You knew it would ultimately happen, right? Now that Hillary Clinton’s survived another round of the presidential nominating process, we’re suddenly hearing once again about Florida’s demands that its delegates be seated.at the Convention. Indeed, Floridians are getting testy about it:

Florida Democrats — led by Hillary Clinton supporters — are turning to public protests to keep the pressure on the national party.
Rallies are planned Saturday in seven Florida cities, including Miami and Fort Lauderdale, to demand that the national party count Florida’s delegates. Hundreds of activists are also expected to ride buses to Washington to rally Wednesday.
”This has to do with our civil rights,” said Millie Herrera, a potential Clinton convention delegate and the president of the Hispanic Democratic Caucus of Florida. “No one has the right to invalidate our votes.”

Sorting out the “civil rights” issues from those that are strictly related to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy won’t be easy. Most national Democrats hoped that Florida and Michigan could be dealt with discreetly after a nominee was selected. But the longer the contest goes on, the harder that becomes.

Hillary Clinton has followed up her solid primary win in PA yesterday with what appears to be a tactical victory today: laying down a story-line that the only contest that matters on May 6 is in Indiana, a state she has a decent chance of winning, making NC, where Obama has a big lead in the polls, essentially meaningless.
I call it a success because so far, the news media, and even some pro-Obama commentators, are buying it. In the midst of a generally negative assessment of Clinton’s ultimate, today’s Washington Post article by Dan Balz on the PA results says this:

Clinton expects victories in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. Obama’s team expects to win Oregon, North Carolina, Montana, South Dakota and Guam. That makes Indiana the critical battleground. Obama was there last night and Clinton will arrive today.

Even more interestingly, Ezra Klein of the American Prospect–who usually reflects the pro-Obama leanings of the progressive blogosphere–has an article up today arguing that Obama needs a “knockout” over Clinton on May 6, meaning an Indiana win.
And the articles discussed here at TDS by J.P. Green earlier today all point to Indiana as the next big contest.
Implicit and sometimes explicit in the all-about-Indiana story-line is that Barack Obama can’t claim true and final victory in the nominating contest–delegate-math be damned–until he can finally exorcise the haunting fear that he can’t win states with substantial but not massive African-American populations. And that’s a concern for him beyond Indiana, if he loses there: if the contest is still alive, HRC is almost certainly going to win big in WV and KY, and Obama’s subsequent likely wins in MT, SD and perhaps OR may be written off as irrelevant to his “problem,” which superdelegates will be constantly asked to weigh.
Part of Obama’s current dilemma is that his own campaign can’t seem to get beyond an inevitability argument. Brandishing projected delegate and popular-vote charts, the Obama campaign and its media allies have been dismissing adverse primary results for weeks and even months now, on the reasonable but probably irrelevant theory that it would take a miracle for Clinton to catch him on either measurement. If he’s already won, then it’s psychologically difficult to lay down his own marker for when superdelegates should force Clinton from the race–e.g., the next time she loses, say, in NC.
So: Clinton gets to call the next “meaningful” battle, and thus gets to lose NC with no consequences beyond whatever net gains in delegates or popular votes Obama can squeeze from the Tar Heel State. Those gains would simply represent a small addition to the charts showing Obama’s inevitability, which much of the media and a critical mass of superdelegates have clearly decided to reject for now.
It was particularly crafty of the Clinton camp to get word out today that key supporters close to the candidate would gently push her to withdraw if she loses Indiana–a pretty empty pledge since no one thinks she could survive a loss there. No such promises were made with respect to a loss in NC.
When I called this framing of the contest a “tactical” victory for Clinton, I did mean just that. Obama can take the bait and win Indiana and not only nail down the nomination, but quiet some of the caterwauling about his “weaknesses.” Perhaps a NC win would add just enough to the inevitability argument to begin to tip superdelegates in his direction even if he loses Indiana. And in the end, the math that underlies the Obama inevitability argument is generally sound; something other than occasional must-win victories would have to happen to give HRC a plausible shot at the nomination.
But the chance to pick the battleground remains a precious asset to Clinton, and one rarely available to a trailing candidate.

