Clinton & Obama: The final push

IN A RACE in which both laid claim to the title of "Rocky," Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton staggered toward the Pennsylvania primary's closing bell last night, trading tired jabs like two punch-drunk brawlers.

In the final hours of the longest and most contentious presidential primary here ever, the two Democratic hopefuls frantically criss-crossed the state and waged one last nasty barrage of crossfire over the TV airwaves.

Before closing her campaign here with what was expected to be a raucous rally with husband Bill and daughter Chelsea at the storied Palestra on the Penn campus, Clinton aired a final TV spot that included an image of Osama bin Laden and said a president "has to be ready for anything."

Obama, who held a surprisingly low-octane gathering on economic policy before a handpicked crowd at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, fought back against the ad, which his campaign said was "appealing to . . . fears."

Today, after six weeks during which the eyes of the nation focused on Pennsylvania, with the Art Museum replacing Capitol Hill as the backdrop for national news and with the media examining our beer and bowling habits with the zeal of anthropologists, the voters finally get their say.

Many in Democratic circles had hoped that the statewide primary - with 158 pledged delegates to the party's August convention in Denver up for grabs - would pick a nominee to do battle against GOP Sen. John McCain in the fall.

They may not get their wish. A flurry of new statewide polls were released in the 48 hours leading up to today's primary, and the bulk of them showed a tightening race with Clinton - the leader since the first surveys were taken here last year - ahead by single digits.

One of the final surveys - a Quinnipiac College survey of 1,027 likely Democratic voters in Pennsylvania - showed the former first lady leading the Illinois senator by 51-44 percent margin, with little movement over the last two weeks.

If those results hold true, it means that Clinton will be able to claim the momentum of a win in another big-sized state that will be a battleground with McCain in the fall. But Obama will still have a nationwide lead in pledged delegates and in popular votes nearly impossible to surpass.

None of that stopped the candidates - who have spent millions of dollars on the airwaves since the campaign shifted here in mid-March - from going all-out in the waning hours.

Obama started the day in the Philadelphia region, where polls show his strongest base of statewide support, especially in predominantly black neighborhoods of the city and in a ring of affluent suburbs such as Blue Bell.

The first-term senator rolled up his sleeves and saddled up on a stool in the community-college courtyard for an issues-based discussion with a private audience of fewer than 50 people.

Obama, in a thinly veiled reference to his opponent, told the handpicked crowd that "not all of us have talked about the need to change how Washington works.

"One of the key distinctions, I think, in our campaign has been the way it's really been built from the bottom up, the grassroots," he said. "That we've been financed by ordinary people, that we have built our organizations through volunteers. We really feel like we've got a chance to break the mold and get out of the typical pattern of our politics over the last 20 years."

Despite the understated tone of the event, which seemed targeted more at Obama's large traveling contingent of reporters than to his small audience of voters, there was still evidence of some of the rock-star treatment that has followed the Illinois senator wherever he campaigns.

"ObamAAAA!!!" one nearly hysterical woman shrieked as his convoy rolled onto campus and students jostled for position. "It's like he's The Beatles," one reporter mumbled to another.

Not everyone was thrilled with the nature of the event. One college student on the other side of the rope voiced his displeasure with the setup, holding a sign that read, "Private meeting, public college? Does our vote count?"

Meanwhile, the candidates skirmished over Clinton's new 30-second TV ad, which emphasized the perils awaiting the next president.

Images of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt, Nikita Khrushchev, Fidel Castro, and Hurricane Katrina flash by while an announcer said, "You have to be ready for anything." Later the announcer says, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen," a knock at Obama's reference to shots he took in last week's debate.

The Obama campaign responded by reviving a Bill Clinton quote from 2004: "If one candidate's trying to scare you and the other one's trying to get you to think; if one candidate's appealing to your fears and the other one's appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope."

Yesterday Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson told reporters a Clinton win by any margin would be significant, since Obama had outspent her on TV by a three-to-one margin in an attempt to "knock Senator Clinton out of the race."

"If he does not win after having outspent us so dramatically, it will once again raise very serious questions among voters and superdelegates about whether Senator Obama can win big swing states like Pennsylvania," Wolfson said. *

Staff writer Will Bunch contributed to this article.