Making Hillary’s case

WASHINGTON — Whether the super delegates will listen is another question, but top officials from Hillary Clinton’s campaign made an impressive case at breakfast Friday with reporters that the New York senator would be the strongest Democratic presidential candidate.

Pollster Geoff Garin and communications director Howard Wolfson said that since the beginning of March, Clinton has won more states, more delegates and more votes than Barack Obama. She has won the big states, the battleground states, and the swing “Reagan Democrats” — or blue-collar voters.

Of 20 key districts that helped Democrats take back Congress in 2006, Clinton has won 16, they said. And according to public opinion surveys and exit polls she seen by Democratic voters as the stronger candidate on the key issues facing voters — the economy.

Now, Garin and Wolfson said, she’s poised to win the primary in West Virginia, which they called a key battleground state, by as much as 15 percent.

They made it clear they’re not oblivious to the political environment, which sees Obama as the likely nominee, given his lead in delegates and the popular vote, and his strong win and narrow loss this week in North Carolina and Indiana, respectively. But they said they remain hopeful the superdelegates will not simply ratify the results thus far but rather will fulfull their role, which is to vote their conscience based on who they think would be the best nominee and the best president.

Listing five states where the two Democratic candidates fare differently against the likely Republican nominee, John McCain, the two aides said Clinton wins Ohio, Missouri and Florida while Obama loses them. Obama, meanwhile, wins Colorado and Wyoming while Clinton loses those two.

“It’s hard to imagine,” Wolfson said, “a path to a Democratic win that doesn’t include either Ohio or Florida, or both.”