Ten Things to Remember Tuesday Night

by Seth Grahame-Smith

Hillary Clinton will win Pennsylvania.

Arguments over the meaning or meaninglessness of her win will dominate MSM and stretch bandwidth to its breaking point. Bloggers and pundits will dust off their favorite boxing metaphors: "Hillary's off the ropes!" "Obama can't land the knockout!" Hillbots will rejoice, Obamabots will panic, and McCainbots will watch Murder She Wrote and go to bed at six-thirty. I'll probably write a scathing post attempting to prove that Hillary is the devil incarnate. We'll all lose our minds.

In hope of preventing some of this hysteria (especially my own), I thought it'd be helpful to keep a few things in mind during Tuesday night's results -- from Hillary's "victory" speech to the blizzard of spin that's sure to follow:

1. Remember that there's no way Hillary can become the nominee without a superdelegate coup -- which would alienate a generation of young Democrats and dangerously fracture the party.

2. Remember that her campaign leaked internals showing an eleven point lead (as a means of firing up her supporters and getting out the vote). Therefore, any win smaller than eleven points should be considered a disappointment by her own assessment.

3. Remember that every time Hillary begins a sentence with "you know," or "my opponent," the next thing out of her mouth is a lie.

4. Remember that when Clinton surrogates say "this proves Obama can't win the big states," they're ignoring the fact that he actually won more delegates in Texas -- not to mention twice as many states as she has.

5. Remember that when the pundits argue that Obama can't win in white rural areas because they broke for Hillary, they're ignoring the fact that he won (in alphabetical order): Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

6. Remember that when Hillary talks about who will be "better against John McCain in the fall," she's talking about the fall of 2012.

7. Remember that Hillary's campaign is $10M in debt, while Obama's has more than $40M in cash on hand.

8. Remember that Hillary's lead in Pennsylvania was as a high as 26 points only a month ago.

9. Remember that Hillary's late Pennsylvania rebound was forged in the fires of negativity and fear-mongering.

10. Remember that the only manufacturing job Hillary ever brought to Pennsylvania was the manufactured notion that she was a middle-class, whisky-swilling duck killer, and not an anti-union multi-millionaire.

Seth Grahame-Smith is a writer living in Los Angeles. His next book is Pardon My President: Letters of Apology for Eight Years of George W. Bush (Quirk Books, August '08)