Sen. Hillary Clinton celebrated Tuesday night with a landslide victory in West Virginia’ Democratic primary. And, oh, what a win it was. She beat rival Sen. Barack Obama by a margin of two to one.
Clinton won at least 16 of the 28 delegates at stake in West Virginia, and Obama won at least seven, with five more to be allocated, according to the Associated Press. The Illinois senator now has 1,882 delegates, to Clinton’s 1,713, out of the 2,026 needed to clinch the nomination at the party convention in Denver this summer. In a Mississippi special election Tuesday, the Democratic win increased by one the number of delegates needed to win the nomination, according to the AP.
John McCain continued to pick up delegates, as the presumptive Republican nominee faced off against dark horse candidate Ron Paul in Nebraska’s nonbinding poll. Collecting 87% of the vote, the Arizona senator added 30 pledged delegates to his tally, giving him 1,289. He only needed 1,191 delegates to secure the nomination.
As with the other states in which Clinton has prevailed, her campaign was buoyed by support from predominantly white, blue-collar voters. Only 6.9% of West Virginians over age 25 are college educated, and a mere 3.2% are black. Clinton is also expected to lead, albeit by a smaller margin, in next week’s Democratic primary in Kentucky, which has a similar demographic make-up. But with just 51 delegates in play in the Bluegrass State, a victory could epitomize the concept of too little, too late. Are they simply Clinton’s last hurrah?
Not to hear the New York senator’s campaign tell it. Early in the day of the West Virginia primary, Clinton’s campaign sent out an e-mail message saying, “Sen. Clinton has already won Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan. With a win in West Virginia, [she] will have once again proven her greater ability to win in the key swing states.”
Clinton continued her “anything is possible” attitude. In remarks Tuesday night from Charleston she said, “Tonight I need your help to continue this journey. We are in the homestretch. There are only three weeks left in the final contests, and your support can make the difference between winning and losing. So I hope you’ll go to HillaryClinton.com and support our campaign.”
Although Clinton vowed she would work her “heart out” for the Democratic nomination to ensure the country gets a Democratic president, she also said, “In a campaign, it can be easy to get lost in the political spin and the polls or
the punditry, but we must never lose sight of what really counts, of why all of us care so much about who wins and who loses in our political system. An enormous decision falls on the shoulders of Democratic voters in these final contests and those Democrats empowered to vote at our convention…I am in this race because I believe I am the strongest candidate–the strongest candidate to lead our party in November of 2008 and the strongest president to lead our nation starting in January of 2009. I can win this nomination if you decide I should, and I can lead this party to victory in the general election if you lead me to victory now.”Robert Smith, a political scientist at San Francisco State University, says that while there’s no real reason for Clinton to hang on—she’s trails Obama in delegate, super delegate, and popular vote counts, and risks going even deeper in debt—the few remaining contests in which she is guaranteed wins, will allow her to go out on a high note.
“When she started to plan her campaign years ago, she’d probably never heard of Obama. And when a person with hardly any national experience beats a person of her stature, it’s probably difficult to accept. But I assume her advisers are telling her what everyone else knows, even if we’re not hearing it in the press,” Smith says.
Peter Groff, a Colorado state senator and executive director of the University of Denver Center for African American Policy, agrees that Clinton would prefer to go out with a bang. But, he adds, with contests remaining in Kentucky, Oregon, Missouri, South Dakota, and Puerto Rico she’s probably also trying to figure out what her next step should be. According to Groff, Clinton has three choices. First, she may be thinking about whether she’d like to the vice presidential nominee, although he doubts Clinton would be very interested in second place. Another option is to remain in the Senate, where she might become the “lioness of the Senate” a la Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, “or become that chamber’s majority leader if she’s that gung ho about the politics of creating policy,” Goff says. The final option is becoming governor of New York, he adds.
Or she may simply be thinking of more immediate concerns, such as determining what role she might play in the next convention or help with retiring her campaign debt.
Lately, however, the tone from both camps seems to have taken a decidedly more civil turn. Obama, without trying to appear too presumptuous or overt, has clearly turned his attention to the fall and has been aiming his target more at McCain.
With Obama being widely viewed as the presumptive Democratic nominee after his big win in North Carolina last week, the willingness of the Clinton faithful to transfer their support to Obama may depend in large part on how gracefully the New York senator exits the race. Smith says some of the damage caused by the prolonged competition between Obama and Clinton can be easily repaired if in her final concession speech Clinton reminds voters that campaigns are by nature tough and divisive, emphasizes the commonalities between the two camps, and salutes Obama for having waged an extraordinary campaign.
But Obama also has a lot of work to do. Vincent Hutchings, a political science professor at the University of Michigan, says Obama will likely focus more on the economy, higher energy prices, and concrete solutions. “To the extent that he didn’t talk about those things before, he probably will now–and not just to win over Clinton supporters but because there’s a sense that it’s kind of a big weakness of the McCain camp and he can link McCain to the Bush economy.”