In a poll just released by Quinnipiac University, Hillary Clinton is running ahead of John McCain in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio—three swing states that, according to electoral lore, are necessary to win the presidency.

The poll also shows McCain would beat Barack Obama in both Florida and Ohio:  read more »

The April 22 Pennsylvania primary breathed new life into an underdog presidential campaign that had been on the ropes, ensuring that the race would continue at least through the Indiana primary in two weeks and raising new concerns within the party about the front-runner’s ability to close the deal.

Yes, this is old news—28 years old, to be exact.  read more »

Hillary Clinton got a temporary boost out of Pennsylvania last night, and today, her surrogates are likely to be arguing to superdelegates that her comfortable victory in a swing state is yet more proof that she is the superior general election candidate.  read more »

Forget Pennsylvania—the cruel joke for the last six weeks was that it mattered at all.

Hillary Clinton’s win in Pennsylvania is worth a two-week stay of political execution for the former First Lady—and nothing more. In victory, she can justifiably proceed to Indiana, which will vote on May 6, and try to cobble together enough new cash to keep her million-dollar-a-day machine churning until then (a task not made any easier by her 10-point victory tonight).  read more »

It's called.

Thank God it’s just about over. The 42-day gap between Mississippi’s March 11 primary and today’s contest in Pennsylvania has taxed the patience and energy of even the most dogged political junkies, mostly because, when all is said and done, so little is actually at stake.

Obviously, if Barack Obama were somehow to engineer an outright victory, then something very significant will have been decided in Pennsylvania: the Democratic primary. But that’s not likely.  read more »

STATE COLLEGE, Penn.—Hillary Clinton, speaking on the Penn State campus here on Sunday night, once again sought to exploit Barack Obama's declaration that John McCain would make a better president than George W Bush.

She was met with cheers when she told the crowd, "We need a nominee who is going to take on John McCain, not cheer him on."  read more »

PHILADELPHIA—Barack Obama’s final push through Pennsylvania has shown the combative, angry side of a candidate and campaign that had once been defined by its good cheer and condemnation of negative tactics.  read more »

PAOLI, Penn.—Barack Obama offered an especially sharp criticism of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in Paoli this afternoon as part of his train tour through Pennsylvania:

“Senator Clinton’s essential argument in this campaign is that you can’t change how the game is played in Washington. Her basic argument is that the slash-and-burn, say-anything, do-anything, special-interest-driven politics is how it works. And so she has taken more money than any other candidate, Democrat or Republican combined.  read more »

It feels like we’re counting down to something momentous in Pennsylvania. The candidates have practically moved into the state, each new day brings at least one new poll, and Ed Rendell is on one of the cable news channels every 12 minutes or so.

“I keep being told by the press that you people are going to decide this thing,” Stephen Colbert, broadcasting from the City of Brotherly Love, told Mayor Michael Nutter on Monday night. “Do you think that one state should have that kind of power?”

The mayor, a Clinton backer, smiled and replied, “Yeah.”  read more »