April 22, 2008

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(Via Daily Kos.)

Tonight’s outcome is unlikely to change the dynamic of this lengthy primary. Fully three quarters of the remaining delegates will be selected in states other than Pennsylvania. While there are 158 delegates at stake in today’s primary, there are 157 up for grabs in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries two weeks from today. We expect that by tomorrow morning, the overall structure of the race will remain unchanged—except for the fact that there will be 158 delegates off the table.

Full story here.

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Via Political Wire.)

An early indication that Sen. Barack Obama thinks he’ll lose today’s Pennsylvania primary: He’s heading to Indiana tonight for a rally with John Mellencamp while Sen. Hillary Clinton plans a victory party in Philadelphia.

In addition, Obama’s campaign also released a memo essentially erasing all expectations of a win.

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(Via New York Times.)

Imagine President Barack Obama is preparing his first State of the Union message. Would he want Vice President Hillary Rodham Clinton tut-tutting with edits or suggesting how she could write it better? Would he want to hear Second Spouse Bill Clinton wax on and on about favorite lines from his own speeches?

Senator Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, greeting children Monday at a day-care center in Blue Bell, Pa. More Photos >

Alternatively, would the poll-obsessed Clintons want to wake up in the White House residence in 2009 and read about Vice President Obama’s sky-high popularity ratings, and how they make her look like his stern old lady?

For months, the Clinton and Obama campaigns have been hearing suggestions of a so-called dream ticket of Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama. Former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York has pressed the idea most aggressively — it also came up in last week’s debate — while a major Clinton supporter in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary, Gov. Edward G. Rendell, has blessed it, too.

And some uncommitted superdelegates — the party leaders and elected officials whose votes may determine the nominee — see such a unity ticket as a way to short-circuit a fight for the nomination all the way to the Democratic convention in August, and to blend the voter bases of the two candidates.

Full story here.

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(Via Philadelphia Inquirer.)

Still undecided?

If you’re a Pennsylvania Democrat and today dawned with you still struggling, it could mean one of several things:

You could be one of those terminally indecisive people, for whom even ordering at Applebee’s becomes an hour-long agony.

More likely, it means you’re an earnest citizen who feels how momentous this choice is - but not a person who can resolve it through identity politics, the tug of “first woman” or “first black.”

Perhaps you’re a substance maven whose study of wonky Web sites has taught you that, along the grand spectrum of political thought, the differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama can be measured in microns.

Or, maybe, Barack and Hillary (and, after six weeks, we Pennsylvanians are on a first-name basis) have come to strike you as pushy houseguests who overstayed their welcome. Their bickering and bombarding ads have left you equally annoyed with each.

Whatever the root of your indecision, let me as a fellow citizen share the thought that decided my own mind. Today, I’m going to push the pad that lights up Barack Obama’s name. I’m going to do this though concerned he may be a little callow for the job; though put off by his self-righteous pouting at the last debate; though respectful of Hillary Clinton’s smarts and superb service as a senator; though unsure who has the best chance of winning in the fall; though aware how much a Clinton win would mean to the person whose opinion I value most in the world, my wife’s.

Here’s what it comes down to: Clinton and Obama have different understandings of what it will take to lead America in 2009 and beyond. And I prefer Obama’s.

Full story here.

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(Via RealClearPolitics.)

The result of the 2008 election may come down to how voters decide to define Barack Obama. Is he Adlai Stevenson or John F. Kennedy? Is he a detached former law review editor or a passionate agent of change? Is he an upscale reformer focused on process or a populist who will turn Washington and the country around?

One of the central lessons of the Pennsylvania primary campaign is that Obama’s personality is now far more important than either Hillary Clinton’s or John McCain’s. That’s true not only because voters have a longer history with Clinton and McCain, but also because so much of the energy and novelty of 2008 is the product of Obama’s rapid breakthrough to wide acclaim.

As a result, almost all of the turns in this contest have been driven by how Obama presented himself and how voters perceived him.

When Obama is in control of his own image, his moments of detachment and irony are celebrated as bearing remarkable similarities to those of the cool, shrewd and confident JFK, who won in 1960. When doubts about Obama creep in, those same characteristics are disparaged for resembling the diffidence and distance of Stevenson, who lost in 1952 and 1956.

At its most exciting moments, Obama’s campaign has been compared to the great crusades for change in our country’s history. His appeal to African-Americans and the young of all races has led enthusiasts to see his effort as the reincarnation of Robert F. Kennedy’s brief, glorious and tragic 1968 run for the presidency.

But when Obama falls into the long pauses he is sometimes given to in debate, the wordy answers he periodically offers to questions, or the visible impatience he exhibits toward the less-elevating aspects of politics, he seems far more the law review editor, the professor, the classic good-government guy whose reach to society’s hard-pressed is limited.

Full story here.

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(Via ABC News.)

For the last six weeks Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., have battled and bickered and both have unleashed a barrage of negativity in television ads that have aired thousands of times in the state.

That barrage of ads will come to an end today as the Democrats of Pennsylvania head to the polls in what could be a make-or-break day for Clinton, or prolong the Democratic primary season into at least another month.

Clinton Ad Features Osama bin Laden

In an ad that began airing in Pennsylvania Monday morning, Clinton implies she is tougher than Obama.

“Who do you think has what it takes?” the narrator asks in an ad depicting historical images of crises that presidents have had to deal with: Osama bin Laden, headlines about the stock market crash of 1929, long gas lines from the 1970s oil-shocks, images of the Cold War, Hurricane Katrina and soldiers. It features the first image of Osama bin Laden to be used in a TV ad this political season.

Full story here.

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(Via ABC News.)

Far from the Democratic battlefield of Pennsylvania, Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was campaigning where GOP candidates for president rarely go because they don’t have to.

McCain chose Alabama, one of the reddest states on the Electoral College map, to launch a week-long swing through some of the nation’s economically distressed areas.

Even more extraordinary, McCain went to Selma, the site of one of the most notorious episodes of the Civil Rights movement, and talked about that episode.

Instead of a standard stump speech, he used vivid imagery to describe a dark chapter in the city’s racially-divided history. When Republicans running for president campaign in the South, they don’t often raise the uncomfortable subject of its racially segregated and violent past.

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(Via Newshoggers.com.)

Wow — we are finally here, Pennsylvania Primary day. I’ll be voting in a couple of minutes and hopefully the little old ladies will still have good cookies on sale at my polling station. I’m still not sure where the state will go tonight. I’m still comfortable with my initial call that Hillary Clinton wins the state by six points or so.

I know I’ll be at Pittsburgh Drinking Liberally as the polls close and then at a friend’s election party which hopefully will be as rocking as the Super Tuesday Party where the cops were called for noise disturbances. Yeah, we are wonks and nerds… Pittsburgh Drinking Liberally will be at Buffalo Blues on Highland Avenue on the 2nd Floor loft, and we’ll be starting at 7:00pm.

So what types of reports could we hear today that could give us some indicators of who should do well tonight? I’ll start with a favorable Obama set of reports and then go to a favorable Clinton report.

Full story here.

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(Via Truthdig.)

Sen. Hillary Clinton paid a (virtual) visit Monday to Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown,” where she offered explanations for why she used an image of Osama bin Laden in her new campaign ad and why she accepted the support of Richard Mellon Scaife, the Pittsburgh-based media mogul who was once considered a key figure in the “vast right-wing conspiracy” against the Clintons during Bill’s tenure in office.

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