By now, you're probably sick of reading--or thinking--about Arlen Specter.

Our news cycles do overload when there's real news. And Specter's switch from R to D--that is, his switch-back, since earlier in his political career he had changed from D to R--was indeed news.

I'll spare you more punditing on the matter--since this event is already 23 hours old, which renders it practically ancient history. Suffice it to say that I take a cynical view of the move.

I told you the Pennsylvania primary would not settle anything. Not that that was such a daring prediction. Here is my insta-analysis, first posted at MotherJones.com. Feel free to share your views in the comments section.

The Democratic contest has been a 50-50 proposition for months now--more precisely, a 51-49 percent endeavor or maybe a 52-48-percent face-off in Barack Obama's favor, according to the pledged delegate count and the popular vote. Hillary Clinton's 9-point win in the Keystone State (which apparently did not net her a significant pickup in pledged delegates) does not change this. In fact, her Pennsylvania triumph does not change the fundamentals of the race. Obama is still on track to end the primaries with a slight edge in pledged delegates. And Clinton is still in the race, clinging tightly to her candidacy and reiterating rationales to stay in the hunt: I have more experience; I'm better prepared to be commander-in-chief; I've withstood the worst of the GOP attack machine; I've won the big states.

Bottom line: It's not over, and the contest is not likely to end anytime soon. At HRC HQ in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, Terry McAuliffe, Clinton's campaign manager, ebulliently declared, "She is taking this all the way to Denver." But many Democratic superdelegates and insiders are hardly enthusiastic about a bitterly fought campaign that trudges through the next nine primaries (which conclude in early June) and then continues, as a media-driven contest of Democrat-on-Democrat sniping, for three months until the convention in Denver at the end of August. The question is, will these Democrats be able to do anything about it?

If Clinton is committed to going the distance, she cannot be stopped. No one--not even those mighty superdelegates--can literally force her out. She cannot win the final primaries by margins large enough to erase Obama's lead in voter-determined delegates. Everyone knows that. But she can keep on challenging Obama, doing well enough--winning some contests or placing a strong second--to justify, at least to herself and her supporters, her continued presence in the race. During that time, she can hope something happens that does alter the landscape (look, evidence that Obama is indeed a secret Muslim!), and she can also lay the groundwork for a post-primaries effort to persuade superdelegates to overturn Obama's narrow victory among pledged delegates. Yet that project can only succeed with successful assaults on Obama. Her path to the nomination depends on one fuel: fierce attacks. She can win the nomination only by tearing down Obama after the voting is done and by threatening party unity.

Clinton is obviously fine with that--at this stage. But how far is she willing to go? Her shots at Obama may have helped her win in Pennsylvania. But they were not cost-free. According to the exit polls, 42 percent of the Pennsylvania Democratic voters consider Clinton untrustworthy. (Thirty percent said the same about Obama.) Sixty-seven percent said they believed she had attacked Obama unfairly. Only 49 percent said Obama had thrown low-blows. And Clinton did not redefine her standing among Democrats. Two-thirds of Pennsylvania's Democratic voters said Clinton was "in touch with people" like them. Yet two-thirds had the same assessment of Obama. Despite all the fuss about Obama's "bitter" remark, Clinton had no edge in the candidate-of-the-people category. And 51 percent of the voters said the candidate quality they consider most important was the ability to implement change. Among these voters, Obama attracted 70 percent.

With her Pennsylvania win, Clinton can raise funds--her campaign claimed millions of dollars poured in on Tuesday night--and she can proceed to Indiana and North Carolina (which hold primaries on May 6), staying alive because she insists she is alive. Remember the Monty Python "dead parrot" bit? As long as Clinton refuses to concede she cannot win, she remains a contender--or at least a force Obama and the Democratic Party must contend with. After all, the party has no official coroner who can pronounce her gone. And--no small matter--Democratic voters do keep turning out for her. In her victory speech in Philadelphia, she depicted herself as a politician who fights damn hard on the campaign trail for you and who will fight damn hard in the White House for you. Clearly, she was trying to turn what some superdelegates might perceive as an irritant or problem--her stubborn determination--into a reason why superdelegates ought to dump Obama for her.

