The voters of Pennsylvania have spoken and Senator Clinton can claim a substantial and significant victory. A ten point margin is a big win and she is likely to gain about a dozen delegates toward closing the gap with Obama. Her supporters have reason to celebrate today and only resulting in dragging this election into the next millennium! For those of us who wanted an end to this highly charged race, we have to shake the hands of our opponents, maintain a stiff upper lip and shepherd on!

But we have to ask the question this morning," At what price victory?"

The New York Times in an editorial this morning said,

"The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.

Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election."

Yes, there is no question that some of the tough questions will come from Karl Rove Republicans in the Fall. But we can't use that as an excuse to bring up every ugly, nasty and thoughtless side issue you can think of in order to distract from the real issues. One of the most valuable lessons I learned from Dr. Martin Luther King was you don't have to become your opponents in order to win. A real victory is when you resist the temptation to put on the coat of oppression and rise to a greater level. We don't have to become Karl Rove and adopt his ugly tactics to win an election and if we do so, we lose our soul and our reason to exist as a party.

The New York Times continued in their editorial:

"On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.

If that was supposed to bolster Mrs. Clinton’s argument that she is the better prepared to be president in a dangerous world, she sent the opposite message on Tuesday morning by declaring in an interview on ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president: “We would be able to totally obliterate them.”

By staying on the attack and not engaging Mr. Obama on the substance of issues like terrorism, the economy and how to organize an orderly exit from Iraq, Mrs. Clinton does more than just turn off voters who don’t like negative campaigning. She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama."

The temptation will be for Senator Clinton to escalate the negative tactics in her campaign. To do so is a serious long term mistake and increasingly hurts the Democratic prospects for November no matter who is the nominee. We must return to issues that cry out for leadership like the economy, the war, global warming and poverty in America.

Yes, I am an Obama supporter and I believe, at this moment he will be the likely nominee of our party with more delegates and popular votes than Senator Clinton at the end of this process. However, I do argee strongly with the conclusion of the New York Times editorial:

"After seven years of George W. Bush’s failed with-us-or-against-us presidency, all American voters deserve to hear a nuanced debate — right now and through the general campaign — about how each candidate will combat terrorism, protect civil liberties, address the housing crisis and end the war in Iraq.

It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs."