The NRSC, which gives money to help GOP candidates for the Senate, badly trails its counterpart, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The DSCC had raised $76.6 million and had $37.6 million on hand as of the last federal filing on April 30, while the NRSC had raised $47.9 million and had $19.4 million on hand.

But DeMint says that donors who might be reluctant to give their money to a party that has strayed from conservative principles may be willing to give to individual conservative candidates. He's hoping those candidates can polish the tarnished brand and provide an alternative to the Democratic Party.

"It's important that Republicans provide a clear, attractive contrast," DeMint said in an interview at the NRSC headquarters on Capitol Hill.

So, DeMint is creating a new 'leadership' political action committee (PAC), the Senate Conservatives Fund, dedicated to nominating and electing conservative Republicans.

Most politicians' leadership PACs dole out relatively small contributions to a broad swath of candidates to build a constituency for the lawmaker who runs the committee. The direct donations they make are limited to $10,000 per campaign per election cycle. DeMint said he would prefer to inject large chunks of money into unlimited "independent expenditures" -- spending that is not coordinated with the campaign in any way -- on a handful of worthy candidates. Because it is independent of the campaign, there is no restriction on the amount that can be spent on a race. He envisions dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into ads, literature, phone banks, etc for each of three or four races each cycle for maximum impact.

It may turn out to be a much more effective strategy for a chamber in which only one-third of the seats are up every two years and only a small fraction of those are typically competitive.

It also may sound like a recipe for disaster, a vehicle for challenging incumbent Republicans or knocking off viable moderate Republicans in open seats or those occupied by Democrats. Or, at the very least, forcing the winner to spend extra money in the primary to fend off the Senate Conservative Fund's independent expenditures on an opponent's behalf.

"The overriding distinction is that it puts principle over party," said Andy Roth, director of federal government affairs for the conservative Club for Growth, which has proven to be a powerhouse in conservative fundraising circles in recent election cycles.

But DeMint, who said he has raised more than $1 million for the NRSC this cycle, has always tempered his wide conservative streak with a commitment to party-building activities. It may be that the new PAC can accomplish both by attracting the contributions of conservatives without threatening the party's chances in November.

DeMint won't rule out opposing incumbents in the future, but he doesn't sound like he is spoiling for a fight, either.

"I hope that doesn't happen where we have to make a decision between a colleague and someone on the outside," he said.

DeMint said he will give only to candidates who support robust national defense, fiscal conservatism and traditional social values.

The Web site, which has not yet been made public, lists more policy goals, including efforts to "oppose appeasement," "promote energy independence," "secure our borders" and "expand private health insurance."

DeMint plans to endorse his first campaign later this month.

He is not saying who it is, but former House colleagues Bob Schaffer, who is running for Colorado's open seat and Steve Pearce , who just won a New Mexico primary, are strong possibilities.

DeMint said he understands the need for moderates in the party, particularly in states where conservatives would have difficulty competing. But he believes the GOP's platform should be conservative and that an influx of conservatives would help the party refashion the kind of clear agenda that has been lost in an effort to ensure party moderates can vote with the party.

"In order to accommodate everyone, we have become nothing," he said.

Also: VIDEO INTERVIEW: Clinton Stronger Than Obama in W. Va. General Election]]> tag:blogs.cqpolitics.com,2008:/trail-less-traveled//13.2208 2008-05-12T18:48:45Z 2008-05-12T21:50:55Z

ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. — As a freight train sullied by grime and graffiti lumbered down the tracks that bisect Main Street here in the late afternoon sun Monday, it revealed in its wake a blocks-long chain of boarded-up storefronts and hollowed-out buildings whose abandonment was relieved only by churches and a handful of discount shops.

This majority-black city a little less than an hour’s drive east of Raleigh, still racially split by the train tracks, was pounded first by the closing of Rocky Mount Mills in 1996 and then by flooding from Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The main drag is a ghost town. But local officials say it has already hit rock bottom and they are investing, with the help of earmarked federal dollars, in a downtown revitalization project that they hope will resurrect the city.

