Cooler Heads

Cooler heads prevailed Wednesday, even within the excitable CW. For instance:

The Pennsylvania Primary was Hillary Clinton's last chance to deliver a game changing blow to Obama's campaign for the nomination. She failed to deliver.
Pennsylvania provided her with her final real opportunity to knock the wheels off the Obama campaign. She needed a crushing victory of 18% to 25% to have any real chance of altering the math or the psychology. Demographically, Pennsylvania was made for Hillary: the second oldest state in the nation, heavily blue collar, Catholic and rural -- Hillary's voter profile. She started with a lead of almost 20 points. But her final margin -- which the Pennsylvania Secretary of State says was only 9.2% -- fell far short of what was needed to stop Obama's nomination."

According to CBS News, Hillary won 9 more delegates than Obama did in PA. Other estimates go as high as 12. Obama won 25 net in Virginia.

Chuck Todd, the numbers impressario at NBC, says that Clinton's chances have diminished, not increased. Even if she is to attract super-delegates, she will have to win where she is not expected to win, and that's North Carolina.

And after a pretty hot rebuke to Hillary (see below), the New York Times coolly dismantles her electability argument in Thursday's paper:

Yet for all of her primary night celebrations in the populous states, exit polling and independent political analysts offer evidence that Mr. Obama could do just as well as Mrs. Clinton among blocs of voters with whom he now runs behind. Obama advisers say he also appears well-positioned to win swing states and believe he would have a strong shot at winning traditional Republican states like Virginia.

According to surveys of Pennsylvania voters leaving the polls on Tuesday, Mr. Obama would draw majorities of support from lower-income voters and less-educated ones — just as Mrs. Clinton would against Mr. McCain, even though those voters have favored her over Mr. Obama in the primaries.

And national polls suggest Mr. Obama would also do slightly better among groups that have gravitated to Republican in the past, like men, the more affluent and independents, while she would do slightly better among women."

The rebuke came in an Wednesday editorial, which began:

The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.

Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election."

This from a newspaper that editorially endorsed Hillary. While Obama is criticized as well, the bulk of their ire falls on Hillary, fingering especially that last-day TV ad that threw 9-11 and Osama bin Laden with the rest of the kitchen sink. The harm this is doing, plus the demonstrably false electability argument, should hasten the super-delegates to Obama. Word is that there's one supe or endorsement a day scheduled until North Carolina and Indiana. (There were two today, plus endorsements from 29 North Carolina legislators.) If he wins one or both, it could become a flood.

But what Hillary won in PA was apparently donations. It's not clear how much but maybe enough to keep up the attack, requiring Obama to raise more. And so the obscene waste of money continues. Practically the only beneficiaries of this are media companies, so naturally they hype this at every opportunity.