Democrats on fence look at viability

For them, it's not a question of which candidate is right on the issues. They believe either one would pull the troops out of Iraq. They believe either one would be an advocate for the environment and a friend of the middle class.

For undecided Democratic voters in the Philadelphia area, the question that rises above all others is this: Which candidate would better be able to stand up to Republican Party assaults and capture the White House this fall? Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton? Or Sen. Barack Obama?

"My question is - who can win?" Kathleen Joyce, a Democratic activist in Abington, wrote in a typical letter to The Inquirer from undecided voters. "The right is drooling, waiting to pounce, waiting to tell America who and what to fear, and start a frenzy, the minute this is decided. It's difficult, but I am trying to think like a Republican and determine what they fear most."

Joyce, in an interview yesterday, said she had shaken hands with Clinton during a campaign rally at Montgomery County Community College and with Obama while he was filming a TV commercial in Jenkintown. Yet she still hadn't made up her mind.

With the primary season dragging on for months - and Pennsylvania's primary just one week away - the number of voters still on the fence is dwindling. Independent polls show they could total anywhere from 6 to 9 percent of the Democrats likely to cast votes next Tuesday.

Still unknown is the impact of controversial comments that Obama made last week in San Francisco that exploded as a campaign issue over the weekend. At a private event for donors, Obama suggested that many small-town Pennsylvanians, bitter at being left behind economically, "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them" to work out their frustrations.

Joyce, for one, said the campaign tempest would not affect her decision. Of course, she's from a classic suburb. Philadelphia and its environs are not old steel towns along the Monongahela River.

"It may have been an odd choice of words, but that happens," Joyce said. "It happens to Hillary; it happens to everyone."

But Chris Borick, a pollster at Muhlenberg College, said he believed that the comments - which Clinton portrayed as an insult to many Pennsylvanians - could hurt Obama.

"If I'm sitting on the fence and I'm thinking, 'Who's going to be the better candidate?', then I'm thinking, 'He's just given the Republicans a piece of material [to use against him] in the fall.' "

In many elections, many of the undecided voters are people who haven't paid much attention to the campaign.

But undecided voters say that is not the case here.

Many committed voters, well-versed in a primary they find more exciting than any in years, say they are in a quandary.

Dale Kinney, a Bryn Mawr College professor and graduate school dean, said it frustrated her "not to know whom I am going to vote for."

"I would vote for the candidate most likely to beat [Sen. John] McCain," she said in an interview. "Yet I have not figured out which one is best positioned to do that."

This is no lesser-of-evils option, Kinney and others said. She believes either Clinton or Obama would make a good president.

But she can see that each has leadership weaknesses as well as strengths.

"Mrs. Clinton seems to be a manager, very detail-oriented and practical," she wrote in a letter. "I worry that she might be a micro-manager, which would distract her from the big picture.

"Mr. Obama is visionary and charismatic; it seems he would lead by force of personality rather than by practical intervention and know-how. That could lead to a gap."

Larry Reese of Willow Grove, who owns rental properties in the city and suburbs, said he was leaning toward Obama - whom he called visionary - but hadn't made up his mind "100 percent."

He said Obama's San Francisco comments did not bother him because he believed they were basically true.

He said he also admired Clinton's perseverance and toughness, which he said she had first demonstrated during the investigation of President Bill Clinton's sexual conduct in the White House by Washington special prosecutor Kenneth Starr.

"She has persevered, having her marriage dragged through the mud, and she came through that holding onto her dignity," Reese said while waiting to settle a business-license issue at the Municipal Services Building.

Like many other voters, Reese said he was thrilled by the sheer excitement and drama of the Democratic primary process, which he said was making people think more seriously about their voting options than at any other time he could remember.

"It gives you hope that the electoral process still has validity," he said. "A lot of people are getting involved that would not have otherwise."

Amy Zambrano, a communications and Italian studies major at Rosemont College, said she was in a position just the opposite of Reese's. She was leaning toward Clinton but wasn't entirely certain how she would vote.

Eating breakfast from a Dunkin' Donuts bag at Suburban Station, she said she was being pulled in two directions - toward Obama by many of her college friends and toward Clinton by her 82-year-old grandmother.

Her grandmother, she noted, was born just a few years after women attained the right to vote. She now found it "very cool," she said, that a woman was a leading contender for president.

"I probably won't decide until right up to the primary," Zambrano said.