It takes a fair measure of hope to envision a thriving Rocky Mount. The unemployment rate is over 7 percent, and more than one-fifth of the residents lived below the poverty line as of 2000. But Illinois Sen. Barack Obama , who built his early campaign on a “hope” mantra, is finding support here from voters who also prefer the policy prescriptions he has brought to the presidential race to that of rival New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton .

If past trends hold true Obama, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, should carry Rocky Mount handily on the strength of support from African-Americans, who made up 56 percent of the city’s population of 56,000 according to the 2000 census. Obama is expected to win North Carolina on Tuesday — he is leading in nearly all the polls in the state — but he needs heavy turnout in places like Rocky Mount to ensure victory and possibly stretch his margin to double digits. The margin will be particularly important if Obama loses in Indiana, where Clinton has led in nearly all the polls.

Evangeline High, who works the cash register at Cuzo’s, a small ice-cream and pork-free barbecue eatery at the BP gas station, likes Obama’s long-term plan for lowering gas prices and rebuked Clinton for proposing a summer-months “holiday” from the federal gas tax. Obama has depicted Clinton’s plan as a “gimmick” and, clearly, his rejoinder is resonating with the faithful.

“She’s doing it to get a vote, and she’s not going to get mine,” said High, 48, who estimates that she pours $60 per week into her gas tank as she travels between two jobs.

Though she cited the gas tax issue when asked why she was voting for Obama, High said that she made up her mind when Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was turned into a political issue because of his caustic rhetoric blasting the United States, condemning white people and accusing the government of creating AIDS to kill African Americans.

“The church you go to shouldn’t judge who you are,” she said.

Obama’s proposals on energy and the environment struck the perfect chord with Phyllis Silver, a deputy clerk of courts in Edgecombe County, which shares Rocky Mount with neighboring Nash County.

Silver said she is working on a graduate thesis on gas consumption and likes the idea of “building cars that don’t put so much pollution in the air.”

The state of the economy is a common theme for voters here, but they are not uniformly behind Obama on this issue.

The federal budget and the Iraq war top Lambert Sutton’s list of primary-day issues. Sutton, a retiree who works in a Main Street antique shop a couple of days a week, said he will cast his ballot for Clinton.

“I like the way the budget was balanced when her husband was in office, and I think he’d have some influence” if she were elected, Sutton said.

Obama has come under fire from Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton , presumed Republican nominee John McCain and others since the liberal Web site Huffington Post revealed last Friday that Obama told an audience at a San Francisco fundraiser that rural Pennsylvanians “get bitter” and “cling” to guns, religion, opposition to trade and distaste for other groups because of their economic situation.

“It was a little thing,” said Bill Scheffer, a 77-year-old career truck driver from Bedford. “It doesn’t matter.”

But Scheffer describes his voting preference as “Anybody but Obama.”

Here in South-central Pennsylvania, where many small town voters believe in their right to bear arms and are just as fervent about their religion, Obama’s comments might be expected to evoke uniform condemnation. But even some supporters of other candidates are willing to cut the Illinois senator a little slack.

Cliff Rowell, a Republican, agreed that the comments have received too much scrutiny.

“I think they made a mountain out of a molehill,” he said.

But Mark Treider of York, a commercial pilot who flew F-4s in the Air Force, said he was offended by being stereotyped as a “hayseed.”

“He came flat out and said that people in the middle of the country, and Pennsylvania, they tote guns, they go to church they’re xenophobes, they’re racists and things like that and that’s simply not true and I think it’s an underestimate of what the country’s really all about,” Treider said. “The working class people around here are what makes this country,” he said.

Treider re-registered as a Democrat this year so he could vote for Clinton as part of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” effort to keep the Democratic primary competitive.

But he also says Clinton would make a better president than Obama.

With an electorate already heavily polarized, any shift among Democrats from Obama to Clinton will be at the margins of the small set of Pennsylvania voters who remain undecided, according to Muhlenberg College professor Chris Borick, who conducts polling in the Lehigh Valley and across the state.

“It will play or have an effect on the margin. If you look at it, a lot of the voters who would be most offended by that comment are most likely going to support Hillary Clinton anyway. That’s not to say, again, that moving a few of those five or six [percent] undecideds in one direction wouldn’t be affected by a comment like that,” Borick said. “But the general election it would be interesting to see, especially among independents.”

