Wednesday-Night

Pennsylvania April 22

158 of 187 delegates to the Democratic National Convention are allocated to presidential contenders based on the results of the voting in today’s Pennsylvania Presidential Primary. A mandatory 15 percent threshold is required in order for a presidential contender to be allocated National Convention delegates at either the congressional district or statewide level.
The excellent backgrounder from the Economist below is thorough and even-handed. Read it all!
Post-industrial Pennsylvania will decide whether Hillary Clinton can continue with her presidential bid
(The Economist) Pennsylvania is a big state—the sixth-biggest in the country, in terms of population—and a varied one. [It] contains beaten-up rustbelt towns but also spanking corridors of high-tech start-ups and big-box stores. Pittsburgh feels decayed, like Cleveland, Ohio. Philadelphia has plugged itself into the booming Boston-Washington corridor.
Electorally, Pennsylvania is a stronghold of Reagan Democrats—the white blue-collar workers who side with the Democrats on the economy but with the Republicans on security and moral issues.

April 23
Two views on the primary outcome and what it means for the candidates - take your pick!
Last Night Clinton Won the Pennsylvania Primary, but Lost the War for the Nomination
Pennsylvania provided Hillary with her final real opportunity to knock the wheels off the Obama campaign. She needed a crushing victory of 18% to 25% to have any real chance of altering the math or the psychology. Demographically, Pennsylvania was made for Hillary: the second oldest state in the nation, heavily blue collar, Catholic and rural — Hillary’s voter profile. She started with a lead of almost 20 points. But her final margin of 9.37% fell far short of what was needed to stop Obama’s nomination.
A Tough Spin
Dick Polman – the Philadelphia Inquirer national political columnist breaks down the post-Pennsylvania math for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama at his Inquirer blog. “Obama’s attempt last night to spin the defeat was empirically absurd,” Polman writes. He elaborates:
“Problem was, he lost all the older voter categories, starting at age 45. He lost white people, both genders. And with respect to every background, he lost the working-class folks, the union members, and the non-college educated. He lost suburbanites (including two of the suburban Philadelphia counties, Montgomery and Bucks, that he needed to win by comfortable margins), small-town dwellers, and rural residents. He lost the white Catholics and he lost the Jews. He lost the culturally-conservative Democrats on Bob Casey’s home turf, Lackawanna County, by a 3 to 1 margin.”
April 22
Clinton Defeats Obama in Pennsylvania
With nearly half of the votes counted, Mrs. Clinton led with 54 percent of the vote to 46 percent for Mr. Obama. But the primary’s outcome is likely to split Pennsylvania’s 158 delegates between the two candidates, offering little help to Mrs. Clinton as she attempts to surmount Mr. Obama’s lead in the overall delegate count.
When will we know about the delegates? Don’t expect the full picture until at least Wednesday. There are 158 pledged delegates up for grabs. They are awarded proportionately by congressional district; if a candidate wins 58 percent of the popular vote in a district, he or she gets 58 percent of the delegates. But counting them is not that simple. For one thing, the popular vote is tallied by county, but some congressional districts overlap several counties. Elections officials say their spreadsheets are not set up to calculate the delegates automatically. So bear with them!
Turnout High at End of Long Battle in Pennsylvania
Officials said the turnout was shaping up to at least double the 26 percent recorded in the 2004 primary, and perhaps approach that of a general election
Clinton Camp Vows to Fight On, but Needs to Win 2 States
(NYT) As Pennsylvania voters cast their ballots in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisers were already preparing for an all-out battle through the last nomination contests in early June.
April 21
Final Push for Democrats in Pennsylvania
(NYT) SCRANTON, Pa. — Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama opened their final push across Pennsylvania here on Monday, rallying their committed supporters and seeking to win over a dwindling lot of undecided voters in the most expensive — and exhaustive — presidential primary in state history.
My Vote’s for Obama (if I could vote) …by Michael Moore
Friends,
I don’t get to vote for President this primary season. I live in Michigan. The party leaders (both here and in D.C.) couldn’t get their act together, and thus our votes will not be counted.
So, if you live in Pennsylvania, can you do me a favor? Will you please cast my vote — and yours — on Tuesday for Senator Barack Obama? Read the entire post for some startling revelations at the end. We cannot check their veracity, but it seems hard to believe that even Michael Moore could invent this story.
April 19
Obama keeps rolling as Clinton running out of time
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After a tough six-week stretch of campaign gaffes, roaring controversies and heightened scrutiny, Barack Obama’s presidential bid appears as strong as ever — and rival Hillary Clinton is running out of time to change the script.
