Hillary Clinton hoped to keep her presidential campaign alive Tuesday by winning Ohio and perhaps even Texas, thus buying herself seven weeks to campaign against Barack Obama in Pennsylvania.
“These are two really critical states,” Clinton said Tuesday. “You don’t get to the White House as a Democrat without winning Ohio. And we’re going to put Texas in play.”
Obama won Vermont on Tuesday and tried to downplay the possibility of Clinton winning the popular vote in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island.
“We’ve got a very sizable delegate lead that’s going to be hard to overcome,” the Democrat said aboard his campaign plane. “We started 20 points behind in Texas and Ohio. We closed the gap, but whether it’s going to be enough to actually win is going to depend on what the turnout looks like in both states.”
Clinton was trying to stop Obama’s winning streak that, counting Vermont, had reached 12 primaries and caucuses since Super Tuesday four weeks earlier.
Obama’s momentum appeared to be building until a few days ago, when Clinton began accusing him of duplicity on the North American Free Trade Agreement and emphasizing his ties to Chicago businessman Tony Rezko, currently on trial for political corruption.
“People are beginning to say, ‘Whoa, let’s slow down here for a minute and take a second look,’” Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told MSNBC. “You can feel it here in Ohio. You can feel it in Texas.”
But a reversal of fortune for Clinton could end up harming her party. Seven more weeks of Democratic infighting might weaken the eventual nominee just in time for the general election matchup against John McCain. By the time Pennsylvania votes April 22, McCain will have spent months as the presumptive GOP nominee with the luxury of getting an early start on his general election strategy.
Sen. Chris Dodd, who is supporting Obama, warned against a protracted nomination battle.
“I’m worried about the rhetoric,” the Connecticut Democrat told MSNBC. “I don’t think it helps our interest at all to have people tearing the other candidate apart.”
On the Republican side, McCain won Ohio and Vermont on Tuesday and was expected to win Texas and Rhode Island, forcing his last remaining GOP challenger, Mike Huckabee, to the brink of elimination. After weeks of refusing to drop out of the race, Huckabee hinted Tuesday that the end of his campaign may be near.
“After tonight, regardless of the outcome, whether we win or if we don’t, we’ve got to sit down tomorrow, and tomorrow’s going to be a day of sort of looking at the landscape and seeing what’s ahead and where do we go from here,” Huckabee said in Dallas.
