Politics on the Hudson

In an interview with XM radio’s POTUS ‘08 channel this afternoon, Barack Obama indicated there will be no moral victory is he loses Pennsylvania in a squeaker to Hillary Rodham Clinton tonight.

“Let me cut to the chase,’’ he said, according to a media pool report. “A win is 50 plus one. So if Sen. Clinton gets over 50 percent, she’s won the state. I don’t try to pretend I enjoy getting 45 percent and that’s a moral victory. We’ve lost the state.

“What I do believe is we’re coming to the end of this process and if you look we’ve won twice as many states.

“We’ve won the popular vote by a fairly substantial margin. We’ve got a very big lead in pledged delegates and we’ve competed in every state, win or lose.’’

Obama addressed the criticism he hasn’t won some critical large states such as Ohio.

“Part of the reason, for example, we might not win one of the big states is we’ve decided we could get more delegates by campaigning in five small states,’’ he said. “That was a decision based on the notion that this was a delegate race.’’