England for Obama

It’s a terrible indictment of the corporate news media in America that time after time it’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report which report on the facts and call the lies for what they really are in this election. So it was yesterday when The Daily Show turned their attention to the Clinton campaign’s desperate attempt to rewrite the rules of the Democratic contest. Enjoy:

The polls for the Pennsylvania primary close in about an hour and the Obama team is expected to lose. They’ve always expected to lose Pennsylvania but, contrary to what the Clinton camp would have everybody believe, a win is not always win!

Starting with a 20-point advantage, Pennsylvania was always Hillary’s to lose. She has family roots in the state, she has the support of the Democratic establishment - including Governor Rendell’s extensive network - and former President Bill Clinton is still fondly remembered in contrast to Bush.

At the start of the campaign, they were so confident that even one of their own Pennsylvania spokesmen explained to the Washington Post on 7 March that:

“We can build a team here that is unbeatable.”

“Even if the other side runs more television ads or sends more mailings, they can’t beat us on the ground. We’ve got the support of the people that control the infrastructure here in the state. We’ve got that institutional structure that can deliver people on Election Day.”

Clinton started with every advantage. It should have been an easy romp home for her, but instead she had to resort to a “slash and burn” campaign of negative attacks to even stay in the running.

As the campaign has proceeded, and Obama steadily gained in the polls, voices which rightly said that she needs to win, and win big have been drowned out by the Clinton campaign’s more recent spin that “a win is a win”.

This is nonsense.

The contest is a delegate battle and Obama is leading by a huge margin. Delegates are apportioned proportionally based on the vote, so a 10% margin of victory is not the same as, say, a 5% margin. Hillary’s campaign know this to be true, the media know this to be true, the superdelegates know this to be true as well.

Whatever the result in an hour’s time, Hillary Clinton still can not win the nomination without conducting more of her “slash and burn” campaign against Barack Obama. The only question left is: will her shrinking donor base and the superdelegates let her continue to slash and burn, or can the rightful victor of the overall contest start taking on McCain?

Having already broken one record by receiving over 1 million individual donations, Barack Obama last month notched up another — a record monthly donation total. In February 2008, $55 million was donated in an effort to secure the Democratic Party nomination. No campaign has ever raised this much in a single month in the history of presidential primaries.

Barack contacted us with this message:

As you know, we’ve won 27 of 41 contests and have maintained our commanding lead among pledged delegates.

But today I want to share another staggering number: supporters like you donated more than $55 million to this campaign in the month of February.

That’s a humbling achievement, and I am very grateful for your support.

No campaign has ever raised this much in a single month in the history of presidential primaries. But more important than the total is how we did it — more than 90% of donations were $100 or less, and more than 385,000 new donors in February pushed us past our goal of more than 1,000,000 people owning a piece of this campaign.

From the beginning, this campaign has always been funded by a movement of grassroots supporters giving whatever they can afford. And unlike Senator Clinton and Senator McCain, we have never taken money from lobbyists or PACs.

Senator Clinton has decided to use her resources to wage a negative, throw ‘everything including the kitchen sink campaign’. John McCain has clinched the Republican nomination and is attacking us daily. But I will continue to vigorously defend my record and make the case for change that will improve the lives of all Americans.