Why the Never-Ending Primaries Are TV's Fault
So Hillary's "leaked" internal polling numbers gave her an 11 point lead in Pennsylvania, and Obama publicly predicted he'd lose by 8-10 percentage points. TV talking heads decided she needed to win by "more than 10 points" to justify staying in the race. And Clinton ended up clobbering Obama with 9.2 percent victory! Then, oddly, everyone suddenly admitted that the entire Pennsylvania primary was an elaborate farce with no actual point.
"'Pennsylvania has settled nothing,' the Fox News Channel anchor Chris Wallace concluded, 'and it's all back two weeks from tonight, same place, same station.'" Oh, hah. Because in two weeks is Indiana and North Carolina. SUCKERS. And now we're in a weird spot where everyone admits that nothing changed and that Clinton's chances of winning the nomination remain highly unlikely but they are still encouraging her to go on with it by crowing about her nominal victory.
Via Andrew Sullivan, a slightly unfair look at how Hillary can still pull this off:
Now: Obama is expected to win North Carolina. That means it won't count. Because he's expected to win it, see, so when he does, it won't be a surprising enough result to change the way people on TV talk about the race. Which means it all comes down to Indiana. Which is totally up in the air!
Indiana has a lot a white people, but is it more like Obama-friendly Illinois or Clinton-friendly Ohio? Here's the fun part: we get to spend the next two weeks finding out! Except Indiana is not as close to the eastern seaboard as Pennsylvania so there will be many fewer famous TV people there.