John Baer: Was Pa. primary a turnpike to a major Dems pile-up in Denver?

BETTER PUT the Democratic Party back on suicide watch.

Rather than smoothing the ride to the nomination, Pennsylvania on Tuesday provided the party a keystone for a bridge to self-destruction.

It's now difficult to see - barring some sudden, jarring event - how Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama comfortably captures the clear right to face John McCain in November.

I say comfortably because, despite the fact that Pennsylvania's vote did nothing to change the delegate math favoring Obama, it changed the overall impression of the race.

Pennsylvania brought us an overplayed focus on the wrong things: Obama's misspoken "bitter" words, Clinton's mis-spoken sniper-ducks, ABC-TV's flag-pin debate, and nasty and negative truth-bending ads from both campaigns.

It brought us, in short, the tired familiar politics that Campaign '08 at one time promised to replace.

It is disheartening.

The race has turned into a made-for-TV reality show for inside players and talking heads at the expense of the concerns of working families.

The danger is that this dampens what up to now has been a firestorm of excitement engulfing the race.

And that's too bad.

And if the interparty battle worsens, as is certainly possible, and lasts up to and maybe through the national convention at the end of August?

That could lead to disaster in Denver and, possibly, a President McCain.

It also could mean that African-American voters, a mainstay for Democrats, get turned off and disillusioned in a year when Democrats hold every advantage in their efforts to reclaim the White House.

Notre Dame political-science professor Darren Davis, whose specialty is political behavior and racial politics, says that one impact of the ongoing fight is a change in how Obama is viewed.

Once the candidate of a multiracial coalition who himself seemed to transcend race, Obama is now "a black candidate," Davis says.

"What's happened is the media and Hillary have taken part in peeling off the de-racialized texture of Obama," he says, "to the point we now have a darker candidate than when we began.

"And I can tell you, as an African-American at a predominantly white institution, and as a political scientist who's seen research on the subject, there are things and issues that get attached to minorities that don't get attached to other people."

He contends, for example, that it's harder for Obama to shake the Rev. Wright controversy and his own "bitter" comments than for Clinton to shake Bosnia.

(Does this help explain why Obama avoided Philly's blackest neighborhoods, to avoid seeming too black? Who knows? So much about racial politics seems so risky.)

And now?

Clinton backer Gov. Rendell yesterday said he expects the race to go to the convention but doesn't fear a party meltdown.

He noted that Democrats first nominated Woodrow Wilson, a two-term president, on the 46th convention ballot in 1912, and he won and did OK.

Uh, yeah, but that was 1912. Not to mention that the Republican Party split in two that year, with Teddy Roosevelt running on the Bull Moose ticket.

Rendell also said he now puts Clinton's chances of winning the presidency at "even money," and on a scale of one to 10, a five.

Asked about a possible Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton ticket, Rendell said he'd "absolutely" love to see either one.

But as we watch the contest get more contested the longer it goes, doesn't such a possibility fade?

I questioned Democratic survivability back in January, when Clintonites raised Obama's (admitted) youthful drug use, when there was a dust-up over Hillary's references to Martin Luther King Jr. not being able to make civil-rights gains without the help of a president, and when her (always entertaining) husband suggested Obama's campaign is a "fairy tale."

With winter now turned to spring, I question that survivability again.

And wonder what the summer brings. *

Send e-mail to baerj@phillynews.com.

For recent columns, go to

http://go.philly.com/baer