Monday, April 21, 2008

Pennsylvania Primary Reality Check

this is for you obama supporters. i know, you want it to be over tomorrow. i do too. i've even engaged in wishful thinking, maybe there will be a big upset, so big that hillary will have no other choice but to drop out.

but the fact of the matter is, there's a lot of racisim to be overcome in pennsylvania, and hillary exploited that at every opportunity, and as attytood, a pro-obama blogger who blogs at the philadelphia inquirer, says, an obama win is just not going to happen.
That said, there's one thing that seems impossible to avoid about 32 hours before the polls FINALLY close here in Pa. And that is this, that there is virtually no way that Barack Obama can win here. I don't know the exact margin of victory, but a Hillary Clinton triumph seems certain.

You can say that the polls -- and they seem to come out by the minute -- are inconsistent, but they seem clear on one thing: Obama has never topped 45 percent in any of the surveys. And we've seen in the vast majority of primary states so far that last minute undecideds tend to break for Clinton.

Why that? It's complicated. Race probably is a factor -- people who don't really want to back Obama but won't make it official until the privacy of a voting booth -- but so is the fact that Obama is the lesser known quantity of the two, and if he hasn't swayed people over seven weeks he probably won't change their minds tomorrow, either.

And I think a Clinton win tomorrow of more than 5 points -- less certain, but likely -- moves everyone onto North Carolina, and Indiana, and West Virginia, and Kentucky, and Oregon, and Montana, and South Dakota, and Puerto Rico, and Denver...

with that slap in the face, we must trudge on. but to show that maybe, just maybe... attytood points to a blog of a former clinton supporter turned obama supporter:
I don’t actually fault Hillary, because as all successful feminists of her generation who struggled to break the glass ceiling—and isn’t this the ultimate glass ceiling—she has absolutely mastered the rules of a man’s world. Unfortunately, the game is changing, and the old rules are no longer good enough. I wanted the first woman president to be better than the men who preceded her and not simply to be better at their politics. I wanted Hillary to rise above the fray, to inspire and to unite, and to humanize, and to finally be the one to change both how we campaigned and how we governed. While I owe Hillary a great debt for paving the way for the next generation of women politicians, I believe that our first woman president will not come from her generation. The price she and her peers had to pay for playing by the rules, as they existed, was too high. The first generation feminists didn’t realize that woman shouldn’t simply strive to succeed at the old rules, but they needed to change the rules themselves.

Barack Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia was probably my turning point. Although young and relatively inexperienced, Senator Obama is behaving like the elder statesman that I wanted Hillary to be. He strives to unite, to inspire and shockingly for a politician, he tells the complicated truth about issues like race, that other politicians avoid. I am immensely grateful to the Clintons for their years of service for the causes I believe in, and I hope that Senator Clinton and former President Clinton continue to use their stage to change the world. I wish the Clintons well and like many of their friends and allies I hope they don’t think I am betraying them, but I am voting for Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary.