Yesterday I asked dozens of voters around the Lehigh Valley to talk about what they did and did not admire in the presidential candidates. I sought out areas where I thought I'd hear some of the harsher judgments on them.

What I didn't hear endorsed by even a single voter, Democrat or Republican, were any of those scandals that the traditional media has obsessed over during the last few months. Nobody mentioned "bittergate". Obama's relation to Ayers came up only once; an older couple in Allentown thought the Ayers allegations were confusing and irrelevant. The words "Bosnia" and "sniper" never came up at all.

It's not that I didn't evoke some negative opinions. One middle-aged voter in an up-scale Allentown neighborhood declared that Hillary will bring in socialism, and she said with what appeared to be pride that she couldn't think of a single positive thing to say about Obama. But even so, nobody cared to mention the bizarre "scandals" that have loomed so large in media coverage. In fact only a single voter thought the Philadelphia debate was anything but a waste of time.

Most of the people I spoke to want the traditional media to drop the trivial nonsense and start informing voters about the issues they do care about: the economy, Iraq, healthcare, the mortgage crisis, outsourcing jobs. Nearly everybody agrees that the country is in crisis, and they want to know what the plan is to fix the mess. They have the quaint notion that the traditional media ought to take an interest in that as well.

Well, I need to correct one statement I just made. An activist I met outside a polling place did say he'll never vote for Obama because of Rev. Wright. But he's a Redstate blogger, a self-described neocon whose main complaint about the Iraq war is that Bush did not "bomb Iraq into a parking lot". Otherwise a jovial enough Republican, but hardly typical of the other voters I met - none of whom approve of the war or occupation of Iraq. In fact, one woman who'd like to vote for McCain in November said she really hopes he'll change his mind about staying in Iraq because McCain's position is untenable. So I think the right-wing bloggers have a corner on the Wright "scandal" for now. The public as a whole doesn't seem to realize that it's supposed to care.

Many Lehigh Valley voters I talked to today spoke in short hand about their perspectives on the candidates. They were repeating the distilled collective wisdom of family, friends and co-workers. Sometimes it was difficult to get them to apply their own personal insights and experiences to that received wisdom.

Some others, however, and the most interesting voters, spoke in very personal terms. One of the most remarkable of these voters was Tara Schaffer, a young working mother in rural Heidelberg Heights. Working, and then some. She confessed that she didn't follow politics as closely as she'd like to because she works 60 hour weeks in 12 hour shifts. And she does so gladly because for nearly a year she was unemployed, facing bankruptcy and the loss of her house because her adjustable rate mortgage payments went through the roof. Her family desperately needed healthcare coverage, so this exhausting job is a lifeline.

She voted today for the first time in her life. She registered a few years ago at the DMV, but never received her voter registration information and so she assumed that she wasn't registered. Tara says she decided to vote only because an Obama canvasser came to her door and convinced her that she could and should vote.

She said that was the only canvasser she had ever seen, and it doesn't suprise me. In 2004 I canvassed this entire town and had to do it on my own because the local Kerry headquarters (with canvassers available by the hundreds) didn't want to invest any effort in going after rural voters. I was convinced that was a mistake, and Tara's story shows exactly why. Many of these voters are in need of basic information or simple advice about how to vote, having been neglected by the parties for decades, and many can be persuaded to vote Democratic.

Tara's young son, too, urged her to vote for Obama. He's a news junkie, and at school the kids are excited about Obama's candidacy.

Tara admits that in the past she didn't feel any urgency to vote, but this year is different. This year, she says, is critical because of the Iraq fiasco. The Iraq war "turned me into a Democrat," she told me. And she has really had quite enough of Bush family members in the White House. That made a vote for McCain this year unthinkable for her. She regards McCain as a continuation of Bush's policies.

In the end she opted for Obama because she likes his quiet determination and calmness. She's looking for change in the future, and she thinks a candidate who keeps lobbyists at arms length might achieve something.

Tara had nothing against Hillary Clinton, and will vote for her in a heartbeat if she's the Democratic nominee. But she resented the negativity and triviality of some of her ads. Tara pointed out that she's been struggling for years just to keep her family fed, clothed, and housed. And here you have a campaign lavishing millions of dollars on TV ads that aren't about anything that matters to the country. If they've got a million dollars to waste, she said, they should just give the money to her. "I could really use it."

I spent much of the day talking to voters around the Lehigh Valley trying to gauge their attitudes toward the presidential candidates; their level of knowledge and interest in them; their sources of information; their willingness to consider alternative candidates; the issues they care about and those they've already heard enough about; and what they want to see and hear from candidates this year. I was also trying to gauge how the level of turnout relates to enthusiasm for the candidates.

The turnout clearly is huge, as any number of sources are reporting. By mid afternoon, the rural Lehigh County polling places I was visiting had already seen turnout well above 60% of the normal general election turnout. My quick calculations put that turnout somewhat above 40% of the electorate - by mid-afternoon. It's good news, possibly great news, for the Democratic party in Pennsylvania.

I concentrated on more conservative areas of the Valley, and working class and middle class voters. We know, or think we know, a good deal about how liberals and affluent voters are reacting to the candidates. But the conservative end of the middle class is less predictable.

For example, I spoke to a middle-aged mother in rural Heidelberg Township (a moderately conservative area of LV) who was struggling to make ends meet. Her views about what mattered marked her out as a classic Democratic voter. Over and over, she emphasized the need for healthcare reform. Second, she talked about the disappearance of the middle class in the economic squeeze; she wants a president who will preserve a middle class in America. She complained that Iraq is an utter disaster, and resents the abuses committed openly by energy companies, lavishing money on executive bonuses while hiking rates on the rest of us.

To my amazement, it turned out that she's a registered Republican and supports McCain as the best chance for improvement on those issues - issues that McCain has downplayed, rejected, or ignored. How does a voter reach such a paradoxical position? She's the most extreme example of the disconnect that several voters displayed between the issues and policies they care about, and their continued loyalty to a Republican party that doesn't actually serve them well.

She told me, when I asked about her perception of candidates' weaknesses, that she doesn't believe "it's a good time for a female president". Other conservatives said something similar, that the country isn't ready for a woman president. It's not much of a rationale for not casting a vote for Clinton, nor really a personal weakness of hers. I suspect that the argument has taken hold among many conservatives as a justification for not considering a vote for the Democratic candidate when, it's abundantly clear, that it's the Democrats who are taking seriously the issues they care very deeply about.

Will that turn around by November? It will be one of the key benchmarks of the Democratic nominee's campaign this summer, whether it focuses the national debate on the major issues and away from the garbage that has littered the field for the last few months.

The Pennsylvania primary results very likely will be much closer than the double-digit lead Clinton once enjoyed in polls. Some of the reasons for thinking that have already been laid out here in the last day by kos and others, and if time permits I'll discuss some further evidence later on today.

However it's worth drawing special attention to the Lehigh Valley - for decades a bellwether of PA politics.

Since 1952, Lehigh Valley voters have diverged from the nation's choice of president only four times. That includes the 2000 race, when voters in the two counties picked popular-vote winner Al Gore.

And only once in that same period have Valley voters not mirrored the choice of their fellow Pennsylvanians...

One of the most diverse regions of Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley (PDF) presents in miniature a good likeness of the state's demographics. The Valley (Lehigh and Northampton counties) is dominated by the rust-belt cities of Allentown and Bethlehem, with many white working and middle-class voters but also significant minority populations. LV has some of the bedroom communities that have spread throughout much of southern and eastern PA, as well as dozens of small towns and a slowly shrinking periphery of (frankly gorgeous) farmland. The two counties, slightly Democratic leaning, comprise Congressional District 15. There are five convention delegates up for grabs in the primary.

Since it's both my home and a pretty good yardstick for measuring what's going on around the state, I'll be travelling around the region today to gauge how the primary is shaping up.

During the last six weeks there has been surprisingly little activity in the Valley. The consensus was that Hillary Clinton had a solid advantage here because of the many blue-collar voters, and both candidates probably concluded that she would pick up 3 of the 5 delegates. Thus until a few days ago Clinton hadn't visited the Valley and Barack Obama had made only a single swing through the region.

But the new Morning Call poll of Lehigh Valley voters seems to show a race that is now very tight (Clinton 47%, Obama 46%). In fact, Obama's favorable/unfavorable ratings are significantly better than Clinton's here. Some and maybe much of Obama's rise probably stems from the fact that the Valley is within the Philadelphia media market, which Obama's ads have saturated. As McClatchy reported over the weekend, Clinton's supporters suddenly are "worried by the mood" of voters in LV.

A Clinton spokesman said the senator could visit Lehigh this week. But her double-digit lead in the state has eroded, and her local backers are worried.

"My sense is now it's probably a toss-up," said Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski. "She really needs to get here. I've told them that many times."

Both Pawlowski and Bethlehem mayor John Callahan have endorsed Clinton, though they had to wait until yesterday before she finally showed up in the region. The fact that Obama also made a surprise visit to Bethlehem on Sunday suggests that both campaigns see the Valley in play. If the Lehigh Valley is in play, then so is the state of Pennsylvania...perhaps.

Democratic voters here sound pretty happy to be in a position to choose between two strong candidates this year.

"I've been weighing which candidate might be better rather than which one might be the least bad," said Ed Erwell, 63, an engineer in Allentown. "I think this is best thing that's happened to the Democratic Party in a long time."

That's pretty characteristic of attitudes around here. Overheated rhetoric gets discounted to some degree, and it's not surprising that so few voters seem to have been distracted in recent weeks by hyperbolic charges or even less by the tawdry televised debate. It's perfectly credible to me that voters in the Lehigh Valley are giving both candidates a fair go. How it will come out is anybody's guess now.

DFQ hit the Lehigh Valley today as I stood on line for almost 3 hours just to enter Hillary Clinton's poorly run campaign rally in Bethelehem, Pennsylvania.  I was incognito, wearing clothes that no one would recognize me.  The event was scheduled for 11.  I arrived at 11.  I was almost squarely in the middle of the line of about 5000 people.

Unfortunately the setting did not give me an opportunity to ask a sharp question of Hillary Clinton and my time constraints were such that I had to leave at 2 pm to attend a previous familial commitment.

Most of my observations are bland but if you want to know why Hillary's campaign is in the toilet, I was able to observe that first hand.

PA Road to Change - Day 4

Senator Obama "Baracked The Valley" this evening in Allentown, Pennsylvania's with a town hall-style rally at Muhlenberg College.

Barack, looking positively presidential!

More pics after the jump...