On Morning After, Obama Campaign Makes Its Case

In a conference call with reporters this morning, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe laid out how the Obama campaign sees the post-Pennsylvania electoral landscape.

He also discussed yesterday's loss. "Pennsylvania is clearly a state demographically that was favorable to [Clinton], and we fought as hard as we could," Plouffe said.

Plouffe took reporters through the campaign's strategy in upcoming states, noting that the Obama campaign expects the primary battle to last into June. He said that Clinton would have to win 70 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to erase Obama's pledged delegate lead, and argued "the structure of the race remains the same."

He also rejected the notion that Clinton is more likely than Obama to beat John McCain in November, an argument that the Clinton campaign has been making in an effort to sway superdelegates to the Clinton camp.

"We think this is a flawed exercise to somehow suggest performance in primaries is somehow a leading indicator as to what's going to happen in the general," he said, arguing against the notion that Clinton's wins in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Ohio point to her relative strength in November.

Plouffe argued that Obama is a "much stronger general election candidate," citing states in which the Illinois senator polls better than Clinton in a head to head match up with McCain.

He also said that Democrats will back whichever Democrat is nominated, and so it is strength with independents that could decide the election. And on that front, he said, it is Obama, not Clinton, who is the stronger candidate.

And asked if the campaign would go negative in upcoming contests – as was suggested by an Obama adviser in a story this morning – Plouffe said: "We're not going to do that."