Party Fears Racial Divide; Attacks Could Do Lasting Harm, Democrats Say

By Jonathan Weisman and Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 26, 2008; A01

The protracted and increasingly acrimonious fight for the Democratic presidential nomination is unnerving core constituencies—African Americans and wealthy liberals—who are becoming convinced that the party could suffer irreversible harm if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton maintains her sharp line of attack against Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton’s solid win in the Pennsylvania primary exposed a quandary for the party. Her backers may be convinced that only she can win the white, working-class voters that the Democratic nominee will need in the general election, but many African American leaders say a Clinton nomination—handed to her by superdelegates—would result in a disastrous breach with black voters.

“If this party is perceived by people as having gone into a back room somewhere and brokered a nominee, that would not be good for our party,” House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (S.C.), the highest ranking African American in Congress, warned yesterday. “I’m telling you, if this continues on its current course, [the damage] is going to be irreparable.”

That fear, plus a more general sense that Clinton’s only route to victory would be through tearing down her opponent, has led even some black Democrats who are officially neutral in the race, such as Clyburn, to speak out.

Clinton’s camp has a vastly different interpretation, arguing that the most recent primary demonstrated that Democrats remain very interested in seeing the contest continue.

“Pennsylvania did the job of calming any nerves that existed,” said Clinton campaign spokesman Jay Carson. “It showed that the big states around the country think she’s the best person to be president.”

But that opinion is far from unanimous. More than 70 top Clinton donors wrote their first checks to Obama in March, campaign records show. Clinton’s lead among superdelegates, a collection of almost 800 party leaders and elected officials, has slipped from 106 in December to 23 now, according to an Associated Press tally.

“If you have any, any kind of loyalty to the Democratic Party, perhaps you need to rethink your strategy and bow out gracefully in order to save this party from a disastrous end in November,” Rep. William Lacy Clay (Mo.), an African American Obama supporter, said in an appeal to Clinton.

Clyburn accused Clinton and her husband yesterday of marginalizing black voters and opening a rift between her campaign and an African American Democratic base that strongly backed Bill Clinton’s presidency. Some surrogates in her camp are trying to render Obama unelectable against the Republican nominee so she could run for the Democratic nomination in 2012, he suggested. The discussion flared up yet again when Bill Clinton suggested this week that Obama’s campaign had played “the race card” after the former president compared the candidate to Jesse Jackson after the South Carolina primary.

“We keep talking as if it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter that Obama gets 92 percent of the black vote, because since he only got 35 percent of the white vote, he’s in trouble,” Clyburn said. “Well, Hillary Clinton only got 8 percent of the black vote. . . . It’s almost saying black people don’t matter. The only thing that matters is how white people respond. And that’s what bothered me. I think I matter.”

The reemergence of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Obama’s controversial former longtime pastor, in an appearance on PBS last night may only fan the dispute.

“When something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose and put constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public, that’s not a failure to communicate,” Wright said in an appearance with Bill Moyers. “Those who are doing that are communicating exactly what they want to do, which is to paint me as some sort of fanatic or as the learned journalist from the New York Times called me, a ‘wackadoodle.’ “

Both campaigns sought yesterday to tamp down a race controversy, appealing for Democrats to stay focused on winning back the White House.

“I never believe in irreparable breaches. I’m a big believer in reconciliation and redemption,” Obama told reporters in Indianapolis. “So, look, this has been a fierce contest. I’ve said repeatedly: Come August, there will be a whole lot of people standing on a stage with a lot of balloons and confetti raining down on the Democratic nominee, and people are going to be excited about taking on John McCain in November.”

Campaigning for Clinton in Gary, Ind., yesterday, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (Ohio), who is black, said she does not share her colleagues’ concerns. “I don’t think Bill and Hillary Clinton will ‘do anything’ to win this election,” she said. “They are trying to be successful, but I disagree they will do anything or they are trying to hurt Barack Obama.” She added that black voters “are not a monolith, and we recognize the importance of this election.”

There are signs that the anger voiced by some African Americans is beginning to extend to the Democratic donor base. Campaign finance records released this week show that a growing number of Clinton’s early supporters migrated to Obama in March, after he achieved 11 straight victories. Of those who had previously made maximum contributions to Clinton, 73 wrote their first checks to Obama in March. The reverse was not true: Of those who had made large contributions to Obama last year, none wrote checks to Clinton in March.

“I think she is destroying the Democratic Party,” said New York lawyer Daniel Berger, who had backed Clinton with the maximum allowable donation of $2,300. “That there’s no way for her to win this election except by destroying [Obama], I just don’t like it. So in my own little way, I’m trying to send her a message.”

The message came in the form of a $2,300 contribution to Obama.

Donors are not the only ones who have made the leap. Gabriel Guerra-Mondragón served as an ambassador to Chile during Bill Clinton’s presidency, considered himself a close friend of Sen. Clinton, and became a “Hill-raiser” by bringing in about $500,000 for her presidential bid.

But he had a fitful few weeks as the battle between Clinton and Obama turned increasingly negative. Last week, he decided he had seen enough.

“We’re just bleeding each other out,” Guerra-Mondragón said when asked why he had decided to join Obama’s finance committee. “Looking at it as coldly as I can, I just don’t see how Senator Clinton can overcome Senator Obama with delegates and popular votes. I want this fight to be over—the quicker, the better.”

The Obama converts include William Louis-Dreyfus. The billionaire New York financier said he had been impressed by Clinton’s performance in the Senate and distressed by eight years of the Bush administration when he donated the maximum to her campaign last August. Then, he said, he began watching more closely.

“However much one might have supported the Clintons, or one might support the usual suspects in the Democratic Party, I began to believe Obama represents a new approach. He gives off such a sense of relevance that he’s sort of irresistible,” Louis-Dreyfus said.

He also expressed, as did other big givers who crossed to Obama, exasperation about the tone of the Clinton campaign and frustration with the candidate herself.

“At the end of the day, all she had to do was open her mouth for me not to believe her,” Louis-Dreyfus said.

Staff writers Perry Bacon Jr., traveling with Clinton, and Alec MacGillis, traveling with Obama, contributed to this report.

John Edwards’s supporters are flocking to Sen. Obama

By Alexander Bolton
04/24/08

Donors, activists and members of Congress who backed former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) are flocking to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

This and the fact that Obama is likely to win the North Carolina primary could prompt Edwards to endorse Obama — a move that could burnish the front-runner’s credentials with blue-collar, white voters, who are part of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) base.

Since Edwards dropped out of the presidential race, Obama’s campaign has received contributions of $200 or more from 1,089 donors who had supported Edwards, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records.

Only 393 Edwards donors have given to Clinton since the primary became a two-candidate race. Since Edwards withdrew on Jan. 30, Obama has raised nearly $1 million from Edwards donors, compared to the $427,000 that has flowed to Clinton.

The strong bias among Edwards’s supporters prompts Obama’s allies to hope for an endorsement by the former candidate that could help him in big states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, that were won by Clinton. 

“John Edwards understands the need to change the direction of this country; I would hope that he would make an endorsement to bring closure to the nominating process,� said Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), who first endorsed Edwards but then joined Obama’s camp.

The day before Edwards dropped out, his campaign floated the idea that he could play kingmaker in the primary.

His deputy campaign manager, Jonathan Prince, predicted that Edwards’s haul of delegates could tip the nomination one way or the other.

As it turned out, Edwards quit before he could accumulate a significant number of delegates, but he could still prove influential by swaying white working-class voters slow to embrace Obama.

“Edwards has enormous appeal to working-class, white voters,� Butterfield said. “His endorsement would be a tremendous benefit to the Obama campaign.�

Edwards, a trial lawyer by profession, sought during his campaign to appeal to working-class and union voters, repeatedly citing his father’s work in a mill. He spoke in favor of policies that would redistribute wealth to poorer Americans.

Butterfield is one of nine congressional Democrats who have endorsed Obama after first backing Edwards.

The others are Reps. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (S.D.), Charles Gonzalez (Texas), Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.), Eddie Bernice Johnson (Texas), Jim Oberstar (Minn.), David Obey (Wis.), David Price (N.C.) and Mel Watt (N.C.).

Not one of Edwards’s backers in Congress has endorsed Clinton.

Clinton campaign aides did not respond to requests for comment.

Several members of Edwards’s political circle announced their allegiance to Obama on Wednesday. Ed Turlington, who served as chairman of Edwards’s 2004 presidential campaign and as a senior adviser to his most recent White House bid, was one of them. 

“I had thought that after Sen. Edwards dropped out I would stay on the sidelines,� said Turlington, “but the more I watched the race and talked to Sen. Obama, I became persuaded to endorse him.

“First of all, I think [Obama] is talking about many of the key economic issues Sen. Edwards talked about in his campaign.�

Obama flew to Chapel Hill, N.C., in February to meet Edwards and his wife in hope of winning an endorsement. But Edwards has not yet dropped any hints about whether he will back either candidate before the party convention in Denver at the end of August.

Turlington said he spoke to Edwards about the race several days ago and told him he would support Obama.

“He noted it and we talked about a number of things about the race,� said Turlington. “He admires and respects Obama.�

Yet Turlington said he does not know if Edwards will pick a side.

John Moylan, one of Edwards’s closest friends, cautioned that Edwards might not weigh in despite the trend among his former supporters.

“Sen. Edwards has given no indication that he will be endorsing one candidate over the other and I would be somewhat surprised if that were to happen,� said Moylan. “I have not endorsed a candidate but would almost certainly follow Sen. Edwards’s lead on that front.�

Michael Ward, an attorney at the law firm of Alston and Bird in Washington, D.C., who donated to Edwards’s campaign, gave $1,300 to Obama at the end of February. “I think Obama’s the strongest candidate and I want to field the strongest candidate,� said Ward, who has not given to Clinton.

Ward said Clinton has “too much baggage, and too many political negatives,� referring to her high unfavorability rating in polls.

Clinton received more than a thousand contributions from Edwards donors before he dropped out of the race, and she was still considered the likely Democratic presidential front-runner. Since his departure, Clinton has garnered about 600 contributions from Edwards supporters.

