ANALYSIS:Hillary Clinton won West Virginia and pleaded for the party elders to back her. Their answer yesterday? Three came out for Obama . . . , writes Denis Staunton
HILLARY CLINTON'S landslide victory in West Virginia, where she defeated Barack Obama by a margin of more than two to one, was a remarkable achievement for a candidate who has been almost universally diagnosed as a political corpse. She won almost every demographic group, including the affluent, well-educated voters that have faithfully supported Obama elsewhere.
Unfortunately for Clinton, West Virginia came too late to change the mathematics of a delegate count that gives Obama an unassailable lead among elected delegates and a widening edge among superdelegates, party insiders who account for a fifth of the nominating votes. Even if Clinton won all the delegates in the remaining five contests, she could not catch up with Obama among elected delegates, leaving the remaining superdelegates as her only hope of winning.
Speaking after Tuesday's primary, Clinton made clear that she will not leave the race until after the last primaries on June 3rd, stating flatly that she is staying in because she thinks she is the better candidate.
"The bottom line is this - the White House is won in the swing states and I am winning the swing states," she said, listing the battleground states she has carried.
In a direct appeal to superdelegates, she urged them to ignore the mathematics of the delegate count and to consider instead the arithmetic of the electoral college that the Democratic candidate must win in November.
"I'm asking that people think hard about where we are in this election, about how we will win in November, because this is not an abstract exercise," she said.
"This is for a solemn, crucial purpose: to elect a president to turn our country around, to meet the challenges we face and seize the opportunities. It has been a long campaign, but it is just an instant in time when compared with the lasting consequences of the choice we will make in November. That is why I am carrying on, and if you give me a chance, Democrats, I'll come back to West Virginia in the general election and we'll win this state and we'll win the White House."
Three super delegates gave Clinton their answer early yesterday morning, announcing that they were endorsing Obama and more are likely to follow them later this week. The party establishment, as represented by House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid, have signalled that they will indulge Clinton in allowing the race to continue until June, but that they expect superdelegates to bring it to an end in the days following the last primaries in Montana and South Dakota.
West Virginia highlighted Obama's weakness among a number of voter groups, notably the white working class, women and older voters, who could provide the key to winning big states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania in November. Clinton pointed out that no Democrat has won the White House since 1916 without winning West Virginia and 54 per cent of the state's Democrats who voted on Tuesday said they would be dissatisfied if he is the party's nominee.
Obama's campaign insists the outcome of a primary is a poor guide to how a candidate will fare in the general election, predicting that all but a few Democrats will back the party's nominee in November. His aides point out that no Democrat has won a majority of white voters in a presidential election since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and that in general election match-up polls, Obama has a similar level of support among whites as Al Gore and John Kerry won in 2000 and 2004.
Although Obama does not concede states such as Ohio, which have been crucial, he believes he can change the electoral map by winning such former Republican strongholds as Virginia and Colorado and that he could be competitive in southern states such as Georgia and Louisiana.
While most attention on Tuesday was focused on West Virginia, a special congressional election in Mississippi the same day may have been a more significant straw in the wind. Democrat Travis Childers won a seat that had been in Republican hands since 1994, in the third victory for his party in Republican strongholds in recent months.
An unpopular president, a weakening economy and an apparently endless war in Iraq have tarnished the Republican brand to the point that senior figures in the party acknowledge privately they could face an electoral bloodbath in November.
In such a political environment, Clinton's argument about electability carries less sway with uncommitted superdelegates than fear of the consequences of overturning the choice of elected delegates and, by most measures, the popular vote. Many Democrats fear African-Americans and young voters who have turned out in unprecedented numbers for Obama could be turned off politics for a generation if the party insiders veto the first black candidate with a realistic chance of winning the White House.
Clinton has already shifted gear towards a more gentle campaigning style, avoiding direct criticism of Obama.
For his part, Obama is already behaving as if the contest is over, directing his fire exclusively towards John McCain, the Republicans' presumptive nominee and waiting quietly for Clinton to find the right moment to leave the stage. Like most Democrats, Obama now believes that, if the fat lady is not yet singing, she is in the dressing room practising her scales.
Denis Staunton is Washington Correspondent