During the Monica Lewinsky scandal--when many pundits and Clinton foes predicted Bill Clinton's demise--the Clintons learned a valuable lesson: sometimes you just have to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving ahead, paying no heed to those who say you have no choice but to quit. They had their party--most of it--behind them during those days. And now Hillary Clinton, with significant voter support, is plodding ahead, stuck with a strategy that at his point leaves her only the nuclear option of nullifying Obama's primary and caucus victories. But, she can reason, if I am not dead, then I'm still alive--and still have a chance. Politically speaking, she is somewhere between dead and alive. The undead? The next primaries may nudge her closer to one of those poles. And, once again, they may not be decisive. But as of now, amid the glow of her Pennsylvania victory, it's up to Hillary Clinton to decide at what point might rest the bitter end.

The Democratic primary contest has been "relatively mild." So said Hillary Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson, on a conference call with reporters on Tuesday morning. But in the same call, he and Phil Singer, another campaign aide, continued to whack Obama for making remarks that they blasted "as elitist and condescending." Singer added that Obama is "somewhat detached" from American voters. And Wolfson noted that the whole fuss over Obama's "bitter" comments is "an important issue." But it's a fuss fueled by the Clinton campaign, which yesterday put up an ad in which supposed Clinton supporters--average Joes and Josephines in Pennsylvania--gripe about Obama's remarks.

"It just shows how out of touch Barack Obama is," says Man 1 in the ad. (That's how the campaign identified the fellow in an email to reporters.) "I was insulted by Barack Obama," says Woman 1. And in the spot--the first negative ad in the Obama-Clinton contest that attacks an opponent by name--Woman 2 says, "I'm not clinging to my faith out of frustration and bitterness. I find my faith is very uplifting." [Correction: Howard Wolfson emails to say, "This is not the first ad that mentions an opponent by name -- we ran ads in WI urging him to debate -- he responded by saying we would say anything or do anything to win."]

Gal No. 2 gets to the heart of this non-issue. At that now-infamous San Francisco fundraiser, Obama, referring to middle-class voters in areas hit by massive job loss, said,

So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Obama's foes--in the Clinton camp and the John McCain camp--have accused him of saying people "cling" to guns and faith only because they are bitter. That's not exactly what Obama said. He noted that people in hard-pressed areas become bitter because they see the system failing them and they cling to their belief in gun rights and/or God (as well as other beliefs, such as opposition to immigrants or gay rights). Obama obviously knows that these beliefs--the good and the bad--were already deeply held before the mill jobs disappeared. Such beliefs, though, are presumably further embraced in difficult times. And given that some of these beliefs (gun rights, opposition to abortion and gay rights) tend to cut against candidates perceived as liberals, it can make things tougher for certain Democrats. This ain't in much dispute.

No doubt, Obama was trying to express what passes for a sophisticated point in our culture of debate-by-soundbites, yet he did so in a clunky manner that offered his opponents the chance to assert that he believes that faith and a love of guns come only out of frustration. There may be an argument for such a proposition. But I doubt Obama would accept it. As a former community organizer and longtime churchgoer (we all know that he goes to church), he hardly fits the bill as a secularist elitist. Yet the Clinton campaign pounced on these words to claim that the man whom they have already decried as not able to protect America as commander in chief is out of touch with real Americans. What a "mild" attack.

The bitter "bitter" debate is ridiculous. Days after the report came out that Barack Obama had said that blue-collar Pennsylvanians living in small towns that have experienced massive job flight are "bitter," the controversy is still the talk of the cable news shows. This is nuts. But it's nuts via design. As soon as Obama's remarks were reported, Hillary Clinton pounced, stating:

I saw in the media it's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter. Well, that's not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves. They are working hard everyday for a better future, for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them, they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.

And Clinton surrogate Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor, teed off on Obama's observation that these Pennsylvanians who "fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration" now "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Vilsack declared:

[Obama] suggests that in some way the faith of those who live in small towns is superficial. It's used as a crutch in a time of need. That's not what I know. What I know is that our faith is real and it is rooted. It is the foundation of our values system. It is what defines how we live our lives, and most importantly of all, how we raise our families. It is true. It is genuine. His comment about guns suggests that they are an instrument that we use somehow to protect ourselves from the outside world, to isolate ourselves from the outside world. When in fact, guns are a reflection of what we do with our family and our friends. It's how we pass on, through hunting, family traditions that are strong and how we form friendships that are lifelong.