Since Jan. 30, Obama has received more than 1,800 contributions from Edwards donors, more than three times as many as Clinton. 

Dan Hayner and Michael Lemaire contributed to this report.

http://hill6.thehill.com/leading-the-news/john-edwardss-supporters-are-flocking-to-sen.-obama-2008-04-24.html

US News Media’s Latest Disgrace

ConsortiumNews.com, By Robert Parry, April 21, 2008

After prying loose 8,000 pages of Pentagon documents, the New York Times has proven what should have been obvious years ago: the Bush administration manipulated public opinion on the Iraq War, in part, by funneling propaganda through former senior military officers who served as expert analysts on TV news shows.

In 2002-03, these military analysts were ubiquitous on TV justifying the Iraq invasion, and most have remained supportive of the war in the five years since. The Times investigation showed that the analysts were being briefed by the Pentagon on what to say and had undisclosed conflicts of interest via military contracts.

Retired Green Beret Robert S. Bevelacqua, a former Fox News analyst, said the Pentagon treated the retired military officers as puppets: “It was them saying, ‘we need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’� [NYT, April 20, 2008]

None of that, of course, should come as any surprise. Where do people think generals and admirals go to work after they retire from the government?

If they play ball with the Pentagon, they get fat salaries serving on corporate boards of military contractors, or they get rich running consultancies that trade on quick access to high-ranking administration officials. If they’re not team players, they’re shut out.

Yet, what may be more troubling, although perhaps no more surprising, is how willingly the U.S. news media let itself be used as a propaganda conduit for the Bush administration regarding the ill-advised invasion of Iraq.

Fox News may have been the prototype of the flag-waving “news� outlet that fawned over pro-war retired military officers and mocked anti-war citizens.

But the same imbalance could be found at the major networks, like NBC where then-anchor Tom Brokaw spoke in the first person plural as he sat among a panel of retired brass on the night of the Iraq invasion – March 19, 2003 – and said: “In a few days, we’re going to own that country.”

The blame also goes far beyond the TV networks, to the most prestigious print publications. The New York Times famously promoted fictional stories about Iraqi aluminum tubes for building nuclear weapons, and the Washington Post editorial page remains to this day an ardent cheerleader for the war.

So, the real question is not how widespread the ethical lapses of the U.S. news media were – both in palming off self-interested ex-generals as objective observers and for failing to demonstrate even a modicum of skepticism in publishing false articles that paved the way to war.

Rather, the urgent question is what must be done if the United States is to reclaim its status as a functioning constitutional Republic in which a reasonably honest news media keeps the public adequately informed.

Having spent most of my career on the inside at places such as the Associated Press and Newsweek, it’s been my view for many years that the mainstream U.S. news media can’t be reformed, that it is beyond hope.

Though there are still good journalists working at major news companies – and the better news outlets do produce some useful information, like Sunday’s story in the Times – the central reality is that corporate journalism is rotten at the core and won’t stop spreading the rot throughout the U.S. political process.

That’s why for the past dozen-plus years at Consortiumnews.com, we have called for a major public investment in honest journalism, so information can be produced that it is both professional and independent of the kinds of external pressures that have deformed today’s mainstream press.

We must find new ways to tell the news.

The Reagan Era

The scope of the problem dawned on me in the late 1980s, as I watched the widespread criminality of the Iran-Contra and related scandals – ranging from money-laundering, gun-smuggling, drug-trafficking and acts of terrorism – get swept under the rug because they implicated senior U.S. officials.

During those years, I witnessed the Washington press corps – which still basked in the glory of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers – rushing headlong toward becoming little more than a propaganda funnel for the powers-that-be.

Indeed, in 1992, my first book, Fooling America, argued that the Watergate-Vietnam-era press corps was undergoing a historic transformation into a snarky conveyor of ill-considered conventional wisdom.

The book also made the case that this transformation was not accidental, nor was it driven just by corporate greed and journalistic careerism (though there was plenty of both). There also was a powerful ideological component.

Behind the scenes, the Reagan administration had constructed a domestic framework modeled after CIA psychological warfare programs abroad. The main difference this time was that the psy-op took aim at the American people with the goal of managing how they perceived events, what insiders called “perception management.�

From documents that I uncovered during the Iran-Contra scandal, it was clear that the motive behind this extraordinary operation was the bitterness that conservatives felt toward the mass protests against the Vietnam War and toward American journalists whose reporting supposedly had undermined the war effort.

So, Ronald Reagan’s team made it a high priority to rein in troublesome journalists and to reverse the so-called “Vietnam Syndrome,� the American people’s revulsion over any more foreign military adventures.

The documents revealed that the domestic operation took shape in the early 1980s under the guidance of CIA Director William Casey, who even donated one of the CIA’s top propagandists, Walter Raymond Jr., to manage the program from inside President Reagan’s National Security Council staff.

Other factors fed into the success of this propaganda operation, especially the rise of a bright group of political intellectuals known as the neoconservatives. They proved especially adept at using McCarthyistic tactics to marginalize and silence dissent.

