Clinton’s Big Win in Pennsylvania Won’t Make a Big Difference

By Anastacia Mott Austin

Little old ladies have power! Hillary Clinton won this week’s Pennsylvania primary 55%-45%, in large part due to the record number of older women voting. Pennsylvania boasts the nation’s second-oldest population, and older voters have tended to favor Clinton.

But Clinton’s supporters who felt heartened by the recent victory still need a reality check.

Unfortunately for them, there’s still no way Hill can catch up to, much less overtake Barack Obama’s impressive 140+ delegate lead.

Clinton’s supporters would argue that she gained valuable traction in Pennsylvania and bolstered her argument that she can deliver the big states. Of Obama, she says, "Why can’t he close the deal?"

Obama’s response could be, "Why is she still here?"

Clinton is banking heavily on convincing superdelegates that she is the better candidate, despite being behind her opponent by 140 delegates, almost half a million popular votes, and half the number of primaries (15 to Obama’s 30).

Clinton insists this just means that "The American people don’t quit. And they deserve a president who doesn’t quit either."

Both candidates expected Clinton to win in Pennsylvania, though possibly not by quite so high a margin. Clinton’s family is from the state, and as she mentioned repeatedly, her grandfather once worked in the lace mills in Scranton.

Clinton’s victory means that much of this is the same old news we’ve heard regurgitated on political blogs and in news bytes for weeks. Clinton faces a mathematically insurmountable battle ahead. She simply cannot overtake Obama, unless she can convince the superdelegates to override the popular vote, Obama’s delegate lead, and the primary results to anoint her the Democratic nominee.

According to the blogs whose writers have time to sit with calculators and figure it out exactly (and don’t think I haven’t thought about doing that myself), before Pennsylvania Clinton would have had to win each remaining primary with 65% of the vote. Now, it’s 68%. Because the remaining primary state with the highest number of delegates is North Carolina (where Obama is expected to win), those odds will only get higher for Hill.

But what about those superdelegates everyone is talking about? Barring a huge surprise at the remaining primaries, Obama will still lead with approximately 150 delegates or so by the time this is all finally over. With that, he will only need about a third of the remaining superdelegates to rally around him in order to clinch the nomination. Unless they all decide en masse that they would prefer the candidate who is trailing in every category, things still look quite rosy for Obama.

Yet concern remains in some Democratic circles that the longer the nomination process drags on, the more mud will be slung and the less John McCain will need to spend of his own campaign funds to contribute to the fray.

Both Clinton and Obama have now set their sights on North Carolina and Indiana, the next major primaries set to be held May 6th.

Clinton has her work cut out for her in North Carolina, as that state’s 115 delegates are nothing to sneeze at. If Obama wins as expected, it should put a dent in Clinton’s argument that Obama can’t deliver on big states. North Carolina is one of the nation’s top ten most populous states.

Indiana’s race is closer, with the two battling it out in the polls and coming out about even as of press time.