Winning the Battles, Losing the War

Charlie Cook says, in the National Journal, that Hillary Clinton is winning the battles in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but she's losing the war. He calls it her "political purgatory."

That's not a bad way to put it, actually.

"If this contest were still at the point where momentum, symbolism, and reading tea leaves mattered, Clinton would be in pretty good shape," writes Cook. "Everything she has needed to happen is happening now. ... but it’s happening about three months too late."

Jackie Calmes and Mary Jacoby observe, in the Wall Street Journal, that Clinton's win in the Pennsylvania primary "is stoking concerns about Sen. Barack Obama's appeal in a general election, even as party leaders ... admit he remains the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination."

A voice I always pay attention to when it comes to political matters is the one belonging to Michael Barone. He's been the co-author of the biennially published Almanac of American Politics since its inception in 1972. There may be no one in America who knows more about voting patterns in every state, every congressional district.

Writing for U.S. News and World Report, Barone raises the possibility of a finish that is reminiscent of the 2000 campaign, suggesting that Clinton could win the popular vote in the primaries while Obama finishes with the most delegates.

"My sense is that the superdelegates don't want to make their own decisions; they want to ratify someone else's decision," says Barone. "The problem is that the results are sending us to a situation in which superdelegates have to decide which decisions they will ratify."

Hillary may be losing this war, but she's finally doing what Karl Rove has been insisting that she needed to do.

Clinton "pummeled" Obama, Rove says, which "should cause concern in the Obama HQ."

Rove is partisan, of course, so it shouldn't surprise anyone when he writes in the Wall Street Journal, "The Democratic Party has two weakened candidates."

I must admit, it amuses me when he writes that "Mrs. Clinton started as a deeply flawed candidate: the palpable and unpleasant sense of entitlement, the absence of a clear and optimistic message, the grating personality impatient to be done with the little people and overly eager for a return to power, real power, the phoniness and the exaggerations."

It seems to me the complaints could just as easily have applied to Rove's former boss eight years ago.

"And what of the reborn Adlai Stevenson?" asks Rove. "Mr. Obama is befuddled and angry about the national reaction to what are clearly accepted, even commonplace truths in San Francisco and Hyde Park.

"How could anyone take offense at the observation that people in small-town and rural America are 'bitter' and therefore 'cling' to their guns and their faith, as well as their xenophobia? Why would anyone raise questions about a public figure who, for only 20 years, attended a church and developed a close personal relationship with its preacher who says AIDS was created by our government as a genocidal tool to be used against people of color, who declared America's chickens came home to roost on 9/11, and wants God to damn America?

"Mr. Obama has a weakness among blue-collar working class voters for a reason."

It's clear the Democratic nominee will have some work to do to win an election that should be a slam dunk.