Obama was simply stating what has been established dogma within the Democratic Party: when blue-collar voters' economic concerns and troubles are not addressed, they get pissed off and they vote on other issues, such as what's known in politics as the three Gs: Gods, guns, and gays. And nowadays, you can toss in illegal immigration and trade. With the exception of trade, all of this has helped the Republicans. Clinton and her people understand that.

To say one is "bitter" is no insult--especially when you affirm the reason for the anger (in this case, a government that has not responded to economic needs) and vow to make change. Clinton's equating Obama's recognition of justifiable bitterness with elitism is illogical. It's not elitism, it's empathy. Feeling their pain. Remember that? But she and her people saw an opportunity, and they went straight for the jugular. (You want an elitist remark? What about the gal who once said, "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.") And Obama, despite Vilsack's braying, was not dismissing the basics of faith and gun ownership (what a combo!). He was merely referring to the passions and circumstances that drive working-class voters to place gun issues and social controversies (such as abortion) at the top of their list on Election Day. Vilsack knows that.

This campaign is becoming more churlish and childish by the hour. Each day the two campaigns shoot out to reporters emails that try to turn small matters into scandals. The Clinton people, in my view, are worse, but the Obama camp has not been able to stay above the fray. The pressures of the campaign do push political aides and strategists to resort to such measures. And for political reporters, any fight makes a good headline. So this dynamic ain't gonna change. The Democratic contest is just going to get more bitter--bitter through Wednesday's debate and perhaps bitter all the way to the convention.

In January I observed that Barack Obama had a problem:

If the Democratic presidential race is between him and Hillary Clinton--sorry, Senator Edwards--it boils down, in a way to this: Clinton says, believe in my resume; Obama says, believe in me.

Clinton is pitching herself as a woman of experience who can start working for you and our children on Day One. Look, 35 years of policy wonkery and advocacy. Look, a record of accomplishment. (Fill in the number of children in fill in the state have health insurance because of her.) Look, years of traveling overseas as First Lady, years of hard toil--including working with (gasp!) Republicans--in the Senate, and years of doing political battle in the trenches. All of this is measurable and confirmable. A voter can easily evaluate her case and judge whether she's right for the job.

Obama is selling himself as...himself. That is, Obama is insisting that he has the ability to create a new politics--a transformative, overcoming-the-divide politics--because of who he is, because of his character and considerable personal attributes. Sure, he points to his past as a community organizer and civil rights lawyers and to his work in the Illinois state senator and the U.S. Senate to bolster his argument that he possesses the right stuff. But his is not a campaign of resume-waving. He's running on his soul. And Obama goes further than asking voters to hire him as their advocate. He issues an invitation: join me in this grand cause to change politics, change government, and change the nation. He speaks of his campaign as a movement and compares it to the great social movements of America's past.

With Obama, it's not about his career highlights, it's about him. To buy his case, a voter must believe in him, have faith in him, place hope in him--must have (or feel) a connection with him. And this is where the problem kicks in.

I noted that given the short time available to Obama prior to the Super Tuesday contests of February 5, he would not have the opportunity to connect directly with enough voters because he would be busy hopscotching about the country. Now he has the opposite problem.

After the Wyoming caucus this Saturday and the Mississippi primary on Tuesday, there will be no caucus or election until the critical Pennsylvania primary on April 22. That means: five weeks of campaigning uninterrupted by actual events (i.e., elections). One question for Obama is, in this period of too-much time, can he sustain his pitch?

Clinton's selling point is a conventional one: I'm experienced, I know policy, I'm a fighter on pocketbook issues, I can do the heavy lifting. In other words, she wants voters to make a rational decision and hire her on the basis of her resume. Obama wants voters to feel a certain way about him, his campaign, politics, and the potential for change. He inspires. She PowerPoints.

Obama has demonstrated he can bond with voters and motivate them--even if he failed to do so with the majority of voters in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island. But the issue is, if he does connect with Pennsylvania voters, can he keep that up over a period of five weeks? Clinton's mundane argument for herself may lend itself better to repetitive recitation than Obama's unconventional case. If Obama does indeed succeed in stirring that intense feeling within Pennsylvania voters, will it be susceptible to fading over a long stretch of time. Put simply, what will wear least well: Obama's increasingly familiar rhetoric of hope, change, and new politics, or Clinton's prosaic policy pronouncements and resume-pushing?

