As this is being written, it has just been announced that Hillary Clinton has won the Pennsylvania primary. The margin of victory is not yet clear. I congratulate Senator Clinton and her campaign on their win.
What gets me is that the Clinton campaign has been extremely effective in defining what constitutes victory or defeat, what results are important and what are not.
At this point, and this will not change with tonight results, Senator Obama retains a lead among number of state contests won, pledged delegates, and aggregate popular vote. It is widely conceded by all sides that in the remaining contests, Clinton cannot catch up in number of states won or pledged delegates, but she is said to have an outside chance of catching up in aggregate popular vote. This, her campaign claims, is the justification for the remaining uncommitted super delegates to break in favor of Clinton. And the press has largely accepted this notion, as if the Clintons were writing their news copy for them!
The lead in aggregate popular vote as the basis for the super delegate decision basically means that the caucus states do not count at all. Obama won nearly all of the caucus states, and usually by large margins, and he has won the great majority of the delegates in those states. He played the rules of the contest in those states, but according to the Clinton campaign, their votes do not matter.
Senator Clinton also claims that the Michigan and Florida votes should be counted toward the aggregate popular vote. Obama's name was not even on the ballot in Michigan, and it was agreed by all parties in advance of the primaries that the Michigan and Florida votes would not count if those states insisted on violating the party rules by holding their primaries early. If their positions were reversed, and Obama was behind in the delegate count at this time, but had "won" two primaries that were not supposed to be counted (including one where Clinton's name was not even on the ballot), the screams of "Foul play" from the Clinton campaign would be piercing throughout the country.
The Clinton campaign has further suggested that the many so-called "red" states won by Obama also do not matter. Imagine that you are a candidate for congress or governor in a "red" and/or caucus state. Who would you rather have heading your ticket? Somebody who seriously campaigned in your state, or somebody who says in effect, "I lost that state, so it cannot be important."
Ah yes, says the Clinton campaign, but she has won most of the bigger states, which the Democrats will need to win the presidency in November. That statement is true, but a mostly phony argument. Since Senator Clinton has focused nearly all of her energies in that handful of large states, while Obama has run a 50 state campaign, it should be no surprise that Senator Clinton would do better in the handful of states where she has focused most of her time and resources. If Barack Obama is the nominee, does anybody really doubt that he would win California, New York, and Massachusetts in November?
However, the pundits have largely bought into the definitions given to them by the Clinton campaign. I think that many of them will be shocked when Obama eventually gets the Democratic presidential nomination.
