Fallout

Pennsylvania State Senator Leeanne Washington, and Democrats Dar Thomas and and Susan Petrow announced this morning that they are switching from supporting Hillary to Obama because of Hillary's negativity and dishonesty.

The Philadephia Daily News endorsed Obama, and the Harrisburg Patriot News also did yesterday. That's pretty much a clean sweep of major PA newspapers. This doesn't necessarily translate into popular votes-- Obama swept the big papers in Texas, too. But it helps even out Clinton's Rendell machine advantage.

The ABC debacle last night got big ratings, especially the first half hour. But the fallout continues today with a major level of rage against the network and its "moderators"--if ever a word was ironic, this is it. Most but not all reviews say Obama had a bad debate or even his worst debate, but a few got the point that he was talking directly to voters about the "gotcha" questions, and Hillary remained negative, scoring debate points, but underscoring her reputation.

But I believe voters hear Obama when he says (and he said in the debate):

I think what's important is to make sure that we don't get so obsessed with gaffes that we lose sight of the fact that this is a defining moment in our history. We are going to be tackling some of the biggest issues that any president has dealt with in the last 40 years. Our economy is teetering not just on the edge of recession, but potentially worse. Our foreign policy is in a shambles. We are involved in two wars. People's incomes have not gone up, and their costs have. And we're seeing greater income inequality now than any time since the 1920s.

In those circumstances, for us to be obsessed with this -- these kinds of errors I think is a mistake. And that's not what our campaign has been about.
What our campaign has been about is offering some specific solutions to how we move these issues forward and identifying the need to change the culture in Washington, which we haven't talked at all about, but that has blocked real reform decade after decade after decade. That, I think, is the job of the next president of the United States. That's what I intend to do. That's why I'm running.

Obama is betting that people hear him on this. I'm betting on it, too, because if they aren't, this country is finished.