LAST night, Pennsylvanians went for the fighter, not the uniter.
Despite Barack Obama‘s claims that he would “do better than expected,” Hillary Rodham Clinton overwhelmed him in the Keystone State.
How far we’ve come: Clinton has morphed into the scrappy underdog, battered daily by a media that has fallen under her opponent’s spell and outspent by massive margins as she rebuffs nearly daily calls for her to drop out.
Pundits, superdelegates and party poohbahs lament that this campaign must end. But the voters don’t see it that way.
Given the opportunity to hand Obama the knockout punch he needs so badly, the voters demurred.
Top Obama advisers yesterday visited reporters on the campaign plane wearing T-shirts reading, “Stop the Drama, Vote Obama.”
This popular sentiment suggests that Obama is being kept from the nomination by outside forces.
In fact, he is the one unable to overtake his opponent. The media should put down the Obama Kool-Aid and ask why. The normal rules of political psychology are that voters like to go with the winner.
Once a candidate catches fire and is treated as the presumed winner, voters tend to begin to fall in line. Not so in this primary.
A trend in this cycle has been the consistency of late deciders going for Clinton. Pennsylvania was no different. She won voters who made up their mind in the last day by 18 points and voters who made up their mind in the last three days by 16 points.
This suggests trepidation about Obama, despite his enormous advantages with money, media support, front-runner status, delegate lead and an opponent with high negatives.
And the group showing the most reluctance to join his side are those very people he called “bitter” at that infamous San Francisco gathering: working-class whites. They also happen to make up the bulk of the general electorate.
Clinton has managed to connect with this group throughout the campaign.
In an MSNBC/McClatchy/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette poll released last week Clinton beat Obama 54-33 percent among bowlers and 53-28 percent among gun owners.
Unlike other states where Clinton had been favored, Obama did not concede Pennsylvania. He played to win, barraging voters with ads, and contrary to the media meme, went plenty negative on Clinton.
Pundits will argue that Clinton should have won this state by 20 points because it’s custom-made for her. This is nonsense.
Clinton has been fighting against enormous headwinds and faced a daunting economic disadvantage. Obama spent an astounding $11 million to her $5 million in Pennsylvania.
Her obituary is written nearly daily. Clinton still faces an almost insurmountable task: overtaking Obama in delegates. But last night she more than earned her place in this race.