Philadelphia — Hillary Rodham Clinton ground out a gritty victory in the Pennsylvania primary Tuesday night, defeating Barack Obama and staving off elimination in their historic race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
"Some counted me out and said to drop out," the former first lady told supporters cheering her triumph in a state where she was outspent by more than two-to-one. "But the American people don't quit. And they deserve a president who doesn't quit, either."
"Because of you, the tide is turning."
Her victory, while comfortable, set up another critical test in two weeks time in Indiana. North Carolina votes the same day, and Obama already is the clear favorite in a Southern state with a large black population.
"Now it's up to you, Indiana," Obama said at a rally of his own in Evansville after Pennsylvania denied him a victory that might have made the nomination his.
He criticized John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting, by name as offering more of the same policies advocated by President Bush. And he took aim at Clinton without mentioning her by name. "We can calculate and poll-test our positions and tell everyone exactly what they want to hear," he said. "Or we can be the party that doesn't just focus on how to win, but why we should."
In a campaign marked by increasingly personal attacks, Clinton was winning 55 percent of the vote to 45 percent for her rival with 98 percent counted in Pennsylvania.
A preliminary tabulation showed her gaining at least 52 national convention delegates to 46 for Obama, with 60 still to be awarded.
That left Obama with 1,694.5 delegates, and Clinton with 1,561.5, according to the AP tally. Each candidate won 0.5 pledged delegate vote from the Democrats Abroad.
Clinton scored her victory by winning the votes of blue-collar workers, women and white men in an election where the economy was the dominant concern. Obama was favored by blacks, the affluent and voters who recently switched to the Democratic Party, a group that comprised about one in 10 Pennsylvania voters, according to the surveys conducted by The Associated Press and the TV networks.
A six-week campaign allowed time for intense courtship of the voters.
She showed her blue-collar bona fides one night by knocking down a shot of whiskey, then taking a mug of beer as a chaser. Obama went bowling in his attempt to win over working-class voters.
Clinton's win marked at least the third time she had triumphed when defeat might have sent her to the campaign sidelines.
She won in New Hampshire last winter after coming in third in the kickoff Iowa caucuses, and she won primaries in Ohio and Texas several weeks later after losing 11 straight contests.
Her victory also gave Clinton a strong record in the big states as she attempts to persuade convention superdelegates to look past Obama's delegate advantage and his lead in the popular vote in picking a nominee. She had previously won primaries in Texas, California, Ohio and her home state of New York, while Obama won his home state of Illinois.
Comments
cato_the_elder 10 years ago
Liar, liar, pantsuit on fire.
Confrontation 10 years ago
McCain will be lucky to still be alive by November. He's pushing the life expectancy as it is.
bearded_gnome 10 years ago
barry h. o'bama [don't say his middle name] fumbled several questions in that debate, and got quite noticeably hot under the collar. if he can't handlethat kind of forum, he is not set up to handle the streeses of the whitehouse!barry h. o'bama, his relationship with: his pastor for very many years; his black liberation theology church that preaches killing the white oppressor (o'bamaand his wife donated to this church in the most recent tax year); his wife who has not been proud of america most of her life; and his unrepentant domesticterrorist bomber buddy (he had a fundraiser in this guy's house!). in the campaign in tx, it was revealed that in an o'bama office there, there was a cubanrevolutionary flag with pictures of castro et al. barry h. o'bama, quite ignorant of economics: wants to raise cap gains taxes when there seems tobe a recession!barry H. obama, endorsed by Hamas, the israeli killing palestinian terrorist group. o'bama says he wouldn't talk to hamas' leadership, but he would talkunconditionally with the president of iran who pulls hamas' strings! duh. that president has hundreds of american's blood on his hands because of terroriststrikes and iran's explosives blowing up our heros fighting in iraq.barry h. o'bama said his grandmother worked at a bomber assemblyline at ft. leavenworth. no such assembly.line existed.barry h. o'bama, how much of his pastor's/church's teaching for 20 years has he absorbed? he hasn't had the strength of character to break off this relationshiplong long ago, as did oprah? and these many years he has had his wife and little daughters under this evil racist bigoted antiamerican teaching.very informative on barack h. o'bama. he voted in the IL legislature to deny health care to babies who actually survived abortion. he voted against banningpartial birth abortion.says he won't raise taxes on people earning less than $250,000 but would raise cap gains taxes, many in that range benefit from cap gains. also indirectly,many people would become unemployed in that earnings range if cap gains tax goes up. further he would increase other taxes on that group of taxpayers,i.e. payroll taxes.now, as to the nasty fight...now ain't that just too bad?remember the pantsuited one imagined sniper fire! you don't forget being under fire! when the clintons treated republicans the way they're treating o'bama, dems loons cheered. you have sewn to the wind and reaped the whirlwind now.