If you are curious about the accuracy of all the comparisons last night between Hillary Clinton’s wins in PA and OH, check out Jay Cost’s article in RealClearPolitics this morning. As he demonstrates in category after category, the two candidates performed roughly the same in the two states. If anything, PA’s primary electorate turned out to be somewhat older, whiter, and more Catholic than OH’s, which helped Clinton. Her margins among white woman and white men actually dropped a bit in PA, but they represented a slightly larger percentage of the vote than in OH.
Here’s Cost’s bottom-line take:

What we see, then, is what we have seen again and again in this contest. Clinton continues to do well with “downscale” whites. Obama does well with “upscale” whites and African Americans. What is intriguing about this result is not just that it is similar to Ohio – but also that it is similar after seven weeks and millions of dollars in campaign expenditures. Clearly, these voting groups are entrenched.

I’d add another factor: as Cost himself demonstrated during the last round of primaries, there’s no real evidence that either candidate has enjoyed much of a “bounce” from winning any given contest, with the sole exception of Obama’s Wisconsin victory, which seems to have been influenced by his Potomac Primary sweep. So if demographics are indeed destiny in this nominating contest, HRC’s got an steep uphill climb in NC but a much better chance in IN. “Momentum,” negative or positive, doesn’t seem to matter to Democratic voters this year. But nor do gross ratings points of advertising bought. That’s the bad and good news for HRC right now.

Many states have been called a “must win” for Senator Clinton, and she has shown a remarkable ability to rally when it counts, PA being the most recent example. In the weeks ahead, however, Indiana looms especially large for the Clinton campaign.
Shane D’Aprile’s Campaigns & Elections post “Is Clinton’s Pennsylvania Win a Game-Changer?” sets the stage for the May 6 primaries in Indiana and North Carolina. D’Aprile explains:

Clinton has an uphill fight to get just one win out of the next two states on the Democratic primary docket. Polls show a mixed bag in Indiana where Clinton stands the best chance on May 6. The numbers range from a 5 point lead for Obama in the latest LA Times/Bloomberg to a 16 point advantage for Clinton in a recent Survey USA poll.
In North Carolina, polls suggest an Obama landslide. A recent Insider Advantage poll gives Obama a 15 point lead, while the latest numbers from Public Policy Polling give the Illinois senator a staggering 25 point edge. That poll also shows Obama leading among women and within striking distance of Clinton’s 5 point lead among white voters.

“North Carolina is a lost cause,” echoes U. VA political scientist Larry Sabato in D’Aprile’s article.”Obama will win big because of the large African-American percentage” (about 22 percent in 2005). Sabato believes Clinton has a better chance in Indiana, where Senator Evan Bayh’s support may help, although it would be counterbalanced to some extent by Obama’s familiarity to Indiana voters, 20+ percent of whom are in the Chicago media market.
D’Aprile’s article quotes Democratic strategist Steve McMahon on the effect of Clinton’s PA win: “It makes her claim that she can win the nomination a bit more legitimate…but it doesn’t change the fact that there’s a math problem that’s almost impossible for her to overcome.” But political analyst Rhodes Cook adds “She can probably pull out a victory in Indiana…And then even if she loses North Carolina, she still has Kentucky and West Virginia where she could conceivably win by 20 points each.”
One indication of how close it may be in Indiana is the stance of heartland rocker John Mellencamp, who has scheduled appearances for both Obama and Clinton next week. Tuesday he joins Obama at an Evansville rally and on Saturday he sings for Clinton in Indianapolis. Mellencamp has also performed at at fundraisers for John Edwards, Wesley Clark and Howard Dean. Mellencamp’s publicist, Bob Merlis said there was zero chance he would perform for McCain. “The Democratic Party is the agent for change (Mellencamp) has pinned his hopes on.”
Rock on, bad boy.

With the vote nearly all in from PA, it looks like Hillary Clinton will get her double-digit win, just barely (55-45). She’ll also get a bit over a 200,000 popular vote margin, which will cut Obama’s cumulative popular vote lead (excluding four caucus states, plus MI and FL) to about a half million.
The county map for PA looks a lot like OH’s–a few urban pockets going for Obama, and everything else going for HRC. Her wins in two Philadelphia suburban counties (Bucks by a landslide and Montgomery by a whisker) will get some post-election attention, along with her 74% victory in perennial NE PA general election bellweather Lackawanna County.
Since my earlier post mentioned Howard Fineman’s theory that Obama’s real strategy in PA was to spend HRC into bankruptcy, it’s worth noting that she seems to be raising some serious money online tonight. But the real question is whether PA will give her enough money or votes to survive May 6, when she must win Indiana and may need an upset win in NC.

