Special Report: U.S. presidential election 2008
by Wang Wei
WASHINGTON, May 13 (Xinhua) -- Despite a landslide win in the West Virginia primary on Tuesday, Hillary Rodham Clinton's way to the U.S. Democratic presidential nomination convention is not becoming flattened. Neither is Obama's.
It was not a surprise that Clinton could win by a margin as large as about 40 percentage points in the "Mountain State" which has a mixture of white, senior and female voters as well as those without college degree or higher, all belonging to the New York senator's supporter base.
Besides her popularity among these specific voter groups, Tuesday's victory could also justify her stay in the race by arguing that she is able to carry swing states that will be important to Democrats in November.
"Our hope is that super delegates will look at the results in some of these states and recognize that Senator Clinton would be the best nominee against (presumptive Republican presidential nominee) John McCain," said her chief strategist Howard Wolfson.
However, the current numbers do not favor Clinton.
She trailed Obama in the number of delegates by 165, who would vote at the nomination convention in late August, while there are only five primaries left in the next 21 days before the presidential nomination race ends.
Obama, who has led in the number of pledged delegates yielded from state primaries and caucuses and exceeded Clinton in the number of super delegates last week, is only 147 delegates short of the 2,025 needed to secure the nomination.
Clinton's vow to "fight to the end" was compromised by her uptight wallet. Despite lending her own campaign over 6 million U.S. dollars in the past month, she still shouldered a debt of more than 20 million dollars, indicating the financial woe facing her bid for the White House.
Her campaign team was also undergoing reshuffle at the decisive moment after some advisers resigned to their candidate's likely loss and turned in favor of her bowing out, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
The path to victory, mapped out by her advisers, envisions Clinton doing well in the rest five contests and winning her disputed claim to a majority of the 366 delegates from Michigan and Florida, which were stripped for the two states moving their primaries ahead before the Super Tuesday on Feb. 5.
They would also intensify the efforts to stop their super delegates from jumping to Obama's boat and the rest 246 uncommitted super delegates from joining his camp.
However, none of these three possibilities can come easy.
With all bright prospects and unbeatable advantages such as blacks' overwhelming support, Obama has no more certainties than Clinton on his long-shot bid to be the first African-American president in the country.
The fact that he could hardly win big states and increase his popularity among working-class and conservative Democrats voters raises doubt on his elect ability in November.
CNN's exit polls in West Virginia showed that almost as many of Clinton's supporters would vote for Obama as would for McCain.
Besides the controversial role of the race issue in the contest, Obama's campaign was stuck at a deeper level for his "academic instinct" as Michael Gerson said in his Washington Post column article.
"His first instinct -- the academic instinct -- is to explain and analyze, which is impressive to political writers who share that particular vocation, but this approach always places the explainer in a position of superiority," he wrote.
That might explain why Clinton's new strategy to describe Obama as a political elite out of touch with everyday America finally worked on many voters.
While campaigning for the rest primaries, Obama's team has geared up for an all-around showdown with McCain, starting from a public speech in Missouri on Tuesday night.