bearded_gnome 10 years ago
keep sHrillary in the race! we love seeing all the demorat blood and guts! keep her in to the convention! both candidates are so bloodied, and many of their supporters will not support the other if nominated! dems may have to go to a third candidate! this will alienate blacks from the dems for generations. increasingly, blacks are becoming conservative anyway, since many actually hold conservative family values. sHrillary: a yankees fan? named for a famous mountainclimber who became famous five years after her birth? tried to join the service? billing records magically appeared one day after time was up on those charges. was opposed to NAFTA? ... oh really. oh yeah, claims was really involved in foreign policy in the clinton whitehouse. these two the best the dems can do?***McCain is only about 35% conservative but he is worlds apart from o'bama and sHrillary. he would never raise taxes in a recession, the worst thing you can do to an economy. he will make sure that the sacrifices in iraq are not thrown away by premature withdrawal. that's the demorats: premature withdrawal.
storm 10 years ago
I like Mr. McCain because he is a real Republican and was going to vote for him. But then I got this e-mail that said Mr. Obama was not Christian - like that was a bad thing and I should vote Republican. Well, that's not what being Republican is, so I'm going to vote for Mr. Obama...but I really like Mr. McCain. (The e-mail backfired. ) I think my party has been infiltrated with religious bigots and I'm sick of it. Hilary would be a good president but she's been entrenched in politics too long.
bearded_gnome 10 years ago
because we needed to take down saddam, remember he was harboring terrorists of past and future threat. only you nutbags on the left say iraq wasn't a threat. check out the saddam tapes. ever heard of ricin; saddam did export that to britain, oh you never heard of that, well look it up. and, oh yeah, after we toppled him we did find 250-tons of yellowcake uranium in baghdad, that was actually in the jihad times but they burried it so as not to upset you liberals. add those up. mexico does pose a different kind of threat. and, as i have written elsewhere, the greatest threat is facing poor, low education attainment legal hispanics and blacks. these people find their wages dramatically diminished and their unemployment rate skyrocketting. furthermore, it is a human wave invasion from mexico. no other country would put up with this scale of invasion. and, as I have written elsewhere, in l.a. for example many hospitals have closed or about to close, including some well known or historic hospitals; these are struggling or shut down because of the human invasion. if you need an e.r. there, you probably will take longer to get there, and have a longer wait because of the human invasion. now, there's your answer logicunsound.
bearded_gnome 10 years ago
indeed, those e-mails about o'bama's faith are really very stupid. no, if you look at his black liberation theology, including "kill all the white oppressors" there's enough bad in the truth without making things up about him being a muslim. poor barry h. o'bama, his san francisco comments about people in small towns in PA, and in the midwest (like here!) really hurting him. he said that these people, and us people here, are bitter, and that's why we cling to guns and our faith and have antipathy to people not like us. it is not antipathy towards others not like us to wish for laws to be properly enforced and to avoid rewarding people for breaking into our country. his comments were indeed elitist. and on this board, about half of the leftists who tried to defend them were making elitist comments and generalizations, using words like "redneck, for example." btw, I don't own a gun, and my faith is not there in my life because of some bitterness* and it is a deep insult to imply otherwise. we believe in something greater than man, greater than ourselves. poor barry h. o'bama, logicunsound, he is going down in the polls and his negative poll ratings are rising fast. mostly, because of what I posted above. that is in the general populus I am speaking of. the demorat party is taken over by very far left fringies and they don't care about his pastor, and even embrace his unrepentant terrorist bomber buddy. in chicago, BA, the unrepentant bomber is a major light in demorat politics! that really says something about the party.
pisafromthewest 10 years ago
logicsound04 (Anonymous) says: "Don't kid yourself bonehead_gomer, the American populace would vote for a bloodied Obama or Hilary long before they would vote for John "Dubya Lite" McCain."Down to a virtual dead heat, with both Dems plummeting:http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/national.htmlhttp://apnews.myway.com/article/20080421/D906GBF80.htmlApparently there's a fairly significant portion of the American populace you don't speak for. Gee, there's a shock.
pisafromthewest 10 years ago
By the way, nice comparison, Iraq and Mexico. Which two of Mexico's neighbors have they invaded in the past couple of decades? How many of their own citizens have the Mexican government gased?
storm 10 years ago
It still remains a fact, the twin-tower massacre orchestrated by Mr. bin Laden was more of a threat to this country than Mr Hussain. It's pretty much understood that all politicians are elitist - even Carter was. Every society has a scapegoat, right now it is people from a country called Mexico...it's not human invasion because everyone is breeding, anyway. If one remembers these truths, then one won't be so offended by what the candidates say. It still remains a fact that if one uses capitalization at the beginning of sentences, then their views will appear credible perhaps convincing.
pisafromthewest 10 years ago
illogicabounds rants:"The comparison was between politician's attitudes towards the current Mexican government and their attitudes towards the_current_Iraqi government, not Saddam's regime."And I suppose it's somehow escaped the notice of our little genius-brat that the current government in Iraq wouldn't be the current government in Iraq if we hadn't intervened? Brilliant as always, moron.Sorry, illogic, if you've missed me. Unlike you, Mr. MBA, some of us have jobs and lives, and don't live here on the award-winning LJW message boards impressing ourselves with our "entire body or work" on the issues. And continually trying to change the opinion of idealogical three-year-olds is pretty pointless, so I do tend to leave you to wallow in your own idiocy after making my point ... maybe I'm not as driven by inadequacies as you are that you have such a need to get the last word in. Also, watching your continual self-immolation is discomforting even to someone who so enjoys your making such a pompous a** of yourself daily. Unlike passive-agressive genius boy, who will say (no doubt) that he wasn't going to respond, but then will, ad nauseum. By the way, genius boy, I notice you didn't have much to say about the "American populace would vote for a bloodied Obama or Hilary long before they would vote for John "Dubya Lite" McCain," in light of the polls that show you, as usual, were just shooting off your uneducated mouth without knowing what you're talking about.
pisafromthewest 10 years ago
logicsound04 (Anonymous) says: "For once, pisawork, please try to stay on point instead of picking on whatever detail in my post you feel that you can refute (even if I wasn't arguing that detail)."Translation: Please don't call attention to anything I say that sounds stupid (and is) because I'll just say that wasn't my point (and I just said it for ... oh, geez, who the heck knows why illogicsouse says anything).Just for laughs (which you so consistently supply), illogicsouse, which of those two countries that you see such a comparison between do you think is in a better position to help themselves without our help right now? Worried about all those Mexicans killing themselves in their religious rivalries, are you?"Not even going to address the (I'm hoping) cathartic rant you included in your second paragraph. I just hope it made you feel better."Translation: I can't dispute anything you say, so I'll be my usual passive-agressive snot and pretend to the high ground by claiming I won't respond. As usual."Right now McCain isn't competing against anyone. He isn't having to take direct criticism, while both Hillary and Obama are. You're severly underestimating the effect that having an opponent will have on a poll."While you, in your monumental naivite, think that Hillary and Obama continuing to tear at each other's throats instead of either trying to attack their eventual opponent is a good thing? Only one of my references was a poll, little boy. The other was commentary by the AP political writer explaining in terms that everyone except you can understand why the longer there is no Democratic nominee, it only serves to help the Republican side. But hey, as long as you want to stay in your little dreamland and keep believing, in all your pompous buffoonery, that you speak for the "American populace," who am I to burst your little bubble?
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