After winning Pennsylvania, Clinton came out with both barrels blazing. She has done everything but declare herself the winner. She won Pennsylvania, and so “the tide has turned.” She has started attacking Obama for not being able to “close the deal” in states like Pennsylvania. She obviously thinks that will look good to the fat cats who will ultimately make the decision for who the Democratic nominee will be. I think the question will really come down to how much those same fat cats owe Bill Clinton…if there is enough political capital in the coffers, then she will get the nod.

Personally, I think it is hilarious that such a big deal is being made of the fact that she has won Pennsylvania, and now she is on the upswing. It appears to me that she is still the underdog, and is still quite a bit behind Obama in the delegate race. At last count, Hillary has 1575 delegates and Obama has 1705. I think Obama is still in the lead, if I remember my basic mathematics principles correctly. He is still leading in states won, delegates won, and in the popular vote. Yes, I think this is going to be interesting coming down to September and the Democratic Convention!

Another thing that Clinton has completely ignored is the mass changing of registrations from Republican to Democrat. I know she, as well as the general media outlets, want to believe that this is because the Republicans are fed up with their leadership and have jumped ship to the other party. The local news in my area reported on it in just that way (and even had a few interviews with folks who made the claim, with sly grins on their faces). I’m sure this major shift had absolutely nothing to do with Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” which encouraged registered Republicans to make the change. I heard on Mike Church this morning that he was encouraging the same thing, and referred to the movement as the “Talk Radio Militia.” According to an article on MSNBC (it pains me to even site them, but surely their pure statistics are accurate) since the first of the year, there have been 101,499 new applicants for Democratic registration, and 132,688 have switched to the Democratic party. Now, I am not naive enough to believe ALL of those are the result of the movement encouraged by talk radio. But, I think it is ridiculously naive for the Democrats to think that the movement is all legitimate movement of discontent (maybe bitter?) Republicans. I guess maybe we will find out in November!

Hillary is going to need to win big to really have a chance in this election. However, I predict that she will win with a significant margin, at least enough to keep her in the race. Rush Limbaugh has been pretty successful (it seems) with “Operation Chaos”, which has encouraged Republicans to change their registration to “Democrat” just to be able to vote in the Democratic primary. The whole point was to cause the infighting of the Democratic party to continue for as long as possible, and in the end to hand the nomination to Hillary. The belief is that Barak is the stronger candidate (because he has been propped up as such, not because of anything that he has actually accomplished), so Republicans want Hillary in the general election. It will certainly be interesting to see what might happen with this vital primary today.

There is a good chance that both Clinton and Obama will be in this race until late into the summer. They will probably both stay in until the Democratic Convention. Clinton’s best chance may be to hang on until then, and then steal the nomination through the Super Delegates. It is interesting to me that there are no rules at the Democratic Convention that required won delegates to actually vote for their candidate. Clinton has been taking advantage of that point to try and convince some delegates to vote for her at convention, even though the districts they represent were won by Obama.

There are certainly a lot of variables still in play on the Democratic side of this election. If Clinton draws closer through the primary today, then she will redouble her efforts to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida (even though she agreed to exclude them because of their heinous crime of moving up the date of their primaries). It certainly looks like those two states could have a great impact on the final outcome of the election. I think I may enjoy sitting back and watching Barak and Hillary duke it out for the next few months. Who knows, this may last until September 5th and the Democratic Convention. With enough fighting among themselves, even the Democrats may be sick of them both by the time the general election rolls around!