Clinton continues to tout electability
Posted: Thursday, May 08, 2008 1:56 PM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli
CHARLESTON, WV -- Calling West Virginia “a test” for herself and Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton made her case to local voters and those watching elsewhere that she is most electable in the fall.
“I’m winning Catholic voters and Hispanic voters and blue-collar workers and seniors, the kind of people that Sen. McCain will be fighting for in the general election,” she said. “Now some call you swing voters. I call you Americans.”
It wasn’t just swing voters -- but swing states -- that she argued were on her side, rattling off the states that she’s won in primaries, including Michigan and Florida (where neither Clinton nor Obama campaigned).
“Now the delegate math may be complicated, but the electoral math is easy,” she said. We need 270 electoral votes to win in November.”
Speaking directly to those on hand, she said West Virginia was another such state that needs to be in the Democratic column, adding that while polls show her doing well here, she wants “to do really well.” Earlier, she implicitly said that she’s targeting the so-called Reagan Democrats.
“I think it’s fair to say that West Virginia is a test,” she said. “It’s a test for me and it’s a test for Senator Obama. Because for too long we have let places like West Virginia slip out of the Democratic column... I remember these are the voters right here in West Virginia who delivered two terms to President Reagan and two terms to President Clinton, and I like that outcome better.”
She called the “hard-working voters” of the Mountain State the “heart and soul of the Democratic Party and the backbone of our victory in November.
“We’ve always said were the party of the people haven’t we?” she said. “We’re the party of the waitress on her feet. We’re the party of the nurse on the night shift. We’re the party of the worker on the line, and we’re the party of the coal miner on the job. We’re the party of the hardworking people of West Virginia. We stand with you and we will stand up for you.”
Clinton spoke to a small crowd inside the State Capitol building here, after organizers scrapped plans for an outdoor rally due to weather. She was introduced by first lady Gail Manchin, who praised her record as senator and first lady but offered no endorsement. Clinton said she had met before the rally with Gov. Joe Manchin, a first-term Democrat who remains in the ranks of uncommitted superdelegates.