The crowning achievement of this decade-long effort came during the first Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. President George H.W. Bush believed that a successful U.S.-led ground offensive could finish the job of bringing the American people back from their post-Vietnam malaise.

However, after months of devastating aerial bombings, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had persuaded Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait with no more killing, and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and other front-line U.S. commanders favored the deal.

But Bush rebuffed the offer, instead ordering the ground attack that slaughtered tens of thousands of fleeing Iraqi troops during a 100-hour campaign. [For details, see the Colin Powell chapter of Neck Deep.]

When the ground war ended, Bush offered an insight into his central motivation. In his first comments about the U.S. victory, he declared: “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.�

Amid the war euphoria, some American journalists who had thought a less violent solution should have been pursued – including conservative columnist Robert Novak – offered cringing self-criticisms about their mistaken doubts.

The only sustained criticism of President Bush on the war came from the neocons, like Charles Krauthammer, who complained that Bush should have let the killing go on, that he stopped the ground war too soon, that he should have conquered Baghdad and occupied Iraq.

In my book, Fooling America, I told the story of this decline and fall of the U.S. news media, from its glory days of Watergate to its groveling days of the early 1990s. But 16 years ago, few people wanted to hear the story – or believe it.

The common view at the time was that the Washington press corps was still the aggressive watchdog of Watergate fame and, if anything, was too “liberal.� Though I had a major publisher in Morrow, the book got little circulation and was trashed by key book reviewers, including one from the Washington Post.

The thought that the heroic Washington press corps was changing into something cowardly and reckless was an idea whose time had not yet come.

[Fooling America has long been out of print, but some of the material can be found in Robert Parry’s later books, Lost History, Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep.]

Repeating History

In the investigation of how the Pentagon used TV military analysts to sell the Iraq War – thus allowing George W. Bush to “complete the job� left unfinished by his dad – the New York Times also traced the administration’s P.R. theories back to the Vietnam War and to the early days of the Reagan era.

“Many [TV military analysts] also shared with Mr. Bush’s national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war,� the Times reported in the article by David Barstow.

“This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from ‘enemy’ propaganda during Vietnam.

“‘We lost the war – not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,’ he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars – taking aim not just at foreign adversaries but at domestic audiences, too.

“He called his approach ‘MindWar’ – using network TV and radio to ‘strengthen our national will to victory.’�

But the danger of “MindWar,� aimed by the U.S. government at the American people, is that it turns inside-out the concept of a democratic Republic in which a well-informed people exercise meaningful control over their government.

Instead, you end up with a duplicitous government using propaganda, fear and intimidation to whip the people into line. Rather than the government being the servant of the people, the people become the servant of the government.

Then, as undemocratic regimes have shown throughout history – with the voice of the people silenced – insiders get a free hand to carry out foolhardy policies and to line the pockets of their friends.

With the U.S. taxpayers now looking at an open-ended Iraq War with the total cost possibly reaching $3 trillion, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out who the “winners� were in this “MindWar.�

Often they were the same TV military analysts and news media pundits who were advocating for the invasion more than five years ago. Almost everyone of them has made out like bandits, many with fat stock portfolios and posh vacation homes, not to mention appreciative CEOs back at corporate central.

The “losers� should be equally apparent. Besides the fleeced American taxpayers, there have been more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead, another 30,000 wounded, and hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Iraqis.

This bloody march of folly began some three decades ago when the U.S. news media began surrendering its responsibility to keep the people informed and instead opted for the easier and more lucrative role of acting as propagandists for the powerful.

The New York Times article is just further proof of that sorry reality.

http://consortiumnews.com/2008/042108.html

Delegate Scramble Is On—But It’s All About Bill, Again

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=3105288
By RICK KLEIN with MIKE ELMORE, April 22, 2008

A win can be a win, surely. Yet a win can also be a loss. There will be a “winner” and a “loser” in Pennsylvania’s primary on Tuesday—or maybe two winners and two losers (or even three losers, if you count Bill Clinton). Here’s an easier way: As voters matter again—this six-week pause in voting (if not spinning) finally comes to an end with Tuesday’s primary—all you need to know about the race you can learn by watching the delegates, in all their various forms.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., may claim to be a hunter—and she’s after an elusive target. Pennsylvania is the biggest prize left on the Democratic calendar: 158 pledged delegates will be allocated in a state with 4.2 million Democrats—including some 300,000 who have switched party affiliation or registered for the first time.

And another audience is more important: the undecided superdelegates. They’ll be watching Tuesday’s results on several levels—for winners and losers (whatever that means), demographic breakdowns that speak to electability (whatever THAT means), and expressions of voter sentiment (politicians generally like keeping their jobs).

“The future of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign [is] most likely resting on the outcome,” Jeff Zeleny and John M. Broder write in The New York Times.

“Even a wide victory by her would not overcome her deficit in pledged delegates or in the popular vote of states that have held nominating contests, but it would ensure that the race moved on to contests in Indiana and North Carolina in two weeks, on May 6.”

