Hillary is still acting as if winning the nomination is a strong possibility for her, when it clearly is not–like when Hillary said she’s consider Obama as a vice-presidential candidate, it was almost comical in its presumptuousness. But that is what Hillary has to do, because if Pennsylvanians go to vote and figure that she really has no chance, then she will lose, no matter her lead over Obama in the polls: Democrats will vote for Obama, even if they favor Clinton, because they recognize what is best for their party as a whole. It has been made pretty clear to enough people that a Clinton victory would only prolong the inevitable and hurt the party, and I think that this is worth quite enough that Obama stands a good chance of getting a surprising number of votes this week.
Then there are the polls: as I have noted, they are all over the place. This is probably due to the pollsters trying to figure out how to weight the numbers. For example, will young voters or old voters have higher turnouts? Each pollster makes different decisions like these, and therefore we see a 20-point spread in polls with supposed margins of error far smaller than that. But as I note above, I think there will be an effect beyond polling: the polls measure which candidate is supported, and that is not necessarily who they will end up voting for. In my case, right now the idea of a Clinton candidacy is galling–but if the delegate counts were reversed and Obama had as slim a chance as Clinton has now, then painful as it might be, I would vote for Clinton for the good of the party. And that’s saying something.
Not to mention that both Ohio and Texas had semi-open primaries; Pennsylvania’s is closed. That means we’ll see fewer “Limbaugh” Republicans crossing the lines to get the candidate they want, and that could have an effect as well.
This close to the end, with the damage from a prolonged campaign so clear, and the real conclusion of the race so evident… I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict Obama will, if not win, at the very least lose by no more than 4 or 5 points in Pennsylvania. I would favor, however, something much closer, near a tie.
The question is, how will Pennsylvania be spun by the high and mighty media? In the past, Obama has been hurt by high expectations; his advancing in the polls in the days just before other elections made him seem like the favored candidate, and that hurt him mightily–look at New Hampshire, where the polls saw him jump from a double-digit deficit just a week before the primary to the 5-to-10-point favorite on election day–only to lose by a slim 3-point margin. Hardly a stunning victory for Clinton, who had as much as a 16-point lead just days before–but because the polls gave Obama such momentum, it looked like a stunning victory, and perception is everything.
So how will they spin, say, a 5-point Clinton victory here? Some polls say that is what will happen, some say Hillary leads by 18 points or so. We haven’t seen a poll that had Obama tied or ahead in more than two weeks–but will the media cling to that former image of Obama catching up? You can guess where my money is–the media is addicted to this race, and if they can help Clinton, they will. A 5-point Clinton win will probably be called a Clinton “victory,” despite the doom it spells in terms of delegates. There might be some small caveats in the small print, but the headlines will probably trend Hillary’s way. I would think that only if Obama comes within two or three points of a tie will the media abandon the pretense.
The question is, even if Obama wins, will Hillary finally give up?
