gap--and in the long-term, that's definitely true:



But Hillary's got the stronger argument, I think. Considering how much money Obama has spent in PA in recent weeks (with an acceleration in the last few days), it's remarkable that Hillary was able to maintain basically the same lead. She'll be able to play the underdog card that she used so effectively post-New Hampshire.

As for the bigger picture? No way in hell she drops out now. Even though her chances of grabbing the primary are negligible--her victory tonight won't get her more than a handful of delegates--I'd be shocked to see her out of the race until after Indiana and North Carolina, which are on May 6th. For the good of the party, hopefully a strong performance from Obama will convince her that the Democrats are going to need unity against McCain.

Hillary Up Big in PA

Looks like Hillary's win in Ohio and "win" in Texas (she got fewer delegates than Obama in the latter) have had the desired effect in the final frontier of Pennsylvania. Though Obama was pulling close at the end of February, polls are showing Hillary with a high double-digit lead, most recently 16 points in a Franklin and Marshall poll. (It is worth pointing out that the poll was taking at the height of the Wright mess, and before Obama's widely-acclaimed race speech.)

But will it matter?

Short answer: Probably not. Giving Hillary solid wins in all of the remaining states (including a 16 point win in PA) and a split in the remaining superdelegates on the CNN delegate counter, she still loses by nearly 100 delegates:




The Wright debacle was probably Hillary's last chance to really slam Obama, and it didn't work very well. She needs a miracle to pull this one out.

Up In The Air

Polls are tightening up across the board. David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo has a quality post summarizing recent movements. Using pollster.com data (a poll of polls), Obama has a .2% lead in Texas, and Clinton is up by 6% in Ohio. An Obama sweep, despite his massive gains in recent weeks, seems extremely unlikely.

And that is significant. If he is able to pull it off, Hillary is going to have trouble justifying staying in the race--but a split gives her an angle to keep on battling. Considering Obama's amazing string of victories--and largely landslide victories, at that--stopping his momentum is no easy task. But her strong comebacks and possible victories against great odds can be spun as a return to viability.

Now, I'm not saying that she'll ride tomorrow to a primary victory; even with a sweep there is virtually no chance that she'll make up enough pledged delegates to put much of a dent in Obama's lead, and superdelegates will almost certainly continue to shift towards Obama. But it does give her an excuse to stay in. Despite the calls from a number of party leaders, I don't see the race ending for another few weeks at least.

Thoughts?

Neck-and-neck in TX

Well, perhaps it's not all over. A couple of new polls show a statistical dead heat in Texas, a major change from a few days ago.

American Research Group, Inc: Clinton 47% Obama 46%
Fort Worth Star-Telegram/McClatchy/MSNBC: Clinton 46% Obama 47%

Zogby still has Obama up by 4 (47%-43%).

Should be an interesting next couple of days. If Hillary can stop the Obamatrain (or maybe rein in the Obamahorse, to continue the metaphor in the subject. . .)by grabbing TX and OH, who knows what will happen.

Obamabias?

Is the media playing favorites in the Democratic primary? Hard to believe, I know. But an article in today's NYT provides evidence that a certain Senator from Illinois is getting better treatment:

In a New York Times/CBS News telephone poll conducted Feb. 20-24 and released Tuesday, nearly half of those respondents who described themselves as voters in Democratic primaries or caucuses said the news media had been “harder” on Mrs. Clinton than other candidates. (Only about 1 in 10 suggested the news media had been harder on Mr. Obama.)

Pretty damning statistics. While I'm not arguing that polls provide absolute truth, I can't say I'm surprised at the survey's findings. As I see it, the basic media coverage of the primary has gone like this:

• Pre-Iowa: Obama is the inspirational underdog against the old guard.
• Post-Iowa: With a big lead in New Hampshire, Obama is the shoe-in.
• Post-NH: Obama back to underdog.
• Post-February: Primary over.

Now, whether that has to do with Hillary's connection to Bill, or her own record, or anything else I'm not sure. Please disagree with me. Thoughts?