Well, the nets have now called PA for Hillary Clinton, and the final (unadjusted) exits are out, and it looks like her margin of victory will fall into that ambiguous territory of high single-digits (53-47 or 54-46), thought that could change. The exits themselves are not terribly surprising, given past patterns; the most striking numbers to me were her better-than-two-to-one wins in the perpetual battleground territory of NE PA, and also among Catholics. For Obama, the most impressive numbers were his tie with HRC among voters under retirement age, and his 3-2 margin among new Democratic voters (including first-time voters and party-switchers).
HRC’s three-to-two margin among white voters in PA is one of those numbers that can be read either way.
So: let the spin wars begin.

I’ve been watching MSNBC’s early coverage of the PA primary, and it’s been a roller-coaster of hints that the race is very close and hints that Clinton may wind up winning pretty big. The gradual drip of exit poll date has, even more than usually, contributed to this confusing impression.
The one clearly interesting thing I’ve heard on this network so far is actually by Howard Fineman, who’s saying that Obama’s real PA strategy was to bleed HRC’s finances while limiting her margin of victory. Under that theory, if Obama avoids a double-digit loss while forcing the Clinton campaign into virtual penury, then he’s lost the battle, but maybe contributed to victory in the war. We’ll see.

The record turnout in the PA Democratic primary is not without problems. Every time a state votes, we hear stories about voter intimidation, misprinted ballots, and equipment failures. Most of these issues turn out to be inconsequential.
But if you like hearing about them anyway, check out Elections Journal. A team of activists (led by a Republican named Mike Roman) is on the ground in the Keystone State using web tools like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Google Maps to document alleged abuses.
And lest we forget, there is a reason that Democrats organize voter protection teams on Election Day.

For you serious political junkies, The New Republic‘s Noam Scheiber has published a fascinating profile of David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s publicity-averse campaign manager. You’d be excused for forgetting that Plouffe’s the top guy, given the high visibility of “strategist” David Axelrod (Plouffe’s colleague in pre-Obama political consulting); this inside-outside division of labor is a deliberate arrangement they worked out in advance.
Scheiber’s take on Plouffe’s key role focuses on the Obama campaign’s success in organizing caucus states from Iowa on, and also on its efforts to make “pledged delegates” the key media optic for measuring success in the Democratic contest. There’s not anything about Plouffe’s general election strategy if Obama wins the nomination, but you have to give Scheiber a lot of credit for getting any sort of coherent profile done of an operative who refuses to be interviewed.

The long hiaitus in Democratic primary voting is finally over, as voters troop to the polls in PA today. MSNBC’s First Read has a reasonably good assessment of the range of likely results, which will only have a big impact on the nomination contest if Barack Obama pulls off an upset win (which would be as big a blow to the polling industry as HRC’s win in NH), or if HRC wins by a bigger margin than in Ohio (i.e., by double digits). A very narrow Clinton win would produce the most intense spin wars, since most polls predict a high-single-digit margin for her. Even with a comfortable but not overwhelming victory in PA, she’s unlikely to make any significant net gains in pledged delegates, though she could shave Obama’s (roughly) 700,000 lead in the cumulative popular vote by somewhere between 150,000 to 200,000.
If you’re planning to watch the network/cable coverage of the primary results tonight, expect a lot of talk (particularly if there is a significant gap in time between the release of exit poll data and the “calling” of the state) about Obama’s relative performance among various categories of white voters–those without college educations, Catholics, Appalachians, etc., etc.–perhaps with comparisons to his numbers in Ohio. Another good bet is a lot of confused discussion about the cumulative popular vote totals, which will vary from count to count based on all sorts of definitional factors. And yet another lead-pipe cinch will be close scrutiny of exit poll data about the alleged willingness of Clinton and Obama voters in PA to desert the party in November if their candidate does not get the nomination. (Note, however, the TDS staff post earlier today pointing to historical evidence that such defections rarely happen in big numbers, whatever voters say months away from the general election.)
While it may not get much media attention unless the numbers are really surprising, total turnout–generally expected to be in the neighborhood of a record 2 million–will be interesting, not just in terms of the possible impact on the Clinton-Obama competition, but as a reflection of (a) the year-long national trend towards a significant expansion of Democratic registration, and/or (b) the existence or absence of “voter fatigue,” which some observers expect as a product of the increasingly negative nature of the contest, or of television ad over-saturation. The weather, described this morning by the Philadelphia Inquirer as “a near perfect spring day…across the Keystone State,” certainly won’t depress turnout.
Stay tuned here for updates tonight as developments warrant. We’ll try to add some value to the media chatter.