History

Pennsylvania could make history today. It could essentially make Barack Obama the 2008 Democratic nominee, by providing him with a victory that no one (almost) is predicting or expecting. Or it could simply make his nomination inevitable, by providing him with enough votes to drain the Clinton campaign of any last chance.

At this point, hours after the candidates have wrapped up their campaign and hours before the voting starts, it's all possible. Even what Hillary needs--a 25 point win--is possible. But the last polls show a much tighter result. The most respected--SUSA-- has Hillary with a six point lead. The poll with the best record in the primaries--PPP--actually gives Obama a 3 point lead, the only poll to show him ahead. The last poll, the not-so-respected Zogby, shows Clinton with a ten point lead. (Meanwhile, the Tuesday national tracking poll from Gallup shows Obama has regained his 10 point lead.)

Anecdotal analysis from actual PA pols suggest it is very tight, and that turnout is the absolute key--not only the size of it, but who turns out. For much of Monday, the CW was centered on the 300,000 plus new registrants (slightly more than half being former Indies and GOPers), and the buzz in the Philly area. There was talk of Obama's strength in places like York and Lancaster, and the impression that it's about 50-50 in Clinton's stronghold of the Scranton area.

One optimist is Booman of the Booman Tribune, who lives in PA, based partly on his analysis of where the new registrants are. But even he picks Clinton at between 5 and 10 points. Al G. at the Field predicts Clinton by a bit more than 5%, but his district by district analysis shows she'll pick up only 4 more delegates. (This is the place to go, by the way, for numbers; he links to other such analyses as well.)

If anything changed anything in Clinton's favor today, nobody's talking about it yet. There were new ads, and robocalls, but Clinton ended her day in Philadelphia with a crowd of 5,000 (Obama got at least 35,000 and maybe double that). Obama ended his day with a town hall meeting in McKeesport for capacity 2500 and at the University of Pittsburgh rally for a capacity 10,000, easily topping her crowd earlier in the day.

So anything (just about) is possible: a ten point Hillary win to an Obama victory. There are just so many Pennsylvanias--and not only the condescending portraits painted by TV. MSNBC even polled to see who is ahead with gun owners, beer drinkers and bowlers. To them it's simple: working class conservatives in the West, liberals in the East and "Alabama" in between. All of those stereotypes correspond to some reality, but they are too simplistic to explain this Commonwealth. It's a lot more than that.

When the PA Governor's office of Bob Casey, Sr. was my client, I produced a document called "The New Pennsylvania: A Commonwealth That Works." Today will show which Pennsylvania shows up--the new or the old.

As for how to spend the day, I'm going to try to stay away from leaked exit poll information and turnout estimates for as long as I can. Ohio and Texas looked real good for Obama until the returns started coming in, and I'm not going to make that mistake again.

But once the TV blather really gets started and the returns do start coming in, here's the spin I expect. First of all, if these last polls and the buzz today are in the ball park, it's going to be awhile before a "winner" is projected, and even longer until the popular vote percentages settle down. (And of course, longer still until the most meaningful numbers: the delegates.)

But some of the campaign and media spinmeisters have tipped their hand. Obama said in Pittsburgh today that he wasn't predicting a win, but he thinks it will be closer than many people think. The Clinton campaign emphasizes that a win is a win by any margin, and Hillary is absolutely counting on it, because she's staying in Philadelphia election night (while Obama will be in Indiana. He's spending Monday night in Pittsburgh and returns to Philly before his evening rally in Indiana.)

The media chooses its own reality, and the CW in chief, Mark Halperin says Clinton must win by 10.5 to claim a meaningful victory. The Mouth of MSNBC, Chris Matthews, gave his over/under number as 8 points--the percentage she needs to change the game. (He was predicting a 14 point Clinton victory just the other day.) These are really cheesy numbers, because in that range they change nothing. Hillary will get pretty much the same number of delegates if she wins by 8 or 10 or 12 points. And none of them is enough to make a substantial difference in delegates or the popular vote. Hillary was ahead by 20 points just six weeks ago. I really wonder whether any of them are honest enough to say that. I guess we'll see.

Hillary herself may have tipped her hand a bit in her interview with Larry King, no longer claiming she'll fight all the way to the convention. More signals came Monday that June is when the Democrats want it all to be done. There's no real possibility that Hillary will be in position to be the nominee in June.

And Obama got another super-delegate Monday. From Ohio.