Hillary's Odd Choice
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 08:50AM
Skeptic in Elections 2008

Yesterday Senator Clinton avoided elimination by winning the Pennsylvania primary by an impressive 10 percentage points.  Then IMHO she wasted her 10 minutes of free nationwide (cable) news coverage.  Why? 

Senator Obama got quickly and graciously through the obligatory congratulations and thanked and praised his supporters in Pennsylvania.  Then he segued into courting voters in the next elections with a short version of his standard stump speech (which is pretty good BTW).  In contrast, Clinton made her whole speech a victory celebration for herself, her family, her supporters, the Pennsylvania voters, etc. and really devoted no attention to courting voters in the next elections. 

In the sports world, we would think it odd that a team down 3-0 or 3-1 in the World Series or Stanley Cup series would celebrate so heartily after winning the next game.  Instead, we would expect it to focus immediately on the problem of winning 2 or 3 games straight to take the championship. 

All the pundits say raising money and corralling superdelegates are more urgent problems for Clinton than getting votes in the upcoming primaries.  But I don't see how she advanced either of those goals by using precious free air time the way she did.  Odd. 

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