There's no need to make a prediction. But Obama, this year's fresh candidate, may have a challenge keeping things not only real but fresh over the long pre-Pennsylvania slog. Clinton, for good or bad, has no such burden.

I was right about Pennsylvania, wasn't I?....Here's the dispatch on the March 4 election results I posted at MotherJones.com:

Now it's on to the Democratic death-march in Pennsylvania.

By winning decisively in Ohio and Rhode Island and narrowly in Texas, Senator Hillary Clinton managed to keep her presidential aspirations alive and guaranteed that the bitterly-fought Democratic contest will slog on for weeks, at least until April 22, when Pennsylvania (with its 188 delegates) votes. With these victories, Clinton put an end to Barack Obama's streak--though he still maintains a significant, if statistically slight, lead in the delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses. (Due to the rules governing Texas' odd joint primary-caucus, it seemed possible on Tuesday night, even probable, that Obama would pocket a majority of the delegates there, despite placing second in he popular vote.) More important, Clinton earned the right to claim that her case against Obama, which she and her aides sharpened in recent days, has been seconded by Democratic voters, including two important blocs for the party: blue-collar Dems in Ohio, a decisive state in general elections, and Latino Democrats in Texas. Obama netted his only primary win of the night in Vermont.

At long last, Clinton and her strategists seemed to have gained traction with their attacks on the candidate of hope. As Firewall Tuesday approached, the Clinton campaign did not introduce any new themes. But it did tinker with the mix and accused Obama of falling short on integrity, credibility and experience. This new mash-up was a success. Catching a break because the corruption trial of Obama's onetime friend and contributor Tony Rezko began this week, Clinton aides repeatedly clamed there were "unanswered questions" about Obama's relationship with Rezko. Obama's aides countered that there were no unanswered questions about this much-investigated episode. (Obama, accused of no wrongdoing in the Rezko matter, has acknowledged it was dumb for him to have entered into a real estate deal with Rezko, especially since the politically-wired developer was under investigation at the time.) Prodded by the Clintonites, reporters started grilling Obama anew about Rezko. And being asked about the dirty dealings of a former pal is never helpful to a candidate selling change and reform. Simultaneously, Obama came under fire--from the Clinton campaign--for falsely denying that a campaign adviser had met with Canadian officials and discussed Obama's position on NAFTA. (The aide denied press reports that he had told the Canadians that Obama's criticism of NAFTA was merely political posturing.) It looked as if Obama the Inspirer was not playing straight.

While casting Obama as just another shifty, sleaze-tainted pol, Clinton and her lieutenants pumped up the volume on their well-worn charge that he's not ready for prime time--that is, when the phone rings in the White House in the middle of the night because there's a crisis somewhere. The Obama camp quickly cooked up a clever retort--Clinton failed her red-phone moment by voting for George W. Bush's Iraq war measure--yet Clinton's heavy-handed commercial, if did not persuade any individual voter in Texas or Ohio, did define the discourse (and media coverage) in the days before these primaries. Experience, not hope, was the main subject of the debate. Advantage: Clinton.

On top of all this, Clinton succeeded where she had recently faltered: convincing working-class Democrats that she's their woman. In the contests after Super Tuesday, Obama penetrated into Clinton's base and coaxed away such voters, as he racked up eleven wins in a row. In Ohio on Tuesday, Obama fared well among Democrats who attended college (53 to 46 percent), but Clinton clobbered him among Democrats who did not (62 to 37 percent). She also walloped him in union households (54 to 45 percent). With the economy rated as the top concern of Democratic voters in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island (it tied with the Iraq war in Vermont), Clinton scored with her steady--if not always inspiring--insistence that she's a heavy-lifter when it comes to kitchen table issues. She also renewed her bonds with other core voters: women and the elderly.

In Texas, the Democratic electorate was more split. Clinton won 64 to 34 percent among Democrats over 65 years of age. Obama led narrowly in the under-64 group, 51 to 48 percent. In other words, the old folks kept Clinton competitive. So, too, did Latinos, who went for Clinton 63 to 35 percent. White Democrats in the Lone Star State favored Clinton by an 11-point margin. Voters with incomes over $50,000 supported Obama, 52 to 48 percent. Those earning less went with Clinton, 51 to 49 percent.

