I'm not exactly happy about last night's events (I really thought Obama would pull off Texas) but I'm pretty excited about all the attention that will be lavished on me, yes ME, over the next 7 weeks. We need this party-building here in PA, to protect our vulnerable freshmen representatives, and to help swing our only open-seat race (my own PA-05) from long-time red status.
I only hope that the campaign stays positive (yeah, I know, keep dreaming.) There's a lot of work to do for Obama to overcome the remaining polling deficits and Hillary's so-called new momentum. I'm not looking forward to being bombarded with red phone BOO! commercials either.
So this morning I'm looking around at the coverage here to get a sense of the impending circus.
First, my local paper, The Centre Daily Times says, "Here they come.":
The seasoned and fiercely competitive campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sent national-staff scouting parties to Centre County last week. Now they're poised to roll full armies into the state for seven weeks.
. . snip . .
Centre County Democrats added 622 new voters in January and February, more than six times the 100 new Republican registrations. No-affiliation voters have gone down by 107, indicating that most of the Democratic gains are new voters.
The Clinton campaign opens their office in downtown State College on Saturday, while the Obama campaign is holding an organizing meeting tomorrow night (I'm going) and is still looking for office space.
Speaking of campaign offices, the Morning Call's Josh Drobnyk made a handy map of Clinton and Obama offices throughout the Commonwealth, which I don't think is entirely accurate when I zoom down to the State College locations. Regardless, it looks like Clinton has or plans 7 offices and Obama has or plans 8 offices (including the not-mapped Bethlehem office).
Clinton has unmatched offices in Erie and in John Murtha's stronghold of Johnstown, while Obama has unmatched offices in the Philly burbs. I think this is probably a smart move by Team Obama. Johnstown and much of southwestern Pennsylvania (save Pittsburgh) are those older (or just old-fasioned) blue-collar whites that everyone keeps talking about as Hillary's stalwart support. Of course, if he has the money and the people, he should have a presence covering as much of the state as possible. Looking at the events pages of both campaigns, I see way more volunteer-based events for Obama all across Pennsylvania, including Johnstown.
For more campaign news out of PA, Brett Lieberman of the Patriot News is a good source. Today he packs both his column and his blog entry with info.
Life as we know it is about to change in Pennsylvania, at least for the next seven weeks anyway, as the state becomes the epicenter of the Democratic presidential race after Hillary Clinton surprised just about everyone by going three for four and stealing Texas and Ohio from Barack Obama on Tuesday to breath new life into her presidential campaign.
"This is the greatest thing in history, by the way," MSNBC's Chris Matthews said during a "Hardball" interview with Gov. Ed Rendell. "[S]even weeks of bloodthirsty fighting between two great Democrats, but in a way in terms of great political love...know you're looking forward to this, seven weeks of thunder through Pennsylvania. What a fight."
Blech. I can picture Tweety's leering grin as he speaks of bloodthirsty fighting. More from Brett Lieberman:
But Clinton, who has the MoJo this morning, hopes to keep it going by hitting the ground for events in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh on Thursday and Friday. Barack Obama, who still leads among pledged delegates and says he's still the front-runner, plans to be in-state by next week but is likely to first go to Wyoming and Mississippi, which have primaries Saturday and Tuesday.
There's a lot more info at Lieberman's Pennsyltucky Politics.
As for the mechanics, Pennsylvania has 188 total delegates, including 103 district-level, 35 at-large, 20 pledged PLEO, 3 pledged add-ons, and 27 superdelegates. It's a closed primary, and the last day to register to vote is March 24th.