But for the nominating contest will almost certainly be decided by the unpledged party leaders and elected officials who are “superdelegates” to the Democratic convention in August. And the latest flap could cost Obama public support if Democrats who rely on Republican votes to win re-election come to believe that Obama is more detested by their GOP constituents than is Clinton.

Arizona Republican Rep. Trent Franks said in a Capitol Hill interview on Monday that the Democratic campaign has served to improve Clinton’s standing, if only marginally, with some Republicans.

“ Barack Obama has done something unparalleled in modern political history: He has made Hillary Clinton almost seem like she has a scintilla of reason,” he said. “It is so surreal it beggars description on my part.”

Democrats are not likely too many cues from Republicans, but they are divided on the significance of Obama’s remarks.

Rep. Brad Miller , D-N.C., an uncommitted superdelegate, defended Obama in an interview with CQ Politics on Monday.

“I think Sen. Obama has already said pretty clearly that he understands the frustrations of rural America,” Miller said. “He made a valid point inartfully.”

Miller said he expects Obama to be the Democratic nominee.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur , D-Ohio, said she wondered whether Obama actually said the words attributed to him until fellow Rep. Tim Ryan , D-Ohio, told her an audio tape exists.

Kaptur’s reaction: “In a word,” she said, “Revealing.”

“His remarks seem counter to other statements that he has made,” Kaptur said. “If you were [Clinton] wouldn’t you go after him on this?”

Kaptur, an uncommitted superdelegate whose district went narrowly for Clinton, said Obama could suffer damage in rural-state primaries even after the upcoming series of industrial-state contests in April and May. But, she said, there could be a silver lining for Obama.

“It shows that he’s human, so maybe there is a good side to this,” she said.

In Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, which many experts view as a microcosm of the state, Muhlenberg professor Borick says an Obama-McCain general election matchup would be fascinating because it would test the overall Democratic trend in the state, with McCain possibly appealing to Democrats and independents who favored Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Borick suggests that Obama risks alienating voters if he does not choose his words more carefully: “He’s got a problem in terms of sounding aloof.”

For at least four decades, this suburban-style tree-lined enclave in the northwest part of the city has been heralded as a model of harmonious racial diversity and economic stability. The wealthier corners of the community, with median household incomes ranging well into six figures, and the poorer sections, where $40,000 per year is common, are heavily Democratic and very liberal.

As the political and real-estate signs dotting the neighborhood seem to symbolize, middle-class communities are the places where the hardships brought on by the subprime mortgage crisis will be seized upon by Democrats during their campaign in their attacks on Republican economic policies. Democrats see a powerful tie between the Bush administration’s distaste for industry regulation and the deepening mortgage crisis, a connection they hope to drive home to voters as they craft their economic platform.

“Under Bush’s America, when he leaves office gas is going to cost you know $4-plus at the pump, the dollar is at its weakest, millions of people have lost their homes in foreclosures, students it will be made more difficult for them to go to college in terms of student loans,” said Rep. Chaka Fattah , whose 2nd District contains Mt. Airy. “Elections have consequences, and that’s why we hope people come out and vote, because the country’s a lot worse off than it was seven years ago.”

Obama and his rival for the Democratic nomination, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton , have proposed housing plans that would pour $30 billion of federal money into efforts to ameliorate the housing crisis, including assistance to state and local governments. They both have expressed support for congressional efforts to expand the Federal Housing Administration’s ability to insure home loans and repeal prohibitions on bankruptcy judges modifying the terms of home loans.

Obama wants to up mortgage revenue bond authority by $10 billion, which would facilitate the refinancing of home loans and the extension of credit for homebuyers who are new to the market. Clinton’s plan, which more heavily favors government intervention, would implement a 90-day national moratorium on foreclosures and freeze adjustable rate mortgages, or ARMs, for five years.

Their approaches vary markedly from that of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain , who is the senior senator from Arizona. McCain has been critical of those who want the government to subsidize big-time lenders and also those who want to provide money for consumers. He has been supportive of the Senate’s bipartisan relief package but offered little in the way of his own proposals for government action.

