Last Days Before PA Votes

Today Barack Obama did a town hall in Reading that filled the space with 2500 people. Tonight there's an "On Track for Change" rally in Scranton, with Caroline Kennedy as well as Bob Casey, who has been with him through this last swing. That should be interesting, as it is Clinton turf to the max.

Tomorrow, the day before the election, he has two scheduled stops, a town hall in McKeesport and finally a rally in Pittsburgh. Clinton will hit the big spots in every region of the state Monday: Scranton, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Sunday showed what Obama is up against. Not only is he battling against two Clintons campaigning simultaneously in different places (the Billary factor) but he is being attacked by McCain as well as the Clintons.

The Obama campaign is making some strange moves--they've reignited health care as an issue very late in the game, they're going negative more than in the past. Obama may have hurt himself by splitting hairs in Reading--he offhandedly said that all three candidates would be better than Bush. Media and Clinton jumped on it immediately. Things are frantic out there.

This blogger, who is an on the ground canvasser, mentioned some of the new wrinkles in the Obama campaign (including differences in the ground game), and like me wonders if it reflects internal polling. He says it just doesn't feel like Ohio, and suspects the Obama campaign thinks it is close. One could reach another conclusion, of course.

The latest polls show Hillary hovering around 50% with Obama closing in. Most polls are showing about a five point spread. Add five for late deciders and Hillary may still get her double digit win, but it could also drop down below that. At this moment, and at this distance, I'd say the best Obama could hope for is 7. But that's without knowing what no one knows: turn out, who will turn out and who won't; whether the Republicans who switched to Democratic registration are overwhelmingly for Obama or split (with generous dollups of Rush Limbaugh subverters); which way the Independents who registered D will go, and by how much.

PA is an expected win for Clinton, and a must win. How the results will be spun is another question. But what seems likely at this point is that she won't get many more delegates than Obama will, and unless she gets 60% of the vote and this translates into major victories in North Carolina and Indiana in two weeks, it won't mean much.

In the meantime, there's this smart and entertaining piece on the ABC debate by Frank Rich. My favorite sentences: "The trashiest ads often bumped directly into an ABC announcer’s periodic recitations of quotations from the Constitution. Such defacing of American values is to be expected, I guess, from a network whose debate moderators refuse to wear flag pins."

What's satisfying to me about Obama's final argument is that fundamentally it hasn't changed--he's talked specifics and so on, but he is making his basic argument, as in this two and a half minute clip from his rally in Harrisburg Saturday night.

He's getting good crowds everywhere, and it will be interesting to see how they turn out for him in Scranton and Pittsburgh. Good crowds don't guarantee or even necessarily indicate victory in any election, but what they are telling me is that Clinton is unlikely to pile up the popular vote margin she needs to make PA a game changer.