GREENSBURG, Pa. — Campaign volunteer Vickie Sackett could
scarcely contain her excitement Tuesday as she worked the door at
Hillary Clinton’s appearance here.
Ms. Sackett’s elderly parents had been selected to share the
stage with Hillary at a “Solutions for America” rally at the
University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg, where the former First Lady’s
speech focused on her “plan to help families in Pennsylvania have a
secure retirement.”
Collecting tickets at the entrance to the gymnasium where the
Clinton rally was held, Ms. Sackett beamed with pride that her
parents — like her, they’re loyal Democrats — had been chosen for
such an honor. “They’re backstage meeting with her right now,” she
said. “I’d give anything to be back there myself.”
More than 1,200 Pennsylvanians evidently agreed with Ms.
Sackett, waiting in line for hours to gain the privilege of being
in the same building with Mrs. Clinton. The Democratic presidential
candidate was greeted with a standing ovation that lasted more than
a minute, and repeatedly drew cheers by dishing up a red-meat
message of economic populism. Clearly, she knows what Democrats in
suburban Pittsburgh want to hear.
“It’s time we had a president who puts the people of
Westmoreland County ahead of Wall Street,” Hillary said, eliciting
wild applause from the packed gymnasium.
Promoting a new retirement proposal she calls “American
Retirement Accounts Plan,” the New York senator slammed Republican
Sen. John McCain for promising to revisit President Bush’s failed
2005 effort to create private retirement accounts.
“When I’m president,” Mrs. Clinton said, “privatizing Social
Security will be completely out of the question.” Her audience
cheered wildly, apparently without considering the contingent
nature of that first clause: “When I’m president…”
DESPITE POLLS SHOWING her with a double-digit lead over Barack
Obama in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary April 22, many
observers are saying that the possibility of Hillary winning the
Democratic nomination is…well, completely out of the
question.
Mrs. Clinton may still be a celebrity capable of packing an
auditorium, but her campaign finds itself faced with a disadvantage
that’s now being pronounced insurmountable by every pundit with
enough mathematical skill to count delegates, count votes, and
count money.
According to RealClearPolitics.com, Obama has won 1,414 pledged
delegates to Mrs. Clinton’s 1,247. And while Hillary’s supporters
once expected her to hold a decisive edge among so-called
“super-delegates,” those ex-officio party bigwigs have been
steadily trickling over to the Obama camp, so that RCP now figures
her super-delegate lead has shrunk to a slender 250-214 margin.
For all the excitement Hillary generated among Pennsylvania
Democrats as she barnstormed the state Monday and Tuesday, not even
a landslide here will dent Obama’s decisive delegate advantage. Jim
Vandehei and Mike Allen of the Politico calculated the
Clinton campaign’s best-case scenario for the remaining primaries
and brutally summed up the result: “Hillary Rodham Clinton has
virtually no chance of winning. Her own campaign acknowledges there
is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates.”
However, some have pondered the possibility that Obama could be
so damaged by the fallout from the demagoguery of his Chicago
pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that the Democratic super-delegates
will shift back to Hillary because of concern over Obama’s
“electability.”
There are two major problems with that scenario: First, a move
by party insiders to ditch Obama would be seen as an outrageous
betrayal by black voters, the most loyal Democratic constituency.
Secondly, there is the matter of counting the votes.
Depending on how the votes are counted — whether to include the
officially-disallowed Florida and Michigan primaries, for instance
— Obama’s popular vote total so far exceeds Hillary’s by anywhere
from 94,000 to more than 800,000. Given Obama’s overall popularity
in national polls of Democratic voters, that margin is unlikely to
shrink, much less disappear. To deny the nomination to the
candidate with the most votes would make the Democrats the
un-Democratic Party.
Hope for Hillary dwindles even further when you count the money.
Obama finished February with $32 million cash on hand, compared to
the Mrs. Clinton’s $11 million. As the Wall Street Journal
reported last week, Hillary’s campaign engaged in deficit spending
during the fourth quarter of 2007, spending about $15 million more
than it raised, a pattern that continued into January and
eventually resulted in the ouster of her campaign chairman.
The Clinton campaign is now bombarding supporters with e-mail
pleas for contributions. “As we ramp up our campaign in
Pennsylvania, I need your help to make sure we have the resources
we need to win,” said an e-mail sent out over Hillary’s signature
Tuesday. “The Obama campaign is in the middle of a $3 million ad
blitz in Pennsylvania, and we’ve got to do everything we can to
overcome their fundraising advantage.”
The former front-runner once deemed inevitable has now become a
forlorn underdog deemed almost impossible. Small wonder, then, that
while Hillary was traversing Pennsylvania in a two-day campaign
blitz, Barack Obama was vacationing in the Virgin Islands.
WHILE REPORTERS, pundits, and bloggers are pronouncing doom for her
campaign, however, Mrs. Clinton seems undaunted by the odds against
her. At a press conference following her Greensburg rally, she
gamely endured questions about how she “misspoke” in recently
claiming to have landed in Bosnia under sniper fire in 1996. When
asked about her earlier remark that it was the first time she had
misspoken in 12 years, Hillary replied with a smile: “I was joking.
Lighten up, guys.”
She seemed similarly upbeat when asked whether she would face
accusations of “disenfranchisement” if she won the nomination on
the strength of super-delegates. “We have to wait and see what
happens. There’s been a lot of talk about what if, what if, what
if. Let’s wait until we get some facts. People are going to vote
over the next months, millions of people. And we should wait and
see the outcome of those votes.”
While Obama basked in the tropical sun, Hillary was conjuring up
the gritty spirit of Joe Paterno. The Greensburg crowd cheered
loudly when she mentioned the legendary Penn State football coach
(all concerned evidently forgetting Paterno is a hated Republican
of long standing). Trailing badly in the fourth quarter of her
campaign for the Democratic nomination, Hillary may yet lose, but
she seems determined not to quit until the final whistle.
Asked Tuesday if she was feeling pressure to get out of the
race, Mrs. Clinton answered, “The most common thing the people say
— it happened here, it happened last night, it happens everywhere
I go — is, ‘Don’t give up,’ ‘Keep going,’ ‘We’re with you.’ And I
feel very good about that, because that’s what I intend to do.”
