Pennsylvania was her last hope and she had to win it big. Like 20+ points big.
She didn't.
From my side of the table, this is a huge night for Obama. Normally, even little losses get me a little blue but right now I'm more confident than ever Obama is going to win the nomination. Like other astute people have pointed out here, Hillary was better off yesterday than today. She has the same ground to gain with less racetrack to run on. Time has ran out for her. In fact, her last real chance of turning this around was Wisconsin.
Obama will win NC handily and it will be tight in Indiana. This means that in two weeks, Clinton is going to be in a more impossible place and even the idiot pundits on the TV channels like CNN will have to come to their senses and recognize the power of basic math.
What's aweful about all of this is that the whole canard about Obama "failing to seal the deal" is really more appropriately applied to Hillary. How in the hell with all her money, inevitability, establishment support, and a built in constituency that makes up for more than half the Democratic electorate did she ever get to this place? She has been outcampaigned and outmaneuvered from day one. She failed to "seal the deal" when her arrogant attitude and arrogant assholes (Bill Clinton, Mark Penn, Ickes, Wolfson, et al) helped her lose Iowa. She failed to "seal the deal" when she essentially tied Obama on Super Tuesday. She failed to "seal the deal" when she lost over 10 straight important contests after Super Tuesday. She failed to "seal the deal" when she ran her campaign into the ground and into debt. She failed to "seal the deal" when he had to stealthily take $5 million out of her pocket and into her campaign just to keep it alive.
Furthermore, it is 100% certain by any reasonable viewer that Bill Clinton and the gang have been race baiting all along. That doesn't make them racist, but it does reveal how cheap and shitty they can be. At least 92% of Black Dems know this and despite having put white Democrat after white Democrat in office they weren't about to let them get away with the abuse, not this time. To say the Obama camp "played the race card" is to insult the intelligence of us all, especially the core Dem demographic of African Americans. It's this aspect of the campaign that is unforgiveable in my view.
At this point the Hillary Campaign is a Republican campaign in spirit and in method. It's an absolute disgrace. If it was anyone other than a woman married to an ex-President named Clinton, that person would be shunned and drummed out of the party by now. Take Lieberman, for instance. Good riddance.
It's true that "on paper" Hillary and Barack are very similar. That's the crime of it all. At one point long ago, the goals were the same, to make America better. With Hillary "annihilating" Iran and rebuking the activist base (the same activist folks that stand for real change and have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Democratic coffers), I'm not so sure the goals are the same any more.
This all would have been 100% better had both candidates ran a clean, uplifting campaign. However, the Clintons have dragged Obama down in the muck with them. In order to "prove he's tough," he's in part taken the bait. The kitchen sink came out for OH and TX after Hillary's surprising Wisconsin loss, and unfortunately it wasn't only Obama that got damaged. The Democratic party got hit and got hit hard. Since then, it's nearly torn itself in two and McCain is somehow smelling like a rose even though he's married to the shitty policies of the Republican power brokers.
It's extremely likely Hillary Clinton will not be able to win this at all, even if she "goes nuclear" which I'm sure she will be tempted to do. Even if she somehow stole it, a lot of people are not going to follow her with their hearts or their dollars. The historic "turnout" that we've seen throughout this season is likely to vanish in the same smoke as the legitimacy of her win.
On the other hand, I'm not sure Obama will fare better. Clinton has "done her thing" and rode Obama hard. In some ways she has done him a favor, trial by fire and all that. However, the longer this goes on the more we are all hardened in our positions. Despite the "real world" protestations that people still like both candidates, I can't actually say that I know anyone who holds this view. This is classic entrenchment psychology and the longer we work at odds, the more likely we are to become more distant and diecast. At some point we will have a "presumptive" nominee and most Dems will be on the same team. But after the long hard slog to the convention, as McAuliffe promises to take us,
will there be enough time to rebuild? Will the Blacks forgive Hillary for what she has allowed to be done in her name? Will women forgive Obama for robbing them of the possibility of seeing one of their own in the White House before they die? Will true liberals and progressives forgive Hillary for marginalizing them just like the Republicans do? Will the "bread, guns, and butter" white Dems forgive Obama for all the "Un-American" things the Republicans and Hillary infer that he stands for? And will the low information voters of all persuasions just say "fuck it, I'm going with the old crusty white guy like I always have" because they got sick of how ugly the Democratic race became after Penn and Wolfson decided to make it so?
Congratulations on the win in Pennsylvania, but if I were you I'd be depressed. She's worse off than yesterday and we are all worse off than where we were six weeks ago.
On Edit:
It looks like the NY Times wholeheartedly agrees with me per this editorial. If I hadn't written this post before I read the editorial, you could rightly accuse me of plagiarizing their ideas:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/opinion/23wed1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print&oref=sloginApril 23, 2008
Editorial
The Low Road to Victory
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.
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.
If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.
On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook...
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