“All we want to do is have it hit bottom now so it can start going up,” McCain told Fox News Channel’s Greta Van Susteren last week.

“I’ve always been committed to the principle that it’s not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they’re big banks or small borrowers,” he said in March.

Doug Holtz-Eakin, a senior McCain adviser and the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said McCain wants to see if the Senate’s plan is capable of adjusting to the crisis.

“If he decides ‘no,’ then he would move to make more proposals,” Holtz-Eakin said.

The Politics of Intervention

McCain’s stance is being received well by fiscal conservatives, a set that has misgivings about his past wavering on President Bush’s tax cuts.

Complete archive of CQ Politics video

Arizona Sen. John McCain , the presumed Republican nominee, is likely to win a landslide here in November — George W. Bush beat John Kerry by a nearly 2-to-1 margin in 2004. But as far as the Democratic primary goes, this county is shaping up as a battleground in the April 22 vote. The last time this much was at stake in Pennsylvania was 1976, when Democrats opposed to the came-from-nowhere candidacy of Jimmy Carter unsuccessfully tried to stop him in the state’s primary.

Democratic registration rolls have swelled by more than 3,000 names, and local party officials, regardless of whom they support, say new energy has been injected into their party by the fact that the race is still competitive.

“There’s a point when, as long as it doesn’t get too nasty here, it’s good for people to see where we are as Democrats,” state Rep. Mike Sturla said in an interview at Illinois Sen. Barack Obama ’s headquarters on Harrisburg Pike.

But as they have in state after state, the intraparty tension between Obama backers and supporters of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is taking hold here as the primary draws nearer, reflecting deeply held beliefs and emotions about the qualities and characteristics that define a president.

“I hate to talk about divisions among Democrats, but it’s happening,” said Pat Coller, a city councilwoman who works as Sturla’s district director.

Coller, 67, says Obama had her at “hello.”

“When I heard Obama for the first time, I just felt he was the right person for our time,” she said, adding that she believes Obama would fare better in the general election. “When the other side says they want to run against Clinton, that tells you something.”

Coller and Sturla say Obama will win the Democratic-controlled city of Lancaster, where about 11 percent of the county’s 500,000 residents live, and could take the whole county.

Sturla cites the success of Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell in his 2002 primary against the more conservative Robert P. Casey Jr, who is now the state’s junior senator. Though Rendell has endorsed Clinton, Sturla draws a primary-season parallel between Obama and Rendell, who won almost 60 percent of the county against Casey.

He said that voters who might otherwise be moderate or conservative Democrats register as Republicans or independents because of the GOP’s dominance in the region, a dynamic that he believes will boost Obama in a primary that is closed to those voters.

“The reality is, if you’re a Democrat in Lancaster County, you’re pretty liberal,” he said.

Not so fast, say Democrats who back Clinton. Three Democrats on the seven-member city council, Tim Roschel, Jose Urdaneta and Council President Louise Williams, are on the first lady’s side, and they are joined by former Council President Julianne Dickson.

Clinton allies contend that the former first lady will win the county as a whole and will be competitive within the city limits. They say her experience, her focus on expanding access to health care over the last 15 years and her breadth of knowledge on policy are among her most attractive features as a candidate.

Urdaneta, a Latino who is running for the state Senate, said he came of age politically during Bill Clinton’s presidency and those memories help shape his view of the primary.

“I have a very strong and positive view of the Clintons as leaders, and of Hillary,” he said.

They also criticized Obama for his relationship with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons bashed the United States, whites and Clinton. In a speech on race earlier this month, Obama attempted to distance himself from Wright’s words but refused to “disown” the man he credits with bringing him to Christianity. He has said he was not in church during the sermons that have been broadcast in recent weeks by news outlets but acknowledged in his speech that he had been present for other remarks that he characterized as potentially controversial.

Clinton’s advocates in Lancaster said Obama has not done enough to explain why he would continue to attend the church without taking Wright to task for leading his flock with sermons that are offensive to many Americans.

