The Blue-Collar Battle in Pennsylvania

[DeepModem Mom]

TIME: The Blue-Collar Battle in Pennsylvania
By JAY NEWTON-SMALL/HARRISBURG
Tuesday, Apr. 01, 2008


Barack Obama throws a bowling ball on March 29, 2008 at the Pleasant Valley Recreation Center in Altoona, Pennsylvania, during a stop on his six-day bus tour of Pennsylvania.
(Stan Honda/AFP/Getty)

....Pennsylvania is a pretty big state, but the two Democratic hopefuls are right on top of each other this week as they fight for the blue-collar vote in areas that are generally considered to be Clinton strongholds....

Obama's best shot at winning Pennsylvania, or at least closing the gap, is rallying Democrats in and around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the state's two largest cities. So why is he spending so much time in central Pennsylvania? "This is good old-fashioned retail campaigning, with perhaps a feint to surprise and unbalance the Clinton campaign and force her to contest every delegate," said Donald Kettl, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. "In some of these communities, he's been playing to his base, such as the rally at Penn State. However, he's also made a few long reaches, such as bowling in Altoona, as much of a white-guy play as one could make."

Obama may be drawing the crowds — 22,000 in State College alone — and enthusiasm, but Clinton's message is tried and tested in this Rust Belt State, where 47% of Democratic primary voters are over the age of 45. "She's got Bill behind her and I loved Bill," said Daniel Mooney, 72, a security guard from Philadelphia. "She's got the experience we need. She seems to understand people, and unlike Obama she's already been in the White House."

Clinton, with a comfortable double-digit lead in most polls, is running the most conventional of campaigns here — hitting her stronghold areas with a series of discussions on the economy, her strongest issue. Her audiences are filled with her core demographics: women, elderly and blue-collar workers. Her tone is serious as she ticks off depressing economic statistics, brightening only to talk about the boom of the 1990s and how she can return the economy to those good old days. "The typical working family has gotten about $500 in tax cuts from George Bush," Clinton said at the diner in Harrisburg. "Now $500 is not nothing, but the typical family has lost about $1,000 in income. So everybody's behind and that's not the way it used to be; during the '90's everybody was doing better. So what I have been proposing is to get rid of the $55 billion in tax cuts to the oil companies, the drug companies, the pharmaceutical companies and Wall Street, take that money and give it back to you."...

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...though he discusses a range of issues, Obama is sure at every event to mention his plans for middle-class tax breaks, rewriting trade treaties and fixing the subprime crisis....

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...at least one Pennsylvania poll shows the race narrowing as Obama outspends Clinton five to one on television and radio ads. And a steady stream of superdelegates breaking for Obama has become a form of Chinese water torture for the Clinton campaign. "The news keeps trumpeting the idea that Clinton mathematically can't win the nomination, which means that he has a chance to make (the Pennsylvania race) close," said David Barker, a political science professor at the University of Pittsburgh. "I think if he loses by five or six points that will be perceived as a victory."...

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1726864,00.html?xid=site-cnn-partner