Clinton is favored to win her must-win state, but that outcome by itself will be a quick-hit energy boost when what she needs is a healthier long-term campaign lifestyle to overtake the clear frontrunner, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

“The margin in the popular vote ultimately will be secondary to how Pennsylvania affects the battle for pledged delegates,” Dan Balz writes in The Washington Post. “Clinton badly needs to make up ground in the delegate fight and, given the way they’re distributed, that could be difficult.”

Obama comes into the voting with an edge of 145 delegates, per ABC’s delegate scorecard, and proportional allocation means that the lead is unlikely to shrink substantially on Tuesday.

And how will voters and delegates view this final flash of the two edges that are Bill Clinton’s sword? Asked about his infamous Jesse Jackson comments in South Carolina, the former president tells WHYY, “I think that they played the race card on me. And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it all along.”

“I was stating a fact, and it’s still a fact,” he adds, referring to Obama’s support among black voters. (And beware the open mic—and open-ended questions like this one, Mr. President: As the phone interview ends, Bill Clinton says, “I don’t think I should take any sh-t from anybody on that, do you?")

Obama did what he could (and then some) to downplay expectations. Said Obama: “I’m not predicting a win. . . . I’m predicting that it’s going to be close and that we are going to do a lot better than people expect.” Said chief strategist David Axelrod: “I am not standing here telling you we expect to win. . . . I don’t think anybody expects us to win.”

Obama had gone 10 days without a press conference, and he wasn’t about to answer questions over breakfast Monday morning: “Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” Obama said, in one of the less-advisable election-eve utterances. (Get the feeling the RNC is ready to let him eat as many “waffles”—or French toast—as he wants in the general election?)

Clinton set expectations Tuesday morning on “Good Morning America”: “I have to win. I believe that’s my task,” she told ABC’s Chris Cuomo. “I don’t see how a Democrat wins the White House without winning Pennsylvania.”

Clinton is the prohibitive favorite, despite Obama’s lapping of the field in ad spending—but her problem is that everybody knows this already. Clinton is the victim of the expectations game—not to mention the fact that she’s trailing in the race.

“In what may seem like a paradox, the Clinton victory predicted by nearly all public opinion polls might actually turn out to be a loss if she doesn’t win by a significant margin,” Peter Wallstein writes in the Los Angeles Times.

“And if Obama keeps the results closer than some surveys suggest, he could be considered victorious—unless it appears that Clinton’s campaign has succeeded in casting doubt on his credentials to be commander in chief or his ability to win support in the fall from white, working-class voters.”

“Even if Obama is thumped by 10 to 20 percentage points in Pennsylvania, Clinton would not pick up enough delegates there to cut substantially into Obama’s lead,” Wallsten adds. “Obama strategists said Monday that they expected to announce a series of additional endorsements by uncommitted superdelegates shortly after Pennsylvania votes. A strong showing by Obama in Pennsylvania would give superdelegates more comfort in coming forward, but a bad loss might send them back to the assessment stage.”

Writes Christina Bellantoni, of the Washington Times: “If Mrs. Clinton fails to get the big win, many Democrats believe the superdelegates will surge for Mr. Obama to end the divisive battle and unite to square off with presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain.”

Clinton’s other nightmare: Pennsylvania could be another Nevada or Texas: “In Democratic strongholds, such as the 1st and 2nd districts, both in Philadelphia, participation rates are high, and those districts allocate seven and nine delegates, respectively,” Anne Kornblut and Paul Kane write in The Washington Post. “Obama could win seven of the nine delegate at stake in the 2nd District, and four of seven in the 1st, his campaign estimates.”

“Rep. Chaka Fattah, an Obama supporter who represents the 2nd District, predicted in an interview this month that his candidate would win as much as 80 percent of the vote there, an outcome that would yield a 7-2 delegate split for his candidate,” James O’Toole writes in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“Under that scenario, that one district would make up for the one-delegate advantages Mrs. Clinton might reasonably expect in five five-delegate districts scattered through the parts of the state where she is seen as stronger.”

That’s why a win isn’t necessarily a “win.” It’s not a fair fight—but neither is the race at this moment an even match between candidates who have equal claim on the nomination.

“The Clinton-Obama primary, which begins the final phase of the prolonged nomination fight, will be judged not just on the basis of who wins but also by how much,” Larry Eichel writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“An Obama victory by any margin in Pennsylvania would be a devastating, perhaps fatal, blow to Clinton’s prospects,” Eichel writes.

“And a narrow Obama loss would do little to change the overall dynamic of the race, although the Clinton camp would try to make as much of the result as possible. On the other hand, a substantial Clinton victory would prolong the nomination process through the next set of primaries, in Indiana and North Carolina next up on May 6, and perhaps beyond.”

“Not only must she score an expected win, she must beat Barack Obama by a large enough margin to convince party leaders that she would be the stronger nominee in the fall,” Susan Milligan writes in The Boston Globe. “Unless Clinton can win convincingly enough to sow doubts about Obama in the minds of the superdelegates, her chances of becoming the Democratic nominee are slim at best.”

As for what that margin has to be, the remarkable stability in the polls sets the expectations.

