Clinton Pulls No Punches In Scramble For Ohio Voters

With her frontrunner status eroded, and locked in the political battle of her life, the question on the minds of many voters is what - if anything - can Hillary Clinton do to turn this race around.

Perhaps her greatest supporter, her husband, former President Bill Clinton, has placed her fate in the hands of the American people.

"If she wins Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee," he said at a speech on Wednesday in Beaumont, Texas. "If you don't deliver for her, I don't think she can be. It's all on you."

And perhaps this is as it should be in this democratic process where the people should choose their next leader. But members of her campaign staff argue that Clinton is not losing voters as a result of Obama's increasing popularity.

"There is no evidence that voters are voting based on momentum - in fact, the evidence is to the contrary," said Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director, according to a New York Times article.

A few politically savvy people have noted that it is perhaps possible with the addition of delegates from Texas and Ohio that Senator Clinton can begin to take back her previous frontrunner status.

"There is not much Clinton can do now other than campaign as hard as possible in Texas + Ohio + Pennsylvania," said Dr. Albert Cover, associate professor in Stonybrook University's political science department. "At least a paper victory in each of those (even if the victories do not translate into much of a delegate pickup) will be necessary for her to keep Obama in sight."

So Texas + Ohio + Pennsylvania might be the magic formula that equals victory for Senator Clinton. That seems to be one set of moves that Senator Clinton can make to further herself in this race. But another possibility for success is to hold on to as much of her base as she possibly can, despite Obama steadily and stealthily chipping away at said base.

"She needs to be shoring up the support of people who have been supporting her, like older voters and women," Dr. Gregory Wawro, associate professor of political science at Columbia University, suggested.

Wawro noted that while many people have basically decided that there is a decisive frontrunner in this election, delegate count wise everything is still rather close. He reminded us that this is still a competitive primary, Senator Clinton is still in the race and ultimately this nomination process will probably continue up until the Democratic Convention.

"It's hard to see that there will be a knock out win for either of these candidates," Wawro said, "unless Obama has some sweeping victories in key states like Texas and Ohio."

So Clinton now pulls no punches critiquing Obama's platform, calling the media biased against her and rallying any supporters that she can.

Despite all of these efforts, some are a bit more skeptical that Senator Clinton has any viable moves left.

"I honestly don't think there is anything Hillary can do at this point to win the nomination," Dr. Brandon Bartels, a Stonybrook political science associate professor said. "Obama has all the momentum after the string of victories he has amassed, and I think he has sealed the deal. Also, I believe it is nearly impossible, given proportional allocation of delegates, for Clinton to surpass Obama in the delegate count, even if she wins in Texas and Ohio."

A Cleveland Plain-Dealer poll of Ohio voters published on March 1 showed Clinton leading Obama, 47% to 43%, a statistical tie. The votes broke down along the typical lines: women voters supported Clinton 53% to 38% for Obama, and black voters chose Obama over Clinton 83% to 8%. On the issue of health care, 33% of the Ohio voters preferred Clinton's plan to 18% for Obama. When it came to NAFTA, supposedly the big issue in this primary because of the trade agreement's impact on Ohio's economy, the voters didn't see much difference between the candidates' positions. Most interestingly, the poll found that over 90% of those polled said they were set on their choices and they would not change their minds.

Lisa Renee, a Toledo blogger who writes about the Ohio political scene at GlassCityJungle, was a John Edwards supporter. After he dropped out of the race, Lisa switched to Clinton because she preferred her health care and college tuition assistance programs and believed she "would stand the best chance of surviving the Republican attack machine of pacs and 527's." When asked what Clinton could do to sway voters in her area, Lisa replied in an email:

"For Hillary to win my part of Ohio, she really needs to continue to focus on the economy, the differences in her health care plan and the college tuition issue. I'd suggest the college tuition issue most of all needs to be stressed since there are a great many non-traditional students who have been expressing concern that the Obama plan would leave them out or be too difficult to obtain, mixed with the reality that $4,000 does not buy much even in attending a Community College."

In reality, though, there isn't a lot left for the candidates to do other than work to turn out their voters. Lisa wrote that the Ohio vote was inevitably going to be close because of "the fact that both candidates are similar when it comes to many of their platform decisions. People are left to decide as I did on small differences or focus on the sex/race aspect of the race which many are doing."

