As the Pennsylvania voting was underway, Clinton worked to tamp down those kinds of expectations and shift the burden of electoral proof to her front-running rival.
"I think a win is a win," she told reporters at a morning stop in the Philadelphia suburbs, employing a phrase she repeated in several election day interviews. "I think maybe the question ought to be, why can't he close the deal with his extraordinary financial advantage?"
Obama has tens of millions more in the bank than Clinton, whose last financial report showed her campaign effectively in the red. In Pennsylvania, the senator from Illinois outspent Clinton on television advertising by more than 2 to 1. Even so, Obama insisted Tuesday that he was the underdog, noting that a few weeks ago, Pennsylvania polls had shown him as many as 20 points behind.
"This is always an uphill climb," Obama told reporters after sharing pancakes at a Pittsburgh diner with his wife, Michelle. He forecast the Democratic race would last until the final votes are cast June 3 in Montana and South Dakota. The bright side, Obama said, "is we're seeing record turnouts, record involvement. We're building organizations that are getting tested."
Mathematically, with just nine contests left, it appears virtually impossible for Clinton to overtake Obama in the popular vote and among pledged delegates -- those chosen in primaries and caucuses. Her best hope was to instill enough doubts about Obama to persuade the 300 or so uncommitted superdelegates to rally to her side.
Pennsylvania was the last of the big-state contests and offered Clinton perhaps her last best chance to make the case that she could better appeal to the economically hard-pressed white voters that Democrats will need to win the White House.
The balloting Tuesday was the first in six weeks -- the last being Obama's landslide win in Mississippi. The lull was marked by a soap opera's worth of political twists and turns. There were headline-generating slaps at Obama by former New York Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro and former President Bill Clinton; controversies over the incendiary preaching of Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and Clinton's hyperbolic recollection of a trip as first lady to Bosnia; the demotion of Clinton's chief campaign strategist, Mark Penn, and the storm over Obama's characterization of life in struggling small towns.