Urdaneta said he once left a service at the local Methodist church when his pastor delivered a sermon that Urdaneta thought was hostile to gay people. And Williams said she left a congregation because she was uncomfortable with the pastor.

As appears to be the case among Democrats in many places in the country, views on Wright’s remarks and Obama’s ability to address them sufficiently through his subsequent speech on race break down largely along the lines that already divide Obama and Clinton supporters.

In less than four weeks the rival camps could have roughly even numbers, according to the resident political expert.

G. Terry Madonna, who runs the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, said that while Clinton appears to have an advantage in the region right now, Obama could end up winning countywide for the same reason Sturla cited.

“It wouldn’t shock me. I wouldn’t wake up and go surprise, surprise,” he said. “Democratic activists in Lancaster County are pretty liberal, even those who live out in the countryside.”

If Obama does win the nomination, he will still have his work cut out in convincing even some longtime Democrats to back him in the general election.

“I cannot say I will support whoever the candidate is,” Dickson said. “He would have to show me some real depth.”

Dickson is not alone.

A Gallup Poll released Wednesday found that 28 percent of Clinton supporters say they would back McCain if Obama is the nominee. The same survey found that 19 percent of Obama backers would choose McCain over Clinton. Those numbers could change significantly, however, between now and the November election no matter which candidate Democrats put forward.

Sturla, who is running to be an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention in August, said he will give his support to the party’s nominee. At one point, before the primary season got under way, he thought he might cast his lot with Clinton in the primary. He said he told his daughter, Cate, that he would probably back Clinton because she was likely to win the nomination.

“Where’s your heart?’” asked Cate, who will turn 18 just before the primary.

“It’s with Obama,” he replied.

He says he is pleased to see his daughter’s generation paying attention to politics and credits that interest to Obama.

“She had a lot to do with my support,” he said.

But most folks in southwestern Pennsylvania, and certainly in this old industrial town 20 miles south of Pittsburgh, are Democrats.

It is Clinton country, and the buttons say “Hillary.” Voters came to hear former President Bill Clinton coo about New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s credentials six weeks before they cast votes in the Democratic presidential primary. He trounced George H.W. Bush in this town 2,708 to 663 in 1992 and beat Bob Dole by a narrower, 2,233 to 917, tally in 1996.

They love him — and her.

“They’ll vote for Hillary just to get Bill,” said Terry Hazlett, the town manager.

Or is it the other way around?

“She’s more knowledgeable than Bill is in a lot of ways,” said Anna Coen, who perched in the front row with a copy of Bill Clinton’s autobiography, My Life, ready to be signed.

Canonsburg could easily represent Hillary Clinton’s strongest argument to Democratic superdelegates as they weigh whether to send her or Barack Obama to face Republican John McCain in the general election. Many of the white, working-class “Reagan Democrats” who dominate the politics of southwestern Pennsylvania say they plan to vote for McCain if Obama is the Democratic nominee. Defections from the party among those swing voters in a large, politically competitive state could be fatal in the general election. Some Democrats here openly question Obama’s patriotism.

Obama’s most forceful claims to the nomination are his leads: he counts a triple-digit advantage among pledged delegates and holds a narrow popular-vote edge, tallied by realclearpolitics.com at more than 700,000 of the nearly 26 million ballots cast not counting unsanctioned contests in Florida and Michigan.

Nationally, the two Democratic rivals fare roughly the same against McCain in recent polling. A Gallup Poll of registered voters that concluded Tuesday showed Obama leading McCain 46 percent to 44 percent and had Clinton ahead of McCain 47 percent to 45 percent. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll produced similar results.

The popular vote and the polls could change before the Democratic convention in November, but it appears to be all but impossible for Clinton to catch Obama in pledged delegates given the party’s preference for nominating contests that award delegates based on formulas that make it difficult to build or close a lead.

With neither candidate positioned to win the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the nomination after all 50 states have voted, the balance of power is in the hands of the 794 superdelegates, who are not pledged to support any candidate at the convention.

Clinton invited a cross-section of Democratic congressional superdelegates to her Washington, D.C. home Wednesday night for a reception. Reps. Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania, Lincoln Davis of