Obama has tried (and failed) to close Clinton out before—but never has his bar been this low. “Senator Obama has another opportunity tomorrow in Pennsylvania—and this time he doesn’t even have to win,” Real Clear Politics’ John McIntyre writes.

“If he simply outperforms the latest RealClearPolitics Average which has him trailing by 5.9%, that will be enough to calm nervous superdelegates while all but eliminating any hope Senator Clinton has of claiming a popular vote victory.”

“Where the race could get very interesting is if Clinton is able to beat Obama by double-digits,” McIntyre continues.

Polls opened at 7 am ET and close at 8 pm ET statewide. It may not be smooth: “With record numbers of new registrants, voter groups and election officials warn of the potential for record numbers of problems at the polls today,” Anthony R. Wood and Vernon Clark write in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Despite Obama’s efforts to downplay expectations, his campaign has outspent Clinton 3-1 in the Keystone State, and his harsh tone in the closing days suggests a quest for what he was unable to do in New Hampshire or Super Tuesday: close out Sen. Clinton.

He told ABC News’ Robin Roberts on “Good Morning America” that his attacks on Clinton are necessary. “You’ve always got to measure if somebody throws an elbow at you, and after three or four times of gettin’ elbows in the ribs, you know, at what point do you sort of say, ‘OK, you know, we’ve gotta put a stop to that’?” Obama said.

The spin is the spin, but the numbers are also the numbers—and Obama will be the frontrunner when they day ends almost no matter what.

And yet—Clinton may have at least one more run in her. Politico’s Ben Smith: “If past primaries offer any prediction, a Clinton win will offer her new momentum, money and hope—for a few days. . . . The Clinton campaign’s goal Wednesday, if she wins, will be to argue that Pennsylvania is different. Clinton bases her arguments against Obama on the premise that he’s a weak general election candidate whose flaws, finally revealed, will cut the legs out from his campaign.”

Slate’s John Dickerson sees the Clinton campaign trying to build on a victory that hasn’t even come yet: “With a win in Pennsylvania likely, Clinton aides are preparing to frame the victory as a ratification of her ‘Who do you think has what it takes?’ message (whether voters actually saw the last ad or not),” he writes.

“Now, they’re likely to add that Obama’s rough patch in the last week of the Pennsylvania campaign means the crisis-testing scenario is not so hypothetical: Pennsylvania voters saw how Obama reacted to his poor debate performance and the pressure of the campaign, and they determined that he couldn’t take the heat.”

Camp Clinton wants a win to be a win—period, the end. Campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said he rejects “the notion that we need to achieve a certain standard of victory other than victory”—and a 3-1 Obama spending edge helps make his case, per The Hill’s Sam Youngman.

(If it was a “senior campaign source” who leaked an apparent 11-point internal polling advantage to the Drudge Report—a quickly denied report—that individual either should not or will not continue to enjoy that title.)

Yet Clinton did what she could to raise the stakes coming into the voting. A quick flash of Osama bin Laden in her closing ad takes care of that, with the ominous tag line: “Who do you think has what it takes?”

“The Obama retort—without mentioning Mrs. Clinton’s name—brought another of his frequent reminders that, in 2002, she had voted to authorize the war in Iraq,” per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Says the narrator: “Who made the right judgment about opposing the war and had the courage and character to speak honestly about it? And who in times of challenge will unite us—not use fear and calculation to divide us?”

ABC Polling Director Gary Langer, on what to watch for in Pennsylvania: “It’s hard see a single factor more compelling than socioeconomic status, particularly as defined by education. It’s split the Democratic electorate nearly all year, and as with her past victories, it’s what Hillary Clinton will be counting on tomorrow.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Gerald Seib: “Four groups of voters  working-class males, young people, rural and small-town Americans and Hispanics  stand out as the key pieces of that puzzle. All four groups are in flux, and they will provide the leading indicators of where the race is heading.”

More Clinton tough talk: Asked by ABC’s Chris Cuomo what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons, Clinton was unequivocal. “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” Clinton said. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

Looking beyond Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Indiana both vote two weeks from Tuesday—with the Hoosier State looming as the next big battleground.

“Clinton to concede the race if she can’t win [in Indiana],” Mary Jacoby, Amy Chozick, and Nick Timiraos write in The Wall Street Journal. “Sen. Obama has been running ads in both states for a month, while the Clinton campaign put up its first ads in the states two weeks ago.”

This is where Obama’s cash edge starts to matter: “Clinton entered April with about $9.3 million in cash on hand, but she also carried about $10.3 million in debt. In contrast, Obama had $42.5 million available to spend at the start of April and reported $663,000 in unpaid bills,” Matthew Mosk reports in The Washington Post.

Now title-less Mark Penn is now owed $4.6 million alone. That’s another reason a big Pennsylvania win is critical: “[Finance co-chairman Hassan] Nemazee said a victory in Pennsylvania would generate an influx of online donations, and that fundraising from major donors continues to exceed expectations,” Mosk writes.

“It’s Barack vs. Ba-roke,” reads the lede by the New York Daily News’ Michael McAuliff.

