Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

After six weeks of hype nothing much happened on Tuesday. As most predicted, Clinton won but Obama reduced her lead from earlier polls. While Clinton won in Pennsylvania, the result makes Obama’s nomination a little more certain, and the race will continue with Clinton still remaining in the race.

Clinton will pick up a slightly higher number of delegates than Obama but it won’t have any effect on the race as only a total blow out would have helped. Pennsylvania’s demographics were among the best for Clinton of all the states remaining. If she couldn’t win big in Pennsylvania she won’t be able to do so anywhere else. To eliminate Obama’s lead among pledged delegates she now needs to pick up near 80% of the vote in all the remaining states, which is virtually impossible. Clinton’s only hope is that the superdelegates vote for her over Obama, but far more have superdelegates have committed to Obama than Clinton in the past couple of months.

The spin provided a few moments of amusement. While the Obama camp explained how a Clinton victory wouldn’t change the dynamics of the race, the Clinton camp claimed that even a one point victory would still be a victory. While true, this sure contradicts all the times they claimed that Obama’s victories didn’t count, even when he won by far larger margins than Clinton won in Pennsylvania. Clinton surrogates both argued that it is the popular vote and not delegates which matter, but also declined to agree that Clinton loses if she fails to take the lead in the popular vote. Everyone knows they will come up with yet another argument if unable to take the lead in the popular vote. Hillary believes she is entitled to the nomination and nothing else matters.