Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Post-Pennsylvania Primary Political Parsing!

You know you love alliteration.

Yes, Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary by a margin of 10%, gained 12 delegates on Barack Obama, and is now only behind by 133, according to CNN's estimates. But keep these three things in mind:

  1. Districts are weighted according to previous Democratic performance. This largely helps Obama. For instance, Obama won Philadelphia County by 30%; in 2004, Kerry won there by 62%. Clinton took Fulton County by 34%; Bush won that county by 52%.
  2. There is speculation that, even though Clinton won Pennsylvania, her victory may be a Pyrrhic one, and that Obama's real strategy was to limit his margin of loss, while forcing Clinton to spend money she could not afford to waste.
  3. Calls are getting louder and louder for both campaigns to drop both their increasingly negative tones and obsessions with trivial non-issues and for Clinton to drop out of the race.

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