Jeff Leis, chairman of the Warren County Democratic Party, in an email response, said, "Both candidates need to continue what they are doing. They need to visit as many corners of the state as they can before Tuesday. They need to speak the voter's concerns and not take negative shots at one another. Keep it positive."

He added that, "It is important to understand that the Democratic supporters here in Warren Co. feel very fortunate to have such incredible candidates to choose from and when the dust settles we will be ready to support the candidate that comes out on top."

So here we are, at the battlefront, both sides glaring each other in the eye and skillfully watching each others' moves, keeping each other in check. But it seems so odd that this election process has gotten to this point, particularly since Senator Clinton seemed like she would walk away with this election several months ago. Many people are asking themselves, "How did we get here?"

Bartels chalks this up to Obama's personality and message permeating the hearts of more Americans than Senator Clinton has been able to do.

"While I actually agree with some critics that Obama is more about broad, diffuse pronouncements (which sometimes turn into platitudes) than specific substance, it is undisputed that his positive, enthusiastic appeals to Democrats have taken hold," Bartels said. "While Clinton excels in the role of policy wonk, Obama makes people feel good. Making people feel good will almost always trump 'wonkishness' in the minds of votes."

Decisive action should be taken now, as time is running out. If Senator Clinton wants to walk away with this nomination and head toward the general election, perhaps she should take her own words from last night, which she said referring to the current status of healthcare in America, to heart.

Comments

[RussnCA]

Hillary seems to be performing very well with Democrats. Now that John McCain is the nominee it is pretty clear that the battle will be for the center. Hillary's older supporters are far more reliable than the coalition of liberal Democrats from red states and under 30 year olds that Barack is leveraging.

Add in a Florida and Michigan primary and Hillary could possible run the delegate count!

[1dogs2]

Clinton and her advisors have misread the public mood. Unfortunately, both they and Clinton's rabid supporters (e.g., the irrational among her supporters who post comments on this site) not only fail to understand the damage they are all doing to Clinton herself, but also to the Democratic party and hence to the country and the world. Her ambition to be the first woman president (and to perpetuate her husband's triangulation brand of politics, which brought us Bush and the present disastrous state of affairs) appears to trump the possibility of a broad-based colalition of progressives and a majority sufficient to actually accomplish something. Unless and until she becomes the nominee, I will continue to hope that those who are attracted to Obama's vision of a civil and transparent kind of politics will recognize Clinton's destructive attempt to drag political discourse down to the level that she seems to enjoy for what it is, and that they outnumber those who apparently have no objection to more of the same old zero-sum game we have endured for the past 15 years.

[kcforshort]

Well said! I've posted elsewhere that she may win OH & TX today after reverting to gutter politics (and outright lies), but it will come at a significant cost. With so many eyes upon her in the age of blogging & youtube, you can't spin this stuff away. She's rolling around in the mud for all to see &
and has given Obama an opening to bounce back by going after her directly (and correctly) on the issues of character, personal ambition at the expense of the common good, etc.

She is making his case that corrupt, establisment politicians fight tooth & nail to hang on to power...at any cost. All he has to do now is call her out on it. And she is not winning voter friends outside of OH & TX with these tactics. In fact, I have to give you credit for being forgiving enough to still entertain voting for her is she somehow becomes the nominee (via superdelegate armtwisting & favors). The fake NAFTA ad was the final straw for me...as if the war votes & everything else weren't enough to turn my stomach at the polls in Nov. should her name top the ballot.

[Plowboy]

She doesn't pull her punches. She also doesn't mind hitting foul. In fact one of her strong nsupporters has said that the Democrats neded her to oppose McCain instead of Obama because of that. She can and will get as dirty as the Republicans.

Fine argument, except for one thing: do we reaqlly want to continue cchoosing cheaters as our leaders? Haven't we realized already that when we do that,we are the easiest for themto cheat.

I think we need to choose someone who isn't so dirty. We've seenthat old stuff. Something new can't be worse than what we got with it.

[jsrl317]

The funny thing is are these polls. None has been right. In all cases where she has a slight lead she loses. where she has a bigger deficit he clobbers. High voter turnout seems to help him more.

Hilary is acting strange and stupid all at once. Her statement that McCain has more experience for the job than Obama seems to be setting her up for a McCain VP.

She is such a traitor, how can anyone voice support for her as a Democrat. Besides, we all know people have doubts about Obama. But what is without a doubt are Clintons negatives which have not changed.

It is this simple Democrats, elect Clinton, nominate her, and you will lose. let's see how dumb this party has become. Today will be very telling.