On the On the Mark Penn/Howard Wolfson/Guy Cecil conference call right for Team Clinton. Following is a rough translation of some of Penn's remarks. Most interesting is his claim that Barack Obama is the "establishment candidate."
This is a contest that would be all but overall if it were winner-take-all contest [in the states]. We predicted we'd be ahead at this point and we are ahead. We won in blue states, we won in red states....There are some myth-busters…She won more people who decided on the very last day. Sen. Obama may have had some momentum going into the final days, but she had it among those who decided on the last day. This [Obama] momentum was broken and she bounced back to a significant victory here....It's often said she's not winning in rural areas. She won rural districts in MO…and won youth vote in CA and MA....The kinds of margins we saw in MI and FL were the kinds of margins we saw in the contested states. Those are states where we have very large margins. So, when they hear both messages…we see the kinds of margins we saw in places like MI and FL....Overall people rejected an increasingly establishment-oriented campaign of Obama.
--Tom Schaller UPDATE: By their count, and presumably Team Obama's, the delegate results from last night could be as close as a single delegate. Penn said at most one or the other will come out ahead by no more than six delegates. Just think about how tight that is.
