We'll Be Back in Business in No Time

This delayed hiatus has come to an end starting this week or next new and fresh posts on the General Election campaign will be fast and furious.

I'll leave you with this quote from the great Dr. Thompson.

The genetically vicious nature of presidential campaigns in America is too obvious to argue with, but some people call it fun, and I am one of them.

Obama Continues To Close The Gap, Making It Rain In PA

Barack Obama is continuing to dwindle Hillary Clinton's lead in Pennsylvania as we get closer and closer to the primary on April 22nd. Some new polls released in the past few days show Obama down to single digits behind Hillary and many people will point to Obama's spending in the keystone state as the key to this surge. Obama has surpassed the spending record on TV ads by miles this campaign season, he's spent $60 Million dollars on 100,000 ads, and by comparison John Kerry ran 19,000 ads on his way to the Democratic nomination. Now Kerry's campaign was wrapped up by early March but nevertheless Obama's spending is far and away greater than Kerry's and we see no end in sight to the primary race so I would expect to see his spending increase even more. Hillary Clinton has run about 60,000 ads so far.

Two polls have Obama behind Hillary by 3 and 5 points and he has started to pull away from Clinton in some national polls, I just heard on MSNBC (The Place for Politics!) that Obama has maintained a lead in the Gallup Daily Tracking poll for 17 days now, pretty impressive considering that’s about when the Rev. Wright stuff started to die down. Obama has been playing the expectations low in PA, very well I might add, because now as long as Obama doesn't get blown out (read: more than 10 points) he has won PA, Hillary of course will say that a win is a win but if her margin of victory is only single digits Obama's delegate lead will not close.

In other primary news Obama maintains a nice lead in North Carolina, the last "big" state left in the primary calendar (it is the only one left with more than 100 delegates) and Hillary is holding in Indiana of about 9 points. Both states go to the polls on May 6th.

Obama Gaining Ground In Pennsylvania, Not A Sure Thing Though

Senator Barack Obama has been campaigning hard in the keystone state over the last couple of weeks and it appears it’s starting to pay off. In the last two polls released from Pennsylvania Obama is down 5% in the Rasmussen poll and UP 2% in the Public Policy Polling poll. (say that 5 times fast) This is after he was down 26% in a poll just 10 days ago or so.

There are several things that are leading to this Obama mini-surge in PA:

1) The Bosnia Trip, Clinton's initial gaffe was followed by subsequent ones where she continued not to tell the entire truth, this has hurt Clinton on 2 fronts. The first is it damages her credibility and perpetuates the stereotype that the Clintons play dirty and will do anything to win. The 2nd way it hurts Hillary is that it took all the news off the Rev. Wright controversy that had been hurting Obama a bit.

2) Grassroots campaigning by the Obama camp. Obama's Iowa organizer has come over to help him in PA and it looks like he is treating this state just like Iowa. By that I mean he is running the campaign like Iowa, small townhall meetings and greeting people in their environment, Obama hasn't had too many of those huge 20,000 people rallies (aside from the one this Sunday here) The way to win over the people of Pennsylvania is to show them you are down to earth and because there is so much time between the PA primary and the previous ones that Obama will have the time to basically go door to door and market himself as the best candidate for Pennsylvanians.

With all that said however it should be pointed out that Pennsylvania is Hillary Country and it would be VERY unlikely if Obama actually wins. I expect Hillary to win by 10-15 points, but Obama doesn't have to win in order to WIN. If he can close the gap to under 10 many people would see that as a win for Obama and his delegate lead would basically be unchanged. If Obama came out of no where and won in Pennsylvania I believe that will be when Hillary actually drops out, if she cant win a state where she was favored by 20% 4 weeks before the primary where she had the full support of the democratic governor and his political machine then she won't be able to win ANYWHERE.

Obama comes to PSU

Obama draws 22,000 to Old Main

Sunday Funnies

We had a couple of nice things to poke fun at this week and what better way to enjoy them than checkin out a few political cartoons?



Can't you just imagine Hillary slingin concussion grenades?



Faith got ya down?



Fox News loves this story, whether you think it is relative or not

Bill Clinton Visits Penn State, Obama Set To Speak On Sunday

Former President Bill Clinton spoke to a crowd of 8,000 in Rec Hall on Thursday night. I did not attend the event but I was driving downtown last night when it was letting out and there were people everywhere, the former President sure can draw a crowd. Of course Clinton was there to campaign for his wife Senator Hillary Clinton who will be trying to win the key state of Pennsylvania on April 22nd. Clinton knew how to get the crowd going when he mentioned some alumni related to the senator.

I'm here to represent the only candidate for president who had a father and a brother who played football for Penn State

Knowing my fellow PSU students they were definitely charged up to hear that. He went on to mention the Creamery too. Clinton spoke on economic topics through out the hour-long speech, in a part I viewed on the Internet he mentioned helping college students graduate with less debt.

This marks the beginning of the campaigning in my little town of State College, Senator Barack Obama is set to speak on the lawn of Old Main Sunday where the attendance is expected to exceed 10,000 and up to 20,000 according to some university officials.

This should be quite the spectacle indeed on Sunday; hopefully weather will permit this historic occasion, according to a Collegian article

The last time a presidential candidate visited Penn State and spoke on Old Main's lawn was former President George H. W. Bush during his second campaign, Mahon said, adding that 9,000 to 10,000 people attended the event.

It will be very cool to see that many people on the lawn listening to someone talk about politics, this year the younger people really do seem to be very interested in the campaign, a great sign of things to come hopefully. I'll be at the Obama address and hopefully I'll have a post about it Sunday night or Monday morning, I'll be sure to bring my camera to capture this historic event.

Superdelegate Primary?

Recently the Democrats have seemed to be very interested in wrapping up their presidential race. Some interesting ways have come up to solve this problem, of course the easiest would be to have one of the candidates drop out but we all know that will happen when pigs fly. The one strategy that has gained publicity in the last couple of days is the idea of a "Superdelegate Primary" this was first floated by Governor of Tennessee Phil Bredesen. The basic premise would be to have a two-day convention in June where all 796 superdelegates would come to vote for the candidate they support.

The DNC needs to organize it... My thought would be that it would just be a business-like meeting. Have it some place that's easily accessible... For the good of the party we need to bring this thing to closure," he says. "Let's get on to fighting John McCain.

This convention would be as transparent as possible by putting everything on the record. People in politics, specifically Washington, do not seem to be too keen on this idea but for the rest of the nation I'm sure it sounds like a pretty good idea they want anything this will stop the endless drama that has become the Democratic race.


Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein has also been on this bandwagon, here is an excerpt from a piece he did for Politico.com

Here, for example, is one idea for adding a big democratic dose of clarity, transparency and accountability to the superdelegate dilemma: Hold a superconvention. Assuming neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Rodham Clinton can clinch a decisive advantage in pledged delegates once the voting is done in June, let’s convene a special summit of superdelegates around July 4 in Philadelphia (a little obvious symbolism is in order here). Get them off the phone and out of the proverbial smoke-filled rooms — and into full public view for the rest of the party. To maximize this meeting's legitimacy, tap Al Gore — the party’s most senior and respected unaligned superdelegate — as chairman. Invite Obama and Clinton to give a full pitch as to why he or she is the best nominee for the party.

Sounds wonderful! During breaks they can all go down to Geno's or Pat's or Tony Luke's (my favorite) for some cheesesteaks and discuss the ins and outs of Hillary's and Barack's speeches.

I'm not sure whether this would actually fly with the campaigns but it is certainly something to give thought to.