The Campaign Has Benefited Both

by Steve Soto

Reuters photo of Clinton in North Carolina yesterday

Just a quick note about today’s contests. From a common sense perspective, Hillary needs to somehow win both contests in order to further her argument that her late-charging campaign provides a better chance for the party to win in November. Similarly, if Obama wins both contests and shows he can carry working class voters in Indiana, Hillary is done and should drop out. Will she? Probably not, as the Clinton campaign has thought all along that the nomination was deemed to them from Day One, no matter how god-awful a campaign they ran.

If she wins both contests, again unlikely because of Obama’s early leads in both states, and demonstrates that she continues to win working class Democrats and pick up late-switching support in states like North Carolina, she has a perfectly valid case to make to super delegates. If she does what I expect, namely winning Indiana and losing North Carolina by a smaller-than-expected margin, she will continue her campaign until the end. Many of us will gnash our teeth at this, but the polls show that the long campaign hasn’t hurt either of them in head-to-heads with McCain, even though McCain is using this time to repackage himself as someone scrambling back to the center. According to the latest NYT/CBS News poll, Obama would defeat McCain by 11 points and Clinton would defeat him by 12.

Clinton has somehow managed to recast herself as a regular Judy, focusing as she should have on real issues facing Americans. In response, Obama has rushed to shed the elitist label himself, ditched the talk about hope, and instead engaged voters on current concerns. All of this is good for both of them, and the party. A little populism and a little anger directed at the GOP’s last eight years will take the Democrats a long way this year. And because the campaign between them has been bare-knuckled and heavily-contested, the Democratic nominee will be fully prepared to not only connect with real voters on real issues, but will also be able to deal with the certain GOP slime and smear machine as well. We all know that politics isn't beanbag, and this tough campaign now ensures that our candidate has no excuse for a replay of 2004.