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Now What?

Is this protracted primary season good or bad for whomever eventually wrestles the nomination from the other's cold, dead hands? Much depends on whether a negative style of campaigning wins out over the more substantive issues style.

The New York Times bitch-slapped Hillary Clinton in an editorial, for pushing the contest further into the "mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled" side of the equation. A Newsweek poll released last week claimed that Clinton trailed her opponent by 20 points among Democrats nationally, partially because of the negativity.

Shaun Mullen, who writes for The Moderate Voice, has an excellent analysis about what could happen on the road to the Democratic convention. He argues that Clinton barely scraped out a win (of some 10 points) in Pennsylvania because she threw the kitchen sink and all the dirty dishes at her opponent.

She probably had to, considering her fast dwindling campaign coffers and the do-or-die nature of every primary since she lost momentum. But in going so relentlessly negative, Clinton may have lost more than she gained. Mullen points out that her favorable-unfavorable ratings in one national poll sank from 59-39 in New Hampshire to 39-58 in Pennsylvania.

"So why was Pennsylvania pretty much meaningless?" he writes. "Because Clinton has run out of road, as well as money."

Most of the press seems to generally agree that Clinton has an almost impossible task to win the nomination (certainly without some major damage to party politics). But that's not stopping her. Her campaign is arguing that this recent win will result in money flowing in, and superdelegates joining her team.

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