… polls show Obama has whittled her once substantial double-digit lead in Pennsylvania to single digits. A Zogby poll on Friday put her lead at 4 points, a Rasmussen poll showed it at 3 points and a Los Angeles Times poll earlier this week had it at 5 points.
April 17
“Economic Choices 2008″ -The Issue of Climate Change
(PBS Nightly Business News) In western Pennsylvania, it’s the environment that’s the big issue. All three major presidential candidates favor faster, more aggressive action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There’s no question the climate change debate is heating up, and Pennsylvania is a good place to examine the economic stakes as the state prepares for next Tuesday’s presidential primary.
About Last Night…
(The Caucus, NYT) RALEIGH, N.C. – Senator Barack Obama delivered a mocking critique of Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, telling an audience here that the 90-minute session with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton exemplified the problems with Washington by not focusing on issues that truly matter to the American people.
“Last night, I think we set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people. It took us 45 minutes!”
“Forty-five minutes before we heard about health care. Forty-five minutes before we heard about Iraq,” he continued. “Forty-five — 45 — minutes before we heard about jobs. Forty-five minutes before we heard about gas prices.”
(Huffington Post) In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia. They, and their network, should hang their collective heads in shame. More
April 16
Obama and Clinton on defensive in tense debate
(Reuters) The debate, which featured few heated confrontations but plenty of probing and positioning, seemed unlikely to dramatically alter the race six days before the next Democratic showdown in Pennsylvania.
Clinton Uses Sharp Attacks in Tense Debate
… The political implications of his performance remained unclear. As Mrs. Clinton was again reminded by a poll Wednesday in The Washington Post, there are risks to going on the attack as she has over the past six weeks: She is viewed unfavorably by an increasingly large number of voters. Mrs. Clinton can afford nothing short of a strong victory in Pennsylvania’s primary on Tuesday as she looks for a rationale to proceed with her candidacy and stir doubts about Mr. Obama’s ability to appeal to white, blue-collar voters.
But Mrs. Clinton’s audience in attacking Mr. Obama and his electability was not just voters here, but also the unaligned Democratic superdelegates — elected officials and party leaders
April 13
Senator Barack Obama fought back Saturday against accusations from his rivals that he had displayed a profound misunderstanding of small-town values, in a flare-up that left him on the defensive before a series of primaries that could test his ability to win over white voters in economically distressed communities. More
April 11
The Early Word: The Keystone State Divide
… The two metropolitan areas — Philadelphia and Pittsburgh — differ in ethnic makeup, values, culture and, yes, presidential preferences. Pittsburgh, with its plethora of white, older voters, Catholics and moderates, is Mrs. Clinton’s domain. Barack Obama’s strongest hold in the state is inner-city Philadelphia, which has more young people, African Americans and highly educated folks.
April 7
Issues changing?
(The Caucus, NYT) As the candidates have criss-crossed the commonwealth leading up to the April 22 primary — also Earth Day — they have been sticking to scripts that focus on the war and the economy. Their ads talk about experience, special interests and hope. They’ve mentioned high fuel prices and alternative energy sources — mainly wind power and bio-fuels — but couched them as pocketbook issues or “green collar” job generating new industries.

“I haven’t heard a lot about the environment in either the large group speeches they’ve given or in private meetings for us super delegates,” said U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire, D-McCandless. “When I ask about what the candidates will do for our part of the state the environment is something that doesn’t come up as a national issue or part of their Western Pennsylvania pitch.”
The Union Pressure to Oust Penn
More details are emerging on how the Clinton camp came under pressure from unions before Mark Penn stepped down as the campaign’s chief political strategist.
Larry Scanlon, Afscme’s political director, said Mr. McEntee and other Afscme officials were convinced that Mr. Penn had become a liability, especially in Pennsylvania, where trade is an important issue.
April 6
Exit the Clinton Strategist
(TIME) Mark Penn, the strategist with near-total control over Hillary Clinton’s campaign message and strategy since its inception, left the campaign under pressure, her campaign announced on Sunday night. The stunning announcement came after it was revealed Friday that Penn, in his capacity as worldwide CEO of the lobbying firm Burson-Marsteller, had held discussions with officials from Colombia on a bilateral free-trade agreement. Clinton has said she is against such a pact. While campaigning for the Ohio primary, Clinton had assailed Barack Obama’s campaign for what she said was its tacit collusion with Canada over NAFTA, another controversial free-trade pact that she has said needs to be renegotiated.