And Clinton can’t count on any more debates to help her prospects in the states to come. Obama gets a reprieve (and Katie Couric gets the shaft): The April 27 CBS debate scheduled for Raleigh, N.C., has been canceled by the state party, citing logistical hurdles as well as concerns about party unity. “It’s been quite a long campaign season, and from the media reports there were just some questions about whether another debate would help Democrats tell their story, or just be the aftermath of the ABC debate,” Kerra Bolton, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina Democratic Party, tells ABC.

Pennsylvania is highly unlike to end anything. Newsday’s Glenn Thrush: “Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed to take her cash-starved campaign far beyond Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary—win or lose—saying she’ll fight until voters in Florida and Michigan are seated at the Democratic convention.”

The popular vote matters, too—at least in the long term. Clinton adviser Harold Ickes, to New York magazine’s Lloyd Grove: “We expect her to be ahead in the popular vote. The key argument is who is going to be able to stand up to the incoming fire from the Republicans. And it will be withering.”

And on the question of electability: “I don’t think anybody would argue that he can’t win.” (Really? Not even to Bill Richardson?)

No wonder Bill Clinton wants some new math: “If we were under the republican system which is more like the electoral college, she would have a 300 delegate lead,” the former president said, per ABC’s Eloise Harper write. (Actually, the number is 173, but isn’t this a little like saying you could have made the majors if curveballs were outlawed?)

But Bloomberg’s Lorraine Woellert still sees Bill as a net-plus: “Former President Bill Clinton could well be running against his wife instead of stumping for her. The couple’s differences, and his frequent blowups on the campaign trail, though, haven’t hurt much with her supporters. As the campaign heads into the Pennsylvania primary today, he still manages to excite voters in rural areas and small towns where she has her best chance for victory over Barack Obama.”

The latest USA Today/Gallup Poll cuts both ways: “Barack Obama has widened his lead nationally for the Democratic presidential nomination despite a furor over his comments about small-town Americans,” per USA Today’s Susan Page. But Clinton’s slightly stronger in the hypothetical head-to-heads: It’s Clinton 50, McCain 44, and Obama 47, McCain 44.

Regardless of Tuesday’s results, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet sees Obama limping away from Pennsylvania: “After a tough Pennsylvania contest, Obama’s brand is bruised. Obama is not as pristine as he once was. He’s had to deal with a series of controversies and he’s gone negative against Sen. Hillary Clinton—as she has attacked him,” Sweet writes. “In this historic election, Obama’s high pedestal was cut down a few feet in Pennsylvania, his hardest fight so far.”

The self-styled Rocky Balboas closed with some wrestling, not boxing, with their WWE addresses Monday night.

It was Obama, this time, in the kitchen: “So to the special interests who’ve been setting the agenda in Washington for too long - and to all the forces of division and distraction that have stopped us from making progress for the American people—I’ve got one question: Do you smell what Barack is cooking?”

And it was Clinton sounding maybe just a little bit tougher: “This election is starting to feel a lot like ‘King of the Ring.’ The only difference? The last man standing may just be a woman.”

Clinton has his primary night celebration in Philadelphia, while Obama makes the Clinton move of skipping ahead to Indiana, with rally in Evansville featuring John Mellencamp. McCain campaigns in Ohio. Get all the candidates’ schedules in The Note’s “Sneak Peek.”

I’ll be live-blogging as Pennsylvania election returns roll in, at ABCNews.com.

Also making news:

The McCain tour began in Selma, Ala., on Monday: “It was an unlikely setting for Republican presidential hopeful John McCain to campaign in Monday: the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where black protesters were beaten in a 1965 march for voting rights,” Michael Finnegan and Maeve Reston write in the Los Angeles Times.

“McCain joined hands later with black women who sang gospel spirituals to him as they rode a ferry across the muddy Alabama River near Gee’s Bend, a community famous for its quilts and for its role in the civil rights struggle.”

“McCain chose Alabama, one of the reddest states on the Electoral College map, to launch a week-long swing through some of the nation’s economically distressed areas,” ABC’s Ron Claiborne writes.

“Even more extraordinary, McCain went to Selma, the site of one of the most notorious episodes of the Civil Rights movement, and talked about that episode.”

Coming Tuesday: “Sen. John McCain heads for a battleground of the free-trade fight today,” USA Today’s David Jackson writes. “Youngstown, Ohio, is a struggling steel town where jobs have been lost and free-trade deals are unpopular.”

In Youngstown, McCain plans to make a comparison to his once-hopeless campaign: “A person learns along the way that if you hold on - if you don’t quit no matter what the odds—sometimes life will surprise you. Sometimes you get a second chance, and opportunity turns back your way. And when it does, we are stronger and readier because of all that we had to overcome,” McCain, R-Ariz., plans to say, per his campaign.

The New York Times’ David Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg write up the case of McCain and a developer: “For Mr. McCain, the Arizona Republican who has staked two presidential campaigns on pledges to avoid even the appearance of dispensing an official favor for a donor, [Donald] Diamond is the kind of friend who can pose a test,” they write.

“A longtime political patron, Mr. Diamond is one of the elite fund-raisers Mr. McCain’s current presidential campaign calls Innovators, having raised more than $250,000 so far,” they write. “At home, Mr. Diamond is sometimes referred to as ‘The Donald,’ Arizona’s answer to Donald Trump—an outsized personality who invites public officials aboard his flotilla of yachts (the Ace, King, Jack and Queen of Diamonds), specializes in deals with the government, and unabashedly solicits support for his business interests from the recipients of his campaign contributions.”

Newsweek’s Holly Bailey points out that McCain isn’t as funny as she thinks he is.

The Boston Globe’s Peter Canellos sees a missed opportunity for Clinton at the debate. Clinton’s missed opportunity: Why not sign on the dream ticket if you’re Clinton? “Clinton clearly has more to gain from having Obama as her VP than vice versa: She has been looking for a way to persuade undecided superdelegates—the party leaders who will provide the winning margin for either her or Obama—that they can safely back her even if she doesn’t win quite as many elected delegates as Obama in the primary elections.”

If only the candidates themselves didn’t see it as such a nightmare: “Some uncommitted superdelegates—the party leaders and elected officials whose votes may determine the nominee—see such a unity ticket as a way to short-circuit a fight for the nomination all the way to the Democratic convention in August, and to blend the voter bases of the two candidates,” Patrick Healy writes in The New York Times.

“All that stands in the way are a few pesky details  like the fact that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton want to be done with each other, starting now.”

Julie Nixon Eisenhower, a Pennsylvania resident, is “quietly” backing Obama, ABC’s Diane Sawyer reported on Tuesday’s “Good Morning America.”

Michael Moore endorses Obama—mostly because he’s fed up with Clinton. “Over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting,” Moore writes on his blog. “My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate. That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what’s going on is bigger than him at this point, and that’s a good thing for the country.”

President Bush does . . . Howie Mandel?

The kicker:

“You can call me Hill-Rod.”—Hillary Rodham Clinton, addressing a WWE crowd the night before the Pennsylvania primary.

“That is not our plan Jon, but I think your paranoia might make you a suitable moderator.”—Barack Obama, denying to Jon Stewart that he has a secret plan to “enslave the white race.”

Bookmark The Note at http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=3105288&page=1

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Pennsylvania Could Decide Clinton’s Fate - PA voters get say in key primary

Could a double-digit victory make the senator from New York the comeback kid once again?

“If Clinton wins by more than 10 points, which was her margin in neighboring Ohio and New Jersey, her campaign will have new momentum and she will soldier on,” said Bill Schneider, also a CNN senior political analyst.  Watch how the polls show Clinton leading »

“If Clinton wins by single digits, we’re in a political twilight zone. Nothing changes.”

A CNN “poll of polls,” which averages the three latest surveys in Pennsylvania, calculated Tuesday placed Clinton ahead of Obama by 9 percentage points, 51 percent to 42 percent, with 7 percent of voters undecided.

But if Obama scores an upset, “Clinton will face tremendous pressure to end her campaign rather than damage the party,” Schneider said.

An Obama win also could push many of the remaining undecided superdelegates into his camp. Neither candidate is expected to win the 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the nomination by the end of the primary season in June.

Obama leads Clinton in the overall delegate count 1,648 to 1,504, CNN estimates.

The superdelegates—Democratic governors, members of Congress and party leaders and officials—then could decide the nomination.

In recent weeks, Clinton has fended off calls to drop out of the race as the increasingly bruising primary fight raised worries from within the party that the daily cycle of charge-and-countercharge could hurt the Democrats’ chances in the general election.

Clinton, however, said the party would unite once the nominee emerged.

“I think this is on balance a pretty civil and positive campaign compared to many we have seen in the last years, and it is fair to compare and contrast the differences between us,” Clinton told CNN Monday. “And voters got to make up their own minds.”

“At the end of the day, we’re going to have a unified Democratic Party. Whatever differences there are between my opponent and I pale in comparison to the differences we have with Sen. McCain and the Republicans,” she said, referring to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

The Clinton campaign said Obama spent so much money in Pennsylvania that a loss would bring his electability into question.

Pennsylvania seems to be Clinton country, judging by demographics. The state has a lot of older, working-class and Catholic voters, all of whom have made up Clinton’s base so far.

Clinton also has the backing of many of the state’s top Democrats, including Gov. Ed Rendell and the mayors of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the state’s two largest cities.  Watch where the crucial voting areas are »

But there are some factors that help Obama. He’s favored to win Philadelphia, with its large African-American population, and he could do well in that city’s suburbs, thanks to upscale voters who tend to support him.

Obama also could benefit from the large number of new voters who have registered, and he has the backing of the state’s only Democratic senator, Bob Casey Jr.

It has been six weeks since the last Democratic contest, Mississippi on March 11. The long gap made for the longest campaigning in a state since the Iowa caucuses kicked off the primary season January 3.

After Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina hold votes in two weeks as the primary season rolls on toward its end in June.

Then the wait until the national convention.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/22/pa.primary/index.html