Charges Fly As Pennsylvania Voters Go to the Polls
Posted on: Tuesday, 22 April 2008, 18:00 CDT
By Jerry Zremski, The Buffalo News, N.Y.
Apr. 22--PITTSBURGH -- Two months after an aide to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton promised a "kitchen sink" strategy in which she would throw everything she could at Sen. Barack Obama, Clinton on Monday hit him with the entire kitchen.
"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!" Clinton said at a rally in the heart of downtown, apparently implying that the heat might be too much for her opponent. "But I am very comfortable in the kitchen!"
As if that weren't enough, Clinton used the "get out of the kitchen" phrase in her last round of television ads before today's Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania. Featuring images of Pearl Harbor, Hurricane Katrina and Osama bin Laden, the Clinton ad asks voters: "Who do you think has what it takes" to lead the country?
Obama, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, wasn't just dodging the incoming plumbing.
He let loose with an ad of his own in which an announcer said: "Who in times of challenge will unite us -- not use fear and calculation to divide us?"
Welcome to Pennsylvania, Clinton's latest last chance to revive her presidential prospects and the most bombarded battleground yet in the epic campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Polls and pundits predict a Clinton victory here, but they also say that anything could happen -- partly because of the negative turn the race has taken in its last days and the unpredictable impact it could have on voters.
That negativity surfaced only in fits and starts at Clinton's downtown rally and at a town hall meeting Obama held 15 miles to the east in McKeesport, as they crisscrossed the state in one last frenzied day of campaigning.
For example, Obama mocked an earlier Clinton ad in noting that he opposed the Iraq War from the start while the New York senator voted to authorize it.
"Who do you you want to answer that 3 a. m. phone call: the person who got Iraq wrong or the person who got Iraq right?" he asked.
Advertising onslaught
Both campaigns have been jamming the state's airwaves and mailboxes with bad vibes, leaving the political pros and the voters wondering whether the candidates' potshots could ricochet, as they often do in heated campaigns.
In Erie, for example, the Clinton campaign has been sending out fliers about Obama's comments that rural Pennsylvanians are "bitter" about their economic circumstances and that they "cling" to guns and religion as a result.
"That was the entire flier," said Robert Speel, a political scientist at Penn State University's Erie Campus. "It's so negative there's the possibility that voters will be turned off by it."
Then again, Obama's advertising onslaught, in a state where he's outspending Clinton by a 3-1 ratio, could drown out Clinton's message -- or it could backfire.
The Illinois senator's television ads lacerate Clinton for allegedly wanting to garnish people's wages to pay for health care and for launching "eleventh- hour smears, paid for by lobbyist money." And even some of Obama's admirers aren't happy about it.
"I think he should stop it," said Cindy Artim, 50, a Republican from North Huntington who said she would vote for Obama over the presumptive GOP nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain. "That's not the kind of politician he's meant to be. He's stooping to Hillary's level."
Meanwhile, Obama has been coming close to nipping at her heels here in the Keystone State.
Clinton enjoyed a double-digit lead in the polls in February, but Obama chipped away at that advantage, narrowing it briefly to less than 5 points in some polls just before the "bitter" brouhaha erupted 10 days ago.
That controversy and Obama's defensiveness in a debate in Philadelphia on Wednesday seem to have tilted the race a bit more toward Clinton. According to the latest RealClearPolitics. com poll average, Clinton has a lead of 5.9 percentage points.
The controversy of Obama's "bitter" comments "hurt his momentum," said Neil Oxman, a Democratic consultant in Philadelphia. "If this hadn't happened, this thing could be dead even by now."
Then again, it might be dead even -- or Clinton could be headed for a blowout victory. While the consensus is that Clinton is ahead, individual pollsters and pundits said the late round of negative ads is just one of the confounding factors in a confounding race.
"Who really knows?" asked
Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster.
Enrollment is factor
Obama has one huge and unpredictable factor in his favor: a surge in Democratic enrollment in this longtime swing state. About 217,000 new voters have registered since January, and state officials say the vast majority are Democrats. Meanwhile, 178,000 Pennsylvanians have changed parties -- and 92 percent of those became Democrats.
Madonna surveyed those new Democrats last week and found that 62 percent favor Obama. And Oxman noted that some pollsters might be working off old voter lists that don't account for the new Democrats, so it's possible that Obama is really doing better than most of the polls indicate.
"The winner of the Pennsylvania primary is going to come down to turnout," said Dean Debnam of Public Policy Polling, the only major pollster to show Obama with a lead (3 points). "Obama is leading 58-32 in the metro Philadelphia area. If the turnout is huge there, he has a shot."
But the rest of the state, and the state's demographics, favor Clinton. Census figures show that Pennsylvania is older, whiter and slightly more downscale than the national average -- and Clinton has generally done best among older, white and low-income voters.
Moreover, she seems to have the momentum, said John Zogby, who has been polling the race daily and watching Clinton build a bigger lead day by day. His last poll had the New York senator up by 6 points, with undecided voters breaking her way, Zogby said.
"If a 10-point victory is the pundit-driven threshold she needs on Tuesday, it looks like she can do it," he added.
Obama has a 139-delegate lead in the race for the 2,025 delegates needed to seal the Democratic nomination, and that lead will be impossible for Clinton to erase without land-side victories in Pennsylvania and the remaining contests.
Dueling expectations
That being the case, she's counting on starting an Obama losing streak that could help her gain favor among superdelegates, the party pros who will ultimately decide the Democratic nominee.
On the other hand, a Clinton loss in Pennsylvania could effectively end the race.
"The indications are she will win Pennsylvania with a margin of between 5 and 10 points," said Larry Ceisler, another Democratic consultant in Philadelphia. "Anything under 5 has to raise doubts as to whether she can continue in the race."
Clinton aides couldn't disagree more.
"I reject the notion that we need to achieve a certain standard of victory other than victory," said Clinton spokesman Phil Singer.
Obama also sought to dampen expectations, planning a rally tonight in Indiana, which votes May 6, rather than scheduling a victory party in Pennsylvania.
"I'm not predicting a win," Obama said in an interview with a Pittsburgh radio station. "I'm predicting it's going to be close and that we are going to do a lot better than people expect."
Of course, that will happen only if a majority of voters ignore the Clinton ad featuring bin Laden, which outraged the Obama camp.
"We already have a president who plays the politics of fear, and we don't need another," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.
But former President Bill Clinton offered a different take at that rally in Pittsburgh, saying, "I like a good political brawl as much as the next guy."
jzremski@buffnews.com
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