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 Americas & Beyond | April 2008 
Clinton Clearly Outduels Obama in Pennsylvania
 Patrick Healy - NYTimes
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| | Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton celebrating her Pennsylvania primary victory on Tuesday night in Philadelphia with her daughter, Chelsea. (Ozier Muhammad/New York Times) | | |
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton scored a decisive victory over Senator Barack Obama on Tuesday in the Pennsylvania primary, giving her candidacy a critical boost as she struggles to raise money and persuade party leaders to let the Democratic nominating fight go on.
If Mrs. Clinton did not emerge from the bruising six-week campaign with a race-turning landslide — she still trails Mr. Obama in the popular vote and the delegate count — her victory nonetheless gives her a strong rationale for continuing her candidacy in spite of those Democrats who would prefer to coalesce around Mr. Obama.
Indeed, in her victory speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, Mrs. Clinton used the words “fight,” “fighter” and “fighting” repeatedly — not only to promise financially struggling Americans that she would protect them, but also to convey that she had the resolve and confidence to stay in the race.
As for Mr. Obama, the loss only hardened the determination of his advisers to overwhelm Mrs. Clinton’s campaign with his substantial financial advantage — he took in $42 million in March to her $21 million — and with the cold calculus that he is still solidly ahead in their pursuit of the 2,025 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. In his concession speech, he kept the focus on the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, a subject Mrs. Clinton avoided in her address.
Incomplete returns from Pennsylvania showed Mrs. Clinton leading 55 percent to 45 percent, with her victory propelled by her strong performance among women, older voters and less affluent and less educated voters; among white union members with no college education, she won almost three-quarters of the vote, polling showed.
Even as she celebrated, Mrs. Clinton nodded to the stiff challenges ahead for her campaign, not the least of them Mr. Obama’s financial advantage. In her speech, she implored her supporters to log onto her fund-raising Web site and “and show your support tonight because the future of this campaign is in your hands.” (Campaign officials said late Tuesday that they were having their best night ever in fund-raising online, bringing in $2.5 million in less than four hours.)
And she also defiantly acknowledged the Democrats and the pundits who have called on her to end her candidacy.
“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,” Mrs. Clinton said to fervent cheers and applause at her victory party, where she was joined by former President Bill Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, as well as two key supporters in the state, Gov. Edward G. Rendell and Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia.
While Mrs. Clinton repeatedly sounded economically populist notes in her speech, Mr. Obama touched on those themes but was also more expansive in his remarks on Tuesday night, sharply criticizing Mr. McCain, as offering “more of the same” of President Bush’s policies. Mr. Obama left Pennsylvania late Tuesday to make his remarks in Indiana, which holds its primary on May 6, along with North Carolina.
Returning to his long-standing themes of unity and hope, Mr. Obama said: “We can continue to slice and dice this country into red states and blue states. We can exploit the divisions that exist in our country for pure political gain. Or this time, we can build on the movement we’ve started in this campaign.”
Yet Mr. Obama also faces challenges ahead: According to Republican Party officials, party members in North Carolina — which holds its primary on May 6 — are considering running an advertisement against Mr. Obama that highlights his ties to controversial figures like his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. That ad could have the effect of adding a racially divisive element to that Southern state’s primary.
The Indiana primary, on the same day, poses another make-or-break moment for Mrs. Clinton, according to several of her advisers, who said they would urge her to quit the race if she lost that state. Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Clinton and their allies have campaigned frequently in Indiana in recent weeks, and she has some important endorsements, including support from Senator Evan Bayh, the state’s former governor.
“She has to win Pennsylvania and Indiana — pretty much everyone in the campaign agrees on that,” said one senior Clinton adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the campaign’s electoral expectations.
The Pennsylvania race turned into a mammoth political battle in recent days, with both candidates pouring millions of dollars into television advertising — much of it negative — and criticizing each other relentlessly on the campaign trail. Mrs. Clinton questioned Mr. Obama’s electability and attacked him for saying that struggling Americans were “bitter,” while Mr. Obama tried to shave her lead in opinion polls.
Mrs. Clinton faces major challenges: her campaign is essentially out of money, with unpaid bills piling up, and she faces growing frustration among some Democratic officials who would prefer her to end her campaign in recognition of Mr. Obama’s lead in the overall popular vote of the primaries and caucuses so far, as well as his continuing edge toward amassing the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the nomination. And Tuesday’s night’s results likely did little to cut into his edge on that front.
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign spent Tuesday planning a fresh fundraising drive to trying to capitalize on her performance in Pennsylvania, while other aides mapped out political strategy and staff movement to Indiana and North Carolina.
Clinton advisers said they realized they had tough challenges ahead. Chief among them, besides paying bills and financing new advertising, was persuading impatient Democratic superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials — to remain neutral in the contest and let the remaining primaries play out through early June.
The Pennsylvania Democrats who cast their ballots in Tuesday’s primary did so with the economy weighing heavily on their minds, according to surveys of voters leaving polling places. Those surveys showed that more than half the voters questioned believe that the worsening state of the American economy is the most important issue confronting the country, with about 90 percent saying the United States has already slipped into a recession.
Half of those polled also said that they were looking for a candidate who could bring about change, which has been the main theme of Mr. Obama’s campaign. Mr. Obama leads in delegates, but has consistently trailed Mrs. Clinton in polls taken in Pennsylvania, though the gap had been closing in recent days.
About one-quarter of those who participated in the exit polling, conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for five television networks and The Associated Press, endorsed the idea that experience, which Mrs. Clinton has emphasized in her campaign, is the most important quality to be sought in a candidate. For the polling, the margin of sampling error in the sample of 40 precincts across the state was plus or minus four percentage points.
Both candidates performed strongly among the same constituencies that have supported them in other primary states. Mr. Obama was backed overwhelmingly by black voters and also scored well among voters younger than 45 and college graduates, the results show. Trailing Mr. Obama over all in both the national popular vote and in the competition for delegates, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said Tuesday that they were girding for a tough spring.
Most difficult would be amassing enough delegates to overcome Mr. Obama’s lead on that front — he now has about 150 more delegates over all. His advisers say that in the coming days, they also plan to roll out additional Obama endorsements from superdelegates, the party leaders and elected officials who have an automatic vote in deciding the nomination and the discretion to choose a candidate.
Clinton advisers said they were already picking states, cities and towns to dispatch staff members and volunteers from Pennsylvania, and budgeting for television advertising. They are also planning a busy travel schedule for the Clintons, their daughter and an army of surrogates; they are expected to focus heavily on Indiana, and to a lesser extent in North Carolina, where Mr. Obama is widely seen as strongly positioned.
A greater concern in the shorter term for Mrs. Clinton is fundraising: Her campaign faces a cash squeeze as unpaid bills mount and she spends more money than she is taking in, according to new campaign finance filings.
The Pennsylvania race was volatile into its final hours. Mrs. Clinton, for instance, surprised some Democrats with a remark about Iran on ABC on Tuesday, when she broke with her practice of avoiding hypothetical questions and commented on a situation in which Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” she said. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” |
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