The Pennsylvania race is incredibly tight with a poll released Sunday showing Clinton's leading Obama by 48 to 43 percentage points with eight percent still undecided. Could Obama pull it off against all the odds?
That's what his organisers secretly believe, although they are playing down expectations in the media.
Over a slice of pizza at Lancaster train station where the candidate had just given a speech on his train trip across the state, one of his top Pennsylvania operatives, who prefers to remain anonymous, was confident of victory or a worst a narrow defeat. He described how team Obama had been operating "below the radar" in Hillary's heartland of central Pennsylvania for over six weeks and had "registered the *!@*# out of the place."
"Lots of graduate students have come here from all over the country just to help out. The more Hillary goes on the attack, the more people seem to want to come and dig us out," he said.
A word of warning though, we have been here before. Just before the New Hampshire Primary every one had written off Hillary, but she came back.
The Obama man is now expecting the worst from the Clintons, a Swift Boat style attack they hope will push him over the edge. It looks like she has settled on Obama’s friendship with William Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground.
Hillary pushed it in the debate this week and her Senate pal and drinking buddy John McCain took up the baton for her this morning on the TV.
"If you’re going to associate and have as a friend and serve on a board and have a guy kick off your campaign that says he’s unrepentant, that he wished bombed more," McCain bloviated on ABC's talk show moderated by Clinton's old press man George Stephanopolous.
"Then, the worst thing of all, that, I think, really indicates Senator Obama’s attitude, is he had the incredible statement that he compared Mr Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist, with Senator Tom Coburn, Senator Coburn, a physician who goes to Oklahoma on the weekends and brings babies into life — comparing those two — I mean, that’s not — that’s an attitude, frankly, that certainly isn’t in keeping with the overall attitude."
Both candidates have a brutal schedule as they go after undecided voters. Tonight Obama puts his tanks on Hillary's lawn when he shows up in Scranton, a blue collar town where she has deep family roots. Not to be outdone Hillary will be there tomorrow.
don't understand people who say Barack Obama is racist. His mother was white and he has said that the best that is in him came from her. As far as being elitist, his father left him when he was 2, he was raised by a single mom and sent off to his grandparents. He just finished paying off his student loans. When he got out of college he went to work on the streets of Chicago. On the other hand, the Clinton accumulated 110 million dollars in a very short time, and probably more if the truth be told. Who's elitist?
And what he said people being bitter about losing job, home, etc. is entirely true; he might have said it better but he's just not slick enough of a politician to be forever atuned to how his words can be twisted used against him. And I don't think any of us would want to be taken to task for things said by people we happened to know, or even had some association with. That is so ludicrous as to be beyond intelligent thought.
This is such a smear campaign by Clinton. Michael Moore backs Obama but he doesn't really believe that American will let a black man be president. Forget his white ancestry. I don't believe Americans are so racist, or that they cannot see the strategy at work by the Clinton campaign.
We would be very fortunate to have Barack Obama as the next President of the United States. Not only would the US benefit, but the entire world. I believe that with all my heart. If it matters, I'm a 73 year old white woman, and I've been around long enough to know a very special human being when I see one.
Posted by: Joan | 22 April 2008 at 04:49 PM
It's Posters like John_Lai that make me all that much more against the results of inbreeding.
Posted by: arias | 22 April 2008 at 06:08 AM
You would think debate has something to do with the results of an election because you can take a better view of the candidates.
This skittish, double talker, liar coming out of the CHICAGO politics cancel a debate at NC. He should have informed the Pennsylvanian voters what he really is: a snob who have denied the voting rights of Florida, and Michigan who is doing everything he said he was against.
He claims that he can make changes while his backyard has put his friend REZKO on trial of corruption. REZKO is the one who helped him to buy his dream house. Will he change WASHINGTON. Yes WASHINGTON would be much worse than before after he got elected.
Posted by: John_Lai | 22 April 2008 at 03:14 AM