Although the campaign’s statement announcing Penn’s departure as chief strategist suggested he would continue to give advice to her effort, it is impossible to overstate how fundamental a change this represents in Clinton’s campaign. Penn has had almost full autonomy to make major decisions involving what the candidate says, where she goes, and what gets conveyed in her advertisements.
April 1
“Senator Hillary Clinton’s lead in the Pennsylvania Primary is shrinking,” new polling from Rasmussen Reports shows.
The latest…telephone survey in Pennsylvania shows Clinton leading Barack Obama by just five percentage points, 47% to 42%. For Clinton, that five-point edge is down from a ten-point lead a week ago, a thirteen-point lead in mid-March and a fifteen-point advantage in early March.
Tensions clearly remain in the contest. Just 56% of Clinton supporters say they are likely to vote for Obama against John McCain; if Clinton is nominated, just 67% of Obama supporters say they are likely to vote for her against McCain.
SurveyUSA also has a Pennsylvania poll out today, with Clinton leading by 12: However, the poll showed Obama gaining ground in the Keystone State, particularly in cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and among older voters, men and conservative Democrats.
Obama Is Moving to Down-to-Earth Oratory
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Mr. Obama is grounding his lofty rhetoric in the more prosaic language of white-working-class discontent, adjusting it to the less welcoming terrain of Pennsylvania. His preferred communication now is the town-hall-style meeting.
So in Johnstown, a small, economically depressed city tucked in a valley hard by the Little Conemaugh River, Mr. Obama on Saturday spoke to the gritty reality of a city that ranks dead last on the Census Bureau’s list of places likely to attract American workers.Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, introduced the candidate as an “underdog fighter for an underdog state.”
March 28
In a surprise move, Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania has endorsed Senator Barack Obama in advance of the April 22 Democratic primary. Mr. Casey had said he would remain neutral in the race in part because he wanted to help broker a reconciliation between Mr. Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton afterward. He is joining Mr. Obama today as he begins a six-day bus trip across Pennsylvania and plans to be with him for about three days as Mr. Obama meets up with just the kind of blue collar, Catholic men who have eluded Mr. Obama. More
March 24
Record Number of Pa. Democrats Registered
(NYT) PHILADELPHIA — Democratic voter registration in Pennsylvania has hit a record of more than 4 million voters.
“It’s kind of incredible,” Harry A. VanSickle, the state’s elections commissioner, tells The Caucus as his office prepares to post the new numbers. “It’s the first time we know of that a party in Pennsylvania has gone over 4 million.”
A total of 4,044,952 people are now registered to vote in the Democratic primary; a total of 3,215,478 are registered for the Republican primary.
March 21
(The Independent) Clinton surges ahead in Pennsylvania – but has mountain to climb
Hillary Clinton is racing ahead of Barack Obama in the polls for the forthcoming Pennsylvania primary, but she still faces nearly insurmountable odds as she tries to wrest the Democratic nomination away from him.
Mrs Clinton has doubled her lead over her opponent with more than four weeks to go before the Pennsylvania vote, but her hopes of becoming a presidential contender largely depend on her opponent self-destructing between now and the end of the primary season in June.
March 8
Philly Leaders Play in the Spotlight
The city’s Democratic committee, made up of 69 ward leaders, met on Friday to talk about endorsing either Senator Hillary Clinton or Senator Barack Obama. Bill Clinton even came to the meeting to promote Mrs. Clinton The ward leaders decided not to endorse anyone, at least for now. Instead, they decided to hold another meeting later, when they could hear directly from Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama.
After Wyoming votes on Saturday and Mississippi votes on Tuesday, there is no other primary contest until Pennsylvania on April 22. That means one state gets all the attention for almost the same amount of time that 40 other states have shared the limelight with each other.
March 7
(Globe & Mail - John Ibbitson) All eyes now turn to the complex state of Pennsylvania
The Obama and Clinton campaigns are about to pour their entire resources into this fascinating, conflicted state, as both sides fight for victory on April 22 in a contest that could seriously influence who will become Democratic nominee for president.
Most Canadians think of Pennsylvania as a northern state. After all, its northwestern border touches the shores of Lake Erie. But its southeastern border includes the Delaware estuary. While its troubled cities are typically northern or Midwest manufacturing towns, its agricultural base includes such southern staples as grapes, horses and tobacco.
Pennsylvania is, in fact, a border state, with qualities of both the North and the South, which is why so much of the Civil War was fought on its soil, and why some natives refer to their state as Pennsyltucky.