EDITORIAL – Prophetic Pennsylvania

Sen. Hillary Clinton made her Western Pennsylvania campaign debut this weekend, speaking at a… Sen. Hillary Clinton made her Western Pennsylvania campaign debut this weekend, speaking at a Bloomfield gas station, rallying supporters at Soldiers ‘ Sailors Museum and Memorial Friday and attending St. Patrick’s Day festivities Downtown Saturday.

During her appearances, Clinton was surrounded by supporters, including Gov. Ed Rendell and local Democratic politicians Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, as well as local and national media representatives. But Clinton’s rally at Soldiers ‘ Sailors lacked one notable party: the students. While Clinton courted local Democratic voters, Pitt and Oakland neighbor Carnegie Mellon University students were celebrating spring break.

While Clinton’s campaign, in contrast to her Democratic presidential rival Sen. Barack Obama, hasn’t focused on rallying students on college campuses, we find it bizarre that Clinton would choose to hold an event so near to Pitt’s campus when Pitt and Carnegie Mellon students were noticeably absent.

And while Clinton has now made several appearances in Pennsylvania, Obama has yet to even begin heavily campaigning in the state. Obama’s campaign has publicly played down the importance of the Pennsylvania primary recently, most likely in hopes to prevent the momentum drop that would probably occur as a result of a hard-fought Pennsylvania loss.

Both candidates’ Pennsylvania campaign strategies, in a way, could be self-fulfilling prophecies. If Clinton fails to court students and young people, she will struggle to capture the youth vote in Pennsylvania, a faction that, if not critical in the primary, will be of crucial importance in the general election.

Obama’s Pennsylvania play-down could not only lose him a Pennsylvania win, which his campaign is already dismissing as a possibility, but also Pennsylvania votes.

Even if Obama can’t win Pennsylvania (a crucial general election swing state), losing by a smaller margin would give him more delegates than a blowout loss would.

The importance of a Pennsylvania primary win to both Clinton and Obama has certainly waned in recent weeks, with both candidates looking ahead to what could be another four months of campaigning for the nomination, leading both candidates to spend time courting another important voting faction: the superdelegates.

Clinton’s back-in-the-game wins in the Ohio and Texas primaries have edged the delegate gap between the candidates to fewer than 200, a fact that could push the end date of the nomination process to the Democratic National Convention, with superdelegates choosing the nominee.

Neither Clinton nor Obama are reaching out in Pennsylvania where they need to and are instead looking ahead toward a decision that might ultimately be made by party leaders – an event that would alienate not only the losing candidate’s supporters but also voters from both parties across the country.