Clinton wins in Pennsylvania, NBC projects - Decision '08 - MSNBC.com
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Clinton wins in Pennsylvania, NBC projects
Democrats clash over size, importance of victory; Obama seeks momentum
By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
NBC News projected Tuesday night that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had won Pennsylvania’s presidential primary, a victory that analysts said she had to have if she were to remain a credible candidate for the Democratic nomination.
Clinton, independent analysts and the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois had predicted ahead of time that Clinton would win the state, where she enjoyed large leads in opinion polls until recently. But after closing the deficit in the last few weeks, Obama’s advisers said he would have the momentum unless Clinton won by a sizable margin.
Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s chief spokesman, maintained that the size of any Clinton victory was immaterial. Targeting his pitch to the Democratic officeholders and other superdelegates who hold the balance of power at the party convention in Denver in August, he said a win was a win.
Obama “didn’t come to get 45 percent,” Wolfson said in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. “Fifty [percent] plus 1 is a victory.”
“If he can’t outright beat us, I think it will once again raise questions for the superdelegates,” Wolfson said.
But NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell quoted senior Clinton advisers as saying their analysis of interviews with voters as they left the polls indicated that Clinton would not get a big victory. The atmosphere was tense inside the campaign because it appeared Clinton would not get a boost of momentum from the night’s returns, Mitchell reported.
The senior advisers said that coupled with the campaign’s serious financial problems — the latest Democratic filings with the Federal Election Commission showed that Clinton was running in the red, while Obama had $42 million in cash on hand — the results meant they would have to work to find a new rationale for Clinton’s remaining in the race, Mitchell reported.