Sophisticated Nuance In Pennsylvania
BEARING the wounds from a hurled second-hand kitchen sink - the Clinton campaign, after all, is hugely broke - a bitter Barack Obama has conceded defeat in Pennsylvania. His official spin on the outcome is to say "they thought we'd be blown out." That may be a concession speech cliche when the margin of defeat isn't catastrophic but Hillary Clinton's once 20 point lead was indeed whittled away. Whether that advantage was ever actual or merely a perception-driven anomaly is one for the psephologists. (Interestingly, Kevin Rudd's Labor Party had that same lead in the months before last years Federal election but only managed a relatively narrow victory on the day). In the end, Senator Clinton prevailed by about ten percent of votes, as she did in New Jersey and Ohio. Yes, Senator Obama can justifiably claim to be the Comeback Kid who didn't quite come back. And Senator Clinton can say - as football coaches do to cherry-picking losers - 'read about it in tomorrow's papers.' That is to say: a win is a win. But is it?
The ABC News Polling Unit reports that 68 percent of Pennsylvania voters said the victor attacked Barack Obama unfairly. Another such poll found that only slightly more than half of voters consider Hillary Clinton trustworthy. It says nothing positive about either candidate - certainly not victim, Senator Obama - that an untrustworthy pit bull triumphed. What must the voters think of him? The delegate count doesn't support an often-heard view of Obama's present status - that for all intents and purposes he's home, hosed and uninterruptedly enjoying an arugula-sprinkled waffle. He might have a comfortable margin but further victories from Mrs Clinton could instigate enough panic among power-brokers to make the Denver Convention actually deliberative. The aloof wunderkind whose supporters want Clinton to quit might become vulnerable to her boilerplate but effective retort: "But the American people don't quit. And they deserve a president who doesn't quit, either." Some voters may start admiring that.
That Pennsylvania was as much shared loss as Clintonian triumph is inadvertently confirmed by a sad New York Times. Having endorsed Hillary Clinton in January it is now so horrendously embarrassed by the mud-wrestling that passes for discourse on its side of politics that its editors have abandoned sanguineness - the NYT leader concerned is entitled "The Low Road to Victory" - and have apparently begun clinging to bitterness: "The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it." The dispirited whine - imitating dotty sportscaster Keith Olbermann - even argues Senator Clinton's Pearl Harbor and Osama bin laden ads were "torn right from Karl Rove's playbook." Actually, those tactics were pioneered by the father of this woman in the 1960 election. He lied about the "missile gap." Didn't do his prospects any harm.
The ABC News Polling Unit reports that 68 percent of Pennsylvania voters said the victor attacked Barack Obama unfairly. Another such poll found that only slightly more than half of voters consider Hillary Clinton trustworthy. It says nothing positive about either candidate - certainly not victim, Senator Obama - that an untrustworthy pit bull triumphed. What must the voters think of him? The delegate count doesn't support an often-heard view of Obama's present status - that for all intents and purposes he's home, hosed and uninterruptedly enjoying an arugula-sprinkled waffle. He might have a comfortable margin but further victories from Mrs Clinton could instigate enough panic among power-brokers to make the Denver Convention actually deliberative. The aloof wunderkind whose supporters want Clinton to quit might become vulnerable to her boilerplate but effective retort: "But the American people don't quit. And they deserve a president who doesn't quit, either." Some voters may start admiring that.
That Pennsylvania was as much shared loss as Clintonian triumph is inadvertently confirmed by a sad New York Times. Having endorsed Hillary Clinton in January it is now so horrendously embarrassed by the mud-wrestling that passes for discourse on its side of politics that its editors have abandoned sanguineness - the NYT leader concerned is entitled "The Low Road to Victory" - and have apparently begun clinging to bitterness: "The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it." The dispirited whine - imitating dotty sportscaster Keith Olbermann - even argues Senator Clinton's Pearl Harbor and Osama bin laden ads were "torn right from Karl Rove's playbook." Actually, those tactics were pioneered by the father of this woman in the 1960 election. He lied about the "missile gap." Didn't do his prospects any harm.
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