Starting Gate: Hanging Together Or Breaking Apart?

Philadelphia favorite son Benjamin Franklin would have made a great pundit in this age of one-liners and pithy observations and predictions. But even the verbose and prolific founding father might find himself at a loss to describe campaign 2008.

As Democrats in Pennsylvania flood to the polls today, there are a lot of questions but few expectations that the primary will add any finality to the proceedings. Hillary Clinton, whose support among older, blue-collar, lower-educated and income voters have kept her in the race is expected to win in a state where those demographics dominate. The two big questions are how big of a win will she need to gain any momentum and whether the hundreds of thousands of new voters added to the state's Democratic rolls might somehow give Barack Obama a surprising (and probably decisive) win.

That Obama will be traveling to Indiana, the site of the next important primary contest, tonight tells you his campaign isn't banking on basking in the glow of an upset win in the Keystone State. And whether Clinton wins by one-point or 15-points, her campaign has given no indication that she's even considered exiting the race after a win in Pennsylvania.

So what have the past six weeks (since Obama won the Mississippi primary) been all about and what does today's primary mean for the coming months? The eternal optimists within the Democratic Party will see a net positive from this lengthy and costly campaign. It's toughened the eventual nominee up for the fall campaign, generated tremendous excitement and brought legions of new voters (and donors) into the re-energized party.

But those glass-half-full types are getting harder to find the longer the campaign continues and the more hits their front-runner has taken. Clinton's campaign long predicted that Obama would undergo the type of "vetting" process that would tear away some of the veneer from his candidacy. With the Rev. Wright controversy, his "bitter" comments and not a little help from Clinton herself, that has certainly happened to a degree.

Something else has happened however that may be more damaging – he has failed to put Clinton away in spite of holding a nearly insurmountable delegate lead. Barring some catastrophe, Obama is almost certain to finish this race having won more states, more delegates and more of the popular vote. But he won't have an overwhelming margin in any of those categories and that's not exactly the kind of momentum he needs heading into a general election, particularly after having out-raised and outspent Clinton by tens of millions of dollars.

There are divisions within the Democratic Party and they are likely to be on display once again in today's primary. These are not small differences. They are fundamental and break down along racial, gender, economic and educational lines. Party leaders fretting about bringing them back together have cause for concern and time is not a luxury they can afford to waste.

When it comes to November, Democrats might find themselves recalling Franklin once more, who advised his fellow founders on the importance of unity in backing the bid for independence, saying they must hang together, "or most assuredly we will all hang separately."

Not To Be Forgotten: John McCain continues his "Time for Action" tour today in Youngstown, Ohio where he will focus on "forgotten" workers in that economically challenged area (and try to keep from being forgotten himself on this big primary day). In remarks today, McCain will tell workers in Ohio that he feels their pain. "The men and women of Youngstown know what it feels like to be counted out," McCain will say according to prepared remarks. "You've been written off a few times yourselves, in the competition of the market. You know how it feels to hear that good things are happening in the American economy - they're just not happening to you."

And McCain will spell out his plans to help. "Raising taxes on businesses in Ohio and elsewhere, as both my opponents propose to do, will not bring the old jobs back, and it sure won't create new ones. If I am elected president, we're going to get rid of that drag on growth and job creation, and help American workers compete with any company in the world. The same goes for your own wages, in the jobs you have now or the ones you hope to have. And we can start by doubling the tax exemption for every dependent child of every worker in America. I have plans to make health care more portable and affordable with generous tax credits. Losing a job is hard enough without losing your health care, too. We need reforms to make sure that employers spend more on wages, and that your health plan is yours to keep."

Bill, Unplugged (Again): In an interview with Philadelphia's WHYY, Bill Clinton said he was not guilty of interjecting race into the campaign with his comments about Jesse Jackson during the South Carolina primary in February. He said the Obama campaign was. "I think that they played the race card on me. We now know, from memos from the campaign that they planned to do it along," he told the radio station. After reciting a list of his service to the black community, Clinton apparently thought he was off the air when he wasn't and was recorded saying, "I don't think I should take any sh-t from anybody on that, do you?" Read more and listen to the interview here

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