Bump in the Road to the White House

For Barack Obama, the PA results were a bump
in the road. Clinton gained a net of 9 to 12 delegates,
and lost her last big chance to gain significant ground.
She needed to win by the 25 points she had been leading
in some polls a couple of months ago. She won by 9.2. So
for Obama, it has its minuses and its pluses. For me it
was more personal. While the campaign reminded me of
what I cherished about the state, the result reminded me
of why I left, several times. PA is so old partly because the
cost of living there is relatively low, and the last generation
to have pensions they can count on has retired. But it's also
because the young leave. A lot don't want to, but there aren't
enough ways to make a living. Some feel they have to, because
the mood of the place is stultifying and oppressive. And that's
another reason those jobs aren't there: imagination and innovation
are a hard sell.

It's still a beautiful state, the cities of Pittsburgh and (I'm told) Philadelphia
are unrecognized jewels, and family and loyalty are values the rest of
the country could use more of. But the place has the vices of its virtues,
and the contradictions within the white working class culture are major.
Listen to Lennon's "A Working Class Hero" and you get the drift.

The New York Times today has an article arguing that "According to surveys of Pennsylvania voters leaving the polls on Tuesday, Mr. Obama would draw majorities of support from lower-income voters and less-educated ones — just as Mrs. Clinton would against Mr. McCain, even though those voters have favored her over Mr. Obama in the primaries." So her "more electable" argument based on the PA results doesn't work, besides contradicting most national polls. Clinton is running out of time--she can't win enough delegates or enough votes to surpass Obama. This should have ended in PA, but now it will end somewhere else. In a month or, more likely, two weeks.