PHILADELPHIA, April 22 -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won the Pennsylvania presidential primary decisively on Tuesday night, running up a 10-percentage-point victory that bolstered her case for staying in the race for the Democratic nomination.
Sen. Barack Obama played down a defeat that did not substantially reduce his delegate lead, but the outcome only further muddled a race that has stretched on for nearly four months and has sharply divided the party. The two will meet again in primaries in Indiana and North Carolina on May 6.
An estimated 2 million Democrats voted, nearly triple the number who turned out in the past two presidential primaries in the state. Clinton ran up big margins with her core constituencies, winning white voters with incomes under $50,000 by 32 points, voters over age 65 by 26 percent, and Catholic voters by 38 percent -- more than countering Obama's strong showing among black voters and higher-income whites in Philadelphia and its suburbs. She signaled that despite her dramatic financial disadvantage, she has no intention of getting out before the last votes are cast on June 3.
"It's a long road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and it runs right through the heart of Pennsylvania," Clinton said at a raucous post-election rally in Philadelphia. After a campaign that went on for more than a month and a half in the Keystone State, she said: "You listened, and today, you chose."
"Some people counted me out and said to drop out. But the American people don't quit, and they deserve a president who doesn't quit, either," she said.
At this point I think Hillary knows that winning the nomination is a long shot. Not that she'll drop out or fail to give it her best effort, but she knows that it will probably be Barack Obama who will face John McCain in November.
Sen. Barack Obama played down a defeat that did not substantially reduce his delegate lead, but the outcome only further muddled a race that has stretched on for nearly four months and has sharply divided the party. The two will meet again in primaries in Indiana and North Carolina on May 6.
An estimated 2 million Democrats voted, nearly triple the number who turned out in the past two presidential primaries in the state. Clinton ran up big margins with her core constituencies, winning white voters with incomes under $50,000 by 32 points, voters over age 65 by 26 percent, and Catholic voters by 38 percent -- more than countering Obama's strong showing among black voters and higher-income whites in Philadelphia and its suburbs. She signaled that despite her dramatic financial disadvantage, she has no intention of getting out before the last votes are cast on June 3.
"It's a long road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and it runs right through the heart of Pennsylvania," Clinton said at a raucous post-election rally in Philadelphia. After a campaign that went on for more than a month and a half in the Keystone State, she said: "You listened, and today, you chose."
"Some people counted me out and said to drop out. But the American people don't quit, and they deserve a president who doesn't quit, either," she said.
At this point I think Hillary knows that winning the nomination is a long shot. Not that she'll drop out or fail to give it her best effort, but she knows that it will probably be Barack Obama who will face John McCain in November.
This is why she is going to stay in the race and pound Obama with everything she has and try to make him "lower himself" by going negative on her (evidence that she is being successful here). This will greatly improve the chances that John McCain will be elected which will give Hillary another shot at the presidency in 2012.
Hillary knows that the next four years are going to be difficult ones. We are almost certainly entering a recession which the sitting president will be blamed for, however unfairly. Gas prices are only going to keep trending upward and the global warming legislation that McCain is supporting will only make both the recession and the surging gas prices worse, probably a great deal worse.
McCain is going to have a Democrat congress to contend with and in the Senate it is unlikely that the conservative Republicans will even be able to sustain a filibuster (remember that there are enough Olympia Snow, Arlen Specter type RINOS to give Democrats their margin - if they even need it). This means that McCain will be able to achieve nothing that does not bear the stamp of approval of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
Since presidents define success in office as getting legislation passed and since McCain is already completely comfortable working with left-wingers to move the left-wing agenda there is no credible reason to assume anything other than that McCain will govern as far to the left as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would have. Especially when we factor in how much McCain loves being praised by the left-wing mainstream media and how much he loves angering the conservative alternate media.
Given the certain makeup of the next congress nothing can save the Bush tax cuts and nothing can be done to put conservative jurists on the Supreme Court. Hillary knows all of this and she is willing to bide her time until 2012 when the nation will be far more sick of McCain than they ever were of anyone named Bush. The Republican party will be so fractured and demoralized after four years of unremitting attacks from the Democrats, from the mainstream media and from "their own" president that they will not be able to heal themselves and reunify for the next general election.
After seeing Obama go down in flames the Democrat party will publicly say that it was only because the nation is still too racist to elect a black man, however behind the scenes they will wish they had nominated Hillary. They will remember her as the candidate that could have won if only she had been given the chance and in the next presidential primaries she will have the coronation that she wanted to have this time around.
So just remember. McCain in 2008 means economic ruin for the next four years then Hillary in 2012. Obama in 2008 means horrible misgovernment for 2 years until a Republican congress starts to box him in (like they did for Clinton) and then a real Republican in 2012.
Chose however you want but if you pick McCain I don't want to hear one damned word of complaint about anything that happens because you are being well warned and you will have no excuse.
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