For Democrats, still no resolution on nominee

BY GLENN THRUSH AND CRAIG GORDON | glenn.thrush@new

April 24, 2008

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama may have the numbers on his side, but Hillary Rodham Clinton seems to own the map.

Clinton's triumph in Pennsylvania Tuesday pushed panicky Democrats further from a final resolution, but it finally furnished Clinton with a plausible, if improbable, endgame.

Her path to the nomination is contingent on convincing superdelegates that Obama can't win in November because he's lost big contested states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, New Jersey and Florida.

"I don't know where [Obama's] electoral map is going to come from," said New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, a Clinton supporter, referring to Obama's losses in states that often decide the presidency.

New York Gov. David A. Paterson, speaking on a conference call yesterday, said if Obama prevails without big-state wins, "We have to question the nominating process."

The realization that Clinton's cash-starved campaign now has a viable rationale for going on energized her supporters. The campaign expected to raise $10 million online in the first 24 hours after her victory.

If the party's national leadership was hoping for closure on Tuesday, they got a kind of stalemate from which neither side has an obvious escape.

Obama has a commanding 157-delegate lead but it's unlikely he'll reach the 2,025 mark needed to secure the nomination.

Clinton has dominated most of the major states Democrats have won in recent elections - but hasn't won by margins large enough to result in big delegate gains; her sizable win Tuesday only netted a dozen delegates.

"What happened on Tuesday adds credibility to an argument that could allow her to change the race," said Stu Rothenberg, an independent political analyst based in Washington.

"If, come the end of this primary season, she can point to data showing that in the key states the Democrats must win, she can win and he can't, I think that would change the race fundamentally and superdelegates would consider that," he said, adding: "She is still a significant underdog."

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said yesterday Pennsylvania hadn't altered "the structure of the race," pointing out Clinton would have to win 70 percent of delegates in nine remaining contests to catch up.

Clinton's win in Pennsylvania was powered by her strong showing among whites, Catholics, blue-collar workers and gun owners - groups that have been cool to Obama. Speaking on National Public Radio yesterday, top Obama strategist David Axelrod suggested his candidate didn't need to win among those groups to defeat John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee.

"The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years," he said. "This is not new that Democratic candidates don't rely solely on those votes." But Clinton questioned Obama's electability. "I won the states that we have to win - Ohio, now Pennsylvania," she said on CNN yesterday. "It's very hard to imagine a Democrat getting to the White House without winning those states."

Some analysts were quick to throw cold water on the Hillary-on-the-rise scenario.

For one thing, a double-digit Obama win in North Carolina on May 6, where 1.5 million Democrats are expected to vote, could easily halt Clinton's momentum. And the party's rules make it almost impossible for her to pick up big chunks of delegates to overtake him.

"She needs to win almost every remaining pledged delegate, and that's just not going to happen," said Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Political Report.

Staff writer Nia-Malika Henderson contributed to this story.