Clinton's advocates will now argue it's back to the pre-sweep days--when she won in New Hampshire, Nevada and several Super Tuesday states by assembling a coalition of classic Democrats--and the race is on. But the math doesn't change. As Obama's campaign aides have been maintaining for weeks, Clinton's triumphs in Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas will not net her a significant pickup in delegates. "We have nearly the same delegate lead we had this morning," Obama told supporters at a rally in San Antonio, as the Texas results came in.

The Obama and Clinton spinners will bicker over the significance of the March 4 contests.....

You can read the rest here.

Get ready to get sick of Pennsylvania.

I m not making any predictions about what will happen in Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Rhode Island, but my hunch is that, whatever the final tallies will be, when the dust and rust settles, Hillary Clinton will still be in the race. Clintons don't quit. And she will not be forced out of the race short of a cataclysmic event (say, Bill endorses Barack Obama).

That means, Helllllloooooooo, Keystone State. The Pennsylvania primary--in which 188 delegates will be on the line, is not until April 22. Between March 5 and then, there are only two other contests: a caucus in Wyoming on March 8 (18 delegates) and a primary in Mississippi on March 11 (40 delegates). Otherwise, there's nothing but weeks and weeks of time before Pennsylvania. The campaigns will be able to camp out there and treat the big state almost like Iowa and New Hampshire. The candidates will load up on Philly steak sandwiches and overdo the Rocky metaphors, and the politerati (and viewers of cable news) will, by the time the primary occurs, know details of Pennsylvania counties (Hey, what's the unemployment rate in Lycoming? Who did the Susquehanna Shopper endorse?) they never expected they would care about.

With Pennsylvania looming large on the horizon, Clinton will have a mathematical (even if unlikely) possibility of gaining on Obama's pledged delegates lead. And she and her allies can use this possibility to justify prolonging the battle. Moreover, they would have six weeks to throw not only the kitchen sink but the kitchen cabinet, the hallway armoire, the bathroom bathtub, the bedroom chifforobe, and the rec room media unit at Barack Obama. A month and a half is quite a long time in a presidential race. (Ask John McCain.) With all that time to attempt all sorts of stratagems and raise all sorts of questions (real or trumped-up) about Obama, the contest is certainly not beyond hope (there's that word) for Clinton and her posse. And there's always the chance that external events will intervene in her favor. (Perhaps a news story will reveal that Obama once attended a meeting of community organizers at a--gasp!--mosque.)

So get accustomed to the Interstates 76 and 80 and pack your bags--literally or figuratively--for Pennsylvania. It may well be the Democratic contest's Gettysburg.

McCain's Nuclear Waste. John McCain is known as a Republican who has been a leader in the effort to redress climate change. But when it came to passing global warming legislation in the Senate, he sabotaged his own effort because he was gaga about nuclear power. I've posted a piece about this episode at MotherJones.com. It starts:

On January 9, 2003—five years before he would become the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee—Senator John McCain strode to the Senate floor and began a speech by citing the National Academy of Sciences: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." He then pointed to a host of scientific studies that had outlined the negative consequences of global warming. "The United States must do something," he proclaimed, announcing that he and Senator Joseph Lieberman were introducing legislation that day to establish mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions and set up a system for the trading of emissions credits.

Environmental groups endorsed the McCain-Lieberman bill, which compelled major industries to reduce greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010. The League of Conservation Voters called it "a relatively modest reduction" but an "important first step" that would "send an important signal to the global community." It was indeed the first serious attempt in the Senate to impose a cap on global warming emissions.

Ten months later, the bill was defeated by a relatively close margin, 55 to 43. (Then-Senator John Edwards, who missed the vote, had indicated he supported the bill.) Environmental advocates in Washington considered this a decent start considering that six years earlier the Senate had voted unanimously for a nonbinding resolution that signaled opposition to the Kyoto global warming treaty. With this bill, McCain established himself as the undisputed Republican leader on climate change. Convinced that global warming had already led to more droughts and wildfires in his home state of Arizona, McCain vowed to keep fighting for the measure. But within a year and a half, McCain would lose ground and set back the effort to reduce emissions because of a profound political miscalculation, his own stubbornness, and, most of all, his deep attachment to nuclear power.

You can read the rest here.