Day Fourteen, April 8

Right now, anyone who has their eyes on Obama is keeping at least one eye out for what will be happening in the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Two weeks from today, one of the largest remaining political contests the Democratic party has yet to wage will play its part in determining which Senator is going to be on the ballot in November. A month ago, the situation was looking rather grim for Obama in the aptly-named Keystone State, but as countless publications are reporting today, the Illinois Senator has done much to turn his own ship around.

In order to kick off today's post I chose this article, posted today on Forbes.com. Starting out by reminding us just how far ahead Senator Clinton was a month ago (17 points in a poll back in March!), blogger Paul M. Murdock demonstrates just how hard Obama has worked to gain a fighting chance in Pennsylvania. With latest polls showing Hillary ahead by a mere 6 percentage points, Obama is on the tail of the margin-of-error victory that could give him the majority of delegates up for grabs. Considering that he's been outspending his rival's campaign by a count of three-to-one, perhaps this updraft of undecided voters is less surprising after all.

The most inspiring thing about this charge that Obama has mounted in Pennsylvania is the fact that he's managed to do it mostly by recruiting from the type of voters that Hillary has previously been able to keep in her pocket in this race. By reaching out to the white, middle- and working-class vote, Obama is showing the people of Pennsylvania that he not only sympathizes with a state hit especially hard by the recession, but he is willing to fight for them. In a campaign that has placed the importance of no state above any other, making this sort of a comeback is no small feat. Obama's message of economic reform and affordable health care is no more appealing than in Pennslyvania.

In the long run, I think that this month will play a major role in making the economy one of Obama's core issues, which will undoubtedly work out in his favor (and more importantly, it's just what America needs). If the Obama campaign can bring the economy to the forefront of the debates this fall (or if the Federal Reserve does it for him), this will give him a huge edge on McCain, who is holding little more than military experience and his promise to stay the course in Iraq as his trump cards. In a quote from an editorial in last Friday's Boston Globe, Obama emphasized the economic crisis, saying, "there's some very concrete issues that have to be dealt with in terms of disparities in healthcare, or income or joblessness, legacies of the past. So we don't want to paper those issues over." Click here to read the entirety of that editorial, by author Derrick B. Jackson.