A landslide victory in West Virginia might be too little, too late for Clinton

Despite pundits and members of her own party appearing to concede the presidential race for her, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is moving ahead at full speed.

She is heavily favored to win Tuesday’s West Virginia primary, but most analysts agree that a victory may come too late to save her campaign, which is reeling after the senator failed to meet expectations last week in Indiana and North Carolina.

{mosads}But one senior Clinton adviser said Monday that a win in West Virginia will allow Clinton to change the prevailing storyline that the nomination battle is essentially over.

The adviser said a big win for Clinton, coming once again on the backs of white, rural, blue-collar voters, gives her ammunition to go to superdelegates and continue to make the case that only she can win with a demographic that will be important in November.

Democratic front-runner Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has not campaigned seriously in the state, and his Election Day plans hint that he is turning his attention to the general election and presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).

Obama is scheduled to be in the swing state of Missouri Tuesday while Clinton, who spent Mother’s Day campaigning in West Virginia, is scheduled to hold an election-night victory party in Charleston, W.Va.

“I believe it’s a problem that Sen. Obama has essentially conceded the state and isn’t campaigning there,” Howard Wolfson, a senior Clinton adviser, said Friday.

Obama essentially conceded the state in remarks he delivered there Monday, saying that he is “honored that some of you will support me, and I understand that many more here in West Virginia will probably support Sen. Clinton.”

Polls show Clinton leading by as much as 43 percentage points and her campaign continued to make the argument that the eventual Democratic nominee will need to be able to compete with rural, working-class voters in the general election.

Despite that lead, however, Obama could stand victorious Tuesday night as many high-profile Democrats note that his landslide victory in North Carolina and narrow loss in Indiana effectively closed the door on Clinton’s chances of winning the nomination.

Since last week’s contests, superdelegates have been trickling into Obama’s column — some who had been supporting Clinton — and even neutral Democrats are making the argument that Obama is the presumptive nominee.

Former presidential candidate and ex-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), who has not endorsed either of his formal rivals, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the math no longer favors Clinton, but he stopped short of calling on her to withdraw.

Mark Kornblau, a former senior Edwards adviser, said in an e-mail Monday that Clinton needs a landslide victory not only in West Virginia and next week’s contest in Kentucky, where she also enjoys huge leads, but also in states that favor Obama.

“Only a series of landslide victories — including big victories in states like Oregon where Sen. Obama is expected to win — would give Sen. Clinton the ammunition she needs to start making the case again to superdelegates,” Kornblau said.

But Wolfson and the Clinton campaign say that a win in West Virginia does give them that ammunition.

“Why can’t Sen. Obama beat Sen. Clinton in West Virginia?” Wolfson said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Voters there have heard that he’s the presumptive nominee. They’ve seen the great press he’s gotten in the past couple of days. Let’s let them decide. They have an opportunity. They want to end this on Tuesday, they’re perfectly capable of it.”

Neil Berch, a political science professor at West Virginia University, said that because Clinton is expected to do well in West Virginia, a win will do little to bolster her argument with superdelegates.

“I don’t think it really changes the status quo,” Berch said.

Wolfson and the Clinton campaign have tried to make the case — one that some Republicans conceded Monday — that West Virginia will be a swing state in November. Wolfson pointed out Sunday that Democrats won the state in 1992 and 1996 before losing there in 2000 and 2004.

The Republican National Committee (RNC), which now seems to be almost wholly focused on Obama as its general election opponent, rolled out three West Virginia Republicans who targeted the Illinois senator as being out of touch with the state on issues like the economy and gun control.

But all three of those officials agreed that West Virginia is a battleground state in November.