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Pennsylvania fallout: Don’t forget the base

Dante Chinni

Posted: 04.25.2008 / 8:01 AM EDT

Coming out of the Pennsylvania primary, the biggest topic may be “electability” – as in who’s more likely to be able to win in November.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign has pressed that her big wins in key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania show why she should be the nominee. Winning at least one of those two states is crucial for Democrats in the general election.

Senator Clinton points out that she won the votes of working-class whites in both states – many of whom live in the “Service Worker Centers,” which Patchwork Nation notes may be pivotal in November. She’s the one who can rally these voters to the Democratic Party, she says.

But her argument stems from an underlying assumption that Sen. Barack Obama’s followers will support Clinton if she gets the nomination – and with the same zeal they have for Senator Obama. That last point is key. In past presidential elections, huge margins in “Industrial Metropolis” counties in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan offset Republican wins elsewhere.

Consider that Sen. John Kerry carried Pennsylvania in 2004 by about 145,000 votes. Senator Kerry’s margin came from Philadelphia, where he won by more than 400,000 votes.

So how do political observers in Philadelphia, our Industrial Metropolis, react to the electoral fallout from the Keystone State’s primary? With furrowed brows.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” says John Saler, a Philadelphia lawyer and Democratic political adviser who is not affiliated with either of the campaigns. “If you are a superdelegate, you’d better follow the elected delegate count. If you don’t there will be disenfranchisement.”

Mr. Saler is referring to the Clinton campaign’s strategy of wooing superdelegates, elected officials and Democratic party leaders who can vote for whoever they want to get the nomination. Clinton will almost certainly be behind in the pledged delegate count when all the primaries are over.

“Five weeks from Tuesday, if Obama is still up 100-plus in elected delegates, still has won more states, and is still up 500,000 or so in the popular vote, they’d better give him the nomination,” says Neil Oxman, a Democratic political ad man in Philadelphia who’s not working for Obama or Clinton.

And if they don’t? “It would make Chicago 1968 look like a fair,” Mr. Oxman says. (That was the year a split at the Democratic Convention devolved into a nightmare for the party.)

The Rev. Ellis Washington, pastor of St. Matthew A.M.E. Church in largely African-American west Philadelphia, says his congregation overwhelmingly went for Obama, but if Clinton received the nomination there might be a split come November.

“I can’t say for sure with the older voters,” he says. “They feel more of a responsibility to come out and vote. The generation who remembers the civil rights movement … understands that progress can be slow. But they are committed because they know that people died for this.

“The younger voters … will feel disenfranchised. And it won’t just be for this election. They could be turned off from politics for a long time.”

Mr. Washington said he thought race played “a significant part” in the primary results statewide and may be a factor in contests to come, such as Kentucky.
“We hope and expect [Obama] to get the nomination and we hope and expect him to get the presidency. But we know it’s a hard road ahead,” Washington adds.

Ultimately, Patchwork Nation correspondents in Philadelphia are divided over how important Pennsylvania will be in the fall. Some say presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, would have a real shot. Others, including Oxman, say no way.

He notes that the race triggered a massive boost in Democratic registrants. In January, the state had 500,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans; now it has 1 million more Democrats. Most of those new registrants voted for Obama, despite the urgings of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh to vote for Clinton to throw the Democratic race into chaos. “They’re for real,” Oxman says.

Several Patchwork Nation contacts in Philadelphia say they’re starting to wonder if Obama and Clinton are on a path to “an arranged marriage” because an Obama-Clinton ticket would give everyone in the two camps something to like when they vote in November.

Of course, it would also put two untested presidential commodities – an African-American and a woman – on the same ticket, which could be a risky venture in some other communities. Then there is the matter of getting candidates who’ve been spending their time attacking each other to work together.

That won’t be helped by more weeks of mudslinging.