Below The Beltway

Attention is already being turned to April 22nd in the Keystone State:

[T]he state’s April 22 primary is shaping up to be another so-called decisive battle in the Democratic campaign. It is the single biggest prize in the next six weeks, with 103 delegates up for a vote. With her comeback victories in Texas and Ohio, Clinton needs a solid victory here to justify a potential triumph at the convention with a superdelegate strategy. Obama needs to counter that strategy by piling up the pledged delegates, to blunt any Clinton hold on the superdelegates that is based on momentum and growing popular support. “Neither Clinton nor Obama can afford to bypass [Pennsylvania],” said pollster and political analyst G. Terry Madonna of Franklin & Marshall College. “They can’t afford to let it alone even though it won’t give anyone enough pledged delegates for a victory at the convention.” Madonna’s latest poll, taken in mid-February, shows Clinton holding a good lead in Pennsylvania, 44 to 32 percent, but Obama has closed the gap since January, when he was 20 points down. Democratic consultant Larry Ceisler believes that by winning Texas and Ohio, Clinton proves she can win Pennsylvania.

There seems to be a common theme today about Pennsylvania that, because of it’s similarities to Ohio, Clinton’s victory there yesterday means she has an advantage in Pennsylvania, but the similarities aren’t that apparent:

[Franklin & Marshall College’s] Madonna said Obama is likely to do very well in Philadelphia, with a large African-American electorate, and may win in the city’s suburbs, which have the same kinds of upscale, well-educated professionals that have gone for Obama in recent contests. Western and Central Pennsylvania are much more conservative, blue collar and Catholic, and the voters tend to be a bit older, all of which seem to favor Clinton. The key battleground is likely to be in the Lehigh Valley and the Northeast, toward Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, where traditional blue collar industry is giving way to high tech.

Despite Clinton’s continued lead in the state polls, Obama is riding on a wave of grassroots enthusiasm, the likes of which political veterans say they have never seen before. Until late February, neither candidate had much of an organization in the state — a handful of junior staffers but no more. But without prompting from the national campaign, dozens of self-generated Obama organizations sprang up around the state in recent months, drawing in thousands of supporters. “The brilliance of the Obama campaign is that it is very organic,” said Dan Wofford, an Obama supporter and son of former Sen. Harris Wofford. “It’s not without structure, but it is bottom up.” As campaign staff begins to arrive in the state, he said, “they are very mindful; they don’t want to snuff out the grassroots with a layer of hierarchy on top of it, but they do bring in structure that helps nourish the grassroots movement.”

Dick Polman adds this about what will clearly be an unremitting battle:

Pennsylvania will become the new Iowa; with no competing contests, it will be the target of unremitting national attention. And it will be a brutal battlefield. For all the glib comparisons to Ohio, its rustbelt neighbor, there are significant differences that could aid Obama. Pennsylvania has a larger black population than Ohio, larger cities, and a larger student population. In contrast to Texas, it has a small Latino population. It has populous white liberal suburbs around Philadelphia.

On the other hand (advantage Hillary), it has the second-largest senior electorate in America, behind Florida. It has a large population of lunch-bucket guys, just as in Ohio. And, perhaps most importantly, the Keystone State primary is open only to registered Democrats. Obama-friendly independents need not bother to show up - unless they re-register as Democrats in advance, by the March 24 deadline. It’s hard to imagine that these converts will vote in the same numbers as the independents in other states.

All this points to a long battle ahead.