The Long Haul

Hillary Clinton looked calm and resilient last night as she spoke to the faithful after winning Pennsylvania. Her margin of victory was right on the cusp of what the pundits said she needed to move forward. Her campaign, however, must not be pleased with many of the media post mortems they're looking at today.

An awful lot of them are saying Pennsylvania solved nothing, and only marginally boosted her chances of taking the nomination from Barack Obama. The New York Times went even further. In an editorial titled "The Low Road to Victory", the paper, which endorsed her, raked her over the coals for her negative campaigning in Pennsylvania. They aren't the only ones. That Osama bin Laden ad she dropped this past past weekend has become the poster child for all that's wrong with this election cycle.

Some are starting to ask whether the Clinton campaign's ceaseless attacks on Barack Obama will have long term negative consequences for the Democratic Party's chances in November. The short answer is simple. It might, but why would Hillary abandon an attack strategy that appears to be working? Pennsylvanians voted for her even as they acknowledged in exit polls that she was more negative than her opponent.

Obama faces a different problem, that of the simple sports metaphor, knockout blow. He hasn't been able to deliver one. He's got to win one upcoming primary big in order to get the superdelegates to deliver it for him. As we've said before, there are grave political risks in always being the counterpuncher. He seemed to have gotten that message at the end of the campaign trail in Pennsylvania.

Let's see if Obama is ready to be the aggressor, and how Clinton reacts.