Skip to content

For Obama, his loss is still a win

BARACK OBAMA last night was taking comfort in making the Pennsylvania primary less than a blowout for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

BARACK OBAMA last night was taking comfort in making the Pennsylvania primary less than a blowout for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Already campaigning in Indiana, the Democratic presidential front-runner told supporters in Evansville last night that he was able to narrow the gap in Pennsylvania, register a record number of voters and rally people of all backgrounds to his campaign.

After the bruising Pennsylvania contest, Obama said bickering and tit-for-tat politics obscured the great issues of the day - two wars, a recession and a planet in peril.

The Illinois senator told his Evansville rally that many people didn't think he could make it a close race in Pennsylvania, where Clinton once enjoyed large leads in polls.

Clinton didn't want to hear about spreads or margins in Pennsylvania's primary.

Instead, she repeated the line she used in interviews she gave before the polls closed and the tally was counted: Victory, not its margin, is what matters.

"A win is a win," Clinton told reporters yesterday morning after greeting voters at a polling place in Conshohocken. "Maybe I'm old-fashioned about that."

Later, however, ahead by 10 points with 85 percent of the vote counted, Clinton noted that she won in Pennsylvania despite being significantly outspent by Obama.

Obama's statewide ad assault helped winnow Clinton's lead in Pennsylvania, which had been as high as 20 points in some polls, to single digits in some surveys.

After the Indiana speech, Obama was headed home to Chicago, to sleep in his own bed and have breakfast this morning with his daughters, Sasha, 6, and Malia, 9, whom he hasn't seen in days. Then he was to head back to Indiana later in the day for more of the long campaign. *