Pennsylvania Newspapers: Allentown Morning Call
Submitted by PAforClark on March 9, 2008 - 5:11pm.
Democratic politics
Allentown is located in the Lehigh Valley; north of Philadelphia and south of Scranton. This will be an area where the Clinton/Obama fight might be very interesting. Lots of blue collar jobs lost there in past years. Lots of small colleges.
The Allentown Morning Call is generally a conservative newspaper. In my opinion, though, they are always fair in their reporting. Here is another (and by far the most articulate) breakdown of Pennsylvania demographics.
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-adsa.6304875mar09,0,1611800.story
"PENNSYLVANIA CAMPAIGN STRATEGY
PENNSYLVANIA ROOTS
As a child, Hillary Rodham (left) often visited Scranton, where her father was born. Here she's with friend Charlotte Iori in the 1950s.
THE CATHOLIC EDGE
Catholics have supported Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama by a 2-1 ratio, a trend that will help her in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
GOV. ED RENDELL: Perhaps Clinton's biggest advantage is a two-term governor with deep institutional and political knowledge and personal contacts, especially in Philadelphia and in Harrisburg.
LEHIGH VALLEY: Long considered a bellwether, the Lehigh Valley is a key battleground. Lots of colleges: a bonus for Obama. A large Hispanic population: good news for Clinton. Expect the candidates to make multiple visits.
YOUNG VOTERS: Young voters are Obama's bread and butter, but he has just two weeks to register them by the March 24 deadline. Expect heavy activity at Penn State and at Pennsylvania's many other colleges and universities. He's up 17 points statewide among voters 44 and under.
BLUE-COLLAR: Pennsylvania has lost 190,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000, many west of the Alleghenies. Expect that statistic to be recited with regularity as Clinton tries to rally a core constituency: blue-collar workers. Voters without college degrees back her by double digits here.
BLACK VOTERS: Black support for Obama has been overwhelming -- nine in 10 vote his way. But Pennsylvania has a smaller-than-average black population. And Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Gov. Ed Rendell, who enjoy the support of the city's blacks, support Clinton.
THE ELDERLY: Only West Virginia and Florida have larger percentages of older voters (65+). In Schuylkill County alone, more than 18 percent of voters fit that bill. Perhaps no segment offers such loyal support to Clinton nationwide. In Ohio, age 60+ voters backed Clinton by a margin of 37 percentage points.
SUBURBANITES: The Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburbs are battlegrounds, but also fertile ground for Obama, who's done well among college graduates. About a third of Bucks County residents have a college degree; in Montgomery County it's 39 percent, both above the state's one-in-four average."
(I'm one of those college-educated residents in Bucks County!)
about voters in every state - not just the ones where his campaign thinks he can win or come even. Not to mention some of his campaign money comes from PA voters. Is that a good enough reason if the aforementioned isn't?
"Our public servants work for us - we don't work for them. We have an obligation, as citizens of this country, to always remember that - and to never let them forget it." - DeadMessengers
I think it's going to be a Hilary win, but don't think she will win by a lot.
The ward leaders in Philadelphia haven't endorsed anyone and it looks like they are not going to endorse leaving everyone to vote freely...Nutter is popular, but I don't think he can deliver Philadelphia for Clinton.
The Philly and Pittsburgh suburbs are going to be the battleground and I have a front row seat. But haven't even seen a yard sign yet....
"It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and one to hear." - Henry David Thoreau
Maybe O! ought to just take his name off the ballot in PA and cry foul, later on? Seems to be he's getting good at that tactic.
territories from this point forward.
That's where he has done the best so far, and clearly, Pennsylvania does not look anything like Obama territory.
I think there are at least as many (if not more) delegates still up for grabs in all of the other remaining states as there are in Pennsylvania. And, as jen's diary points out, it only takes a small number of voters in those smaller states to win one delegate to Denver. That translates into more bang for the advertising buck.
Obama advertised heavily in Ohio (for example), and still lost big there. I imagine he would anticipate the same in Pennsylvania. So, perhaps he will try a bit of ju jitsu on Hillary, and let her power into Pennsylvania, while he focuses his money and attempts to win big enough everywhere else to more than cancel out whatever her final margin may be in Pennsylvania. But, naturally, he is likely to need to make some appearances in Pennsylvania to mask his real strategy.
If it goes all the way to Denver, and Obama has won a significant majority of the remaining contests, he will still be poised to argue that he should get the nomination, even if Hillary wins all the delegates in Pennsylvania. And of course, he could also argue that her win there was so large because he chose not to campaign there.
Gordon, you may well be right on this one. Obama may virtually forfeit in Pennsylvania. We'll have little way to track where he is spending his money, but I'll bet he won't spend in Pennsylvania like he did in Ohio.
Perhaps he's already revising plans to spend a lot more than he at first intended in Puerto Rico, for example.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
My Mom and one of my sisters lives in PA. My Mom got a robocall from Ed Rendell inviting her to Hillary's rally in Scranton tomorrow.....She's not going because it's late enough in the day that she'd have to drive home in the dark, which she doesn't like to do. I imagine they'll be getting a lot of visits there and I hope she does get to go see somebody before the primary.
"The mark of leadership is not to standup when everybody is standing, but rather to actually stand up when no one else is standing" - Pulitzer Prize winning author Samantha Power, introducing Gen Clark
With the exception of his work trying to shut down puppy mills, he has disappointed in Harrisburg. Of course, we have had partisan divided leadership here which is stopping much from happening - just as in Washington.
As much as I would like to see both candidates in person, I'll probably pass. I really, really dislike crowds...!
"It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and one to hear." - Henry David Thoreau
...Hillary. Even more reason for Barack to forget about PA>
for posting it.
"Our public servants work for us - we don't work for them. We have an obligation, as citizens of this country, to always remember that - and to never let them forget it." - DeadMessengers
Clicked over to the link especially to see the photo of Hillary with her friend Charlotte in the 1950's, but don't see it there.
Read the article, and I think if the Obama campaign really learned their lesson in OH, they'll be working rural PA hard. If he does that, and takes the big cities and the large colleges populations, he may do quite well.
Once in a while you get shown the light, In the strangest of places if you look at it right.
(snip)
Obama May Have Lost Philly Mayor's Nod By Endorsing Challenger:Washington Post reports on the sudden importance of Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter:
On paper, Michael Nutter and Sen. Barack Obama have much in common.
African American, 50 years old and elected last year as mayor of Philadelphia on a reform platform, Nutter has in many ways experienced a political rise similar to that of the Illinois Democrat vying for his party's presidential nomination.
But presidential elections aren't fought on paper, and Nutter isn't a supporter of Obama's. Instead, he has endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and insisted in an interview late last week with The Fix that she is well positioned to clean up in both Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in general when the Democratic race makes its way there on April 22.
"There's the regular season, and then there's the playoffs," Nutter said of the nomination fight. "We're now in the playoffs." Extending the football metaphor, Nutter compared Obama to the New England Patriots, who were undefeated during the regular season and the playoffs, and Clinton to the New York Giants, who ended that winning streak in the Super Bowl.
Like so many politicians who cut their teeth in the 1990s, Nutter has a long history with the Clintons. In the early part of that decade, Nutter became involved in the Democratic Leadership Council, whose leading voice was then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. During Clinton's 1992 presidential bid, Nutter served as a pledged delegate for, in his words, "an unknown governor of the poorest state in America." (Left unsaid in the interview was that in Nutter's 2007 mayoral bid, Obama endorsed Rep. Chaka Fattah, who wound up finishing fourth.)
Despite that history, Nutter said he weighed his options carefully before deciding to endorse either candidate. He spoke with Obama and Clinton several times, knowing that he wanted to make an endorsement. ("You are either on the field or on the sidelines," Nutter said. "I am an on-the-field guy.") In the end, he went with Clinton because "I thought she had the best ideas [and a] tremendous track record."
(snip)
Harrisburg Mayor To Endorse Clinton: "Harrisburg Mayor Stephen R. Reed plans to endorse U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton for president when the senator from New York visits Harrisburg for a public rally scheduled for noon Tuesday. Reed joins the mayors from Philadelphia and Scranton in supporting Clinton, who will visit Scranton, the hometown of her father, on Monday evening. She'll also be in Philadelphia later Tuesday for a rally on the campus of Temple University."
UPDATED 3/10/08
American Research POLL: Clinton Up 11 Points: "A new American Research Group poll in Pennsylvania shows Sen. Hillary Clinton leading Sen. Barack Obama, 52% to 41%."
Obama leads among men 59% to 38% and Clinton leads among women 63% to 27%. Clinton leads among white voters 63% to 29% and Obama leads among African American voters 89% to 7%. African Americans account for 18% of likely Democratic primary voters. Clinton leads 47% to 45% among likely primary voters under 50 and she leads 58% to 37% among likely primary voters 50 and older.
(snips)
HARRISBURG, Pa.(AP)-Pennsylvania Democrats added more than 65,000 voters to their rolls since last fall, a reflection of the high level of interest in the contested race for the party's presidential nomination and the state's April 22 primary.
..Dems: +1.7%, from 3,883,378 in Nov to 3,948,775 in Mar.
..GOP: +0.1%, from 3,245,271 in NOV to 3,248,583 in Mar.
..The Democrats' biggest registration gains were in three suburban Philadelphia counties - Chester, Delaware and Montgomery. While the GOP still holds the registration edge in those counties, those largely white-collar communities often cross party lines and are considered swing areas for Democrats in statewide races.
..Mike Barley, a spokesman for the state Republican Party, said he believes many of the new Democratic registrants are independent-minded Republicans who are caught up in the excitement of the Democratic race. Sen. John McCain of Arizona has clinched the GOP nomination. "We feel pretty strongly that, come November, we're going to get those people back," Barley said.
The number of voters registered in neither of the major parties also increased, from about 984,000 to nearly 992,000, the new figures show.
The Democratic primary is open only to registered Democrats. Voters have until March 24 to switch or join parties.
Hillary has bet the farm on PA. Look out for her kitchen sink, the furniture, the bathroom, and the garage.
Some say PA is Ohio's big sister.
What's the use of Barack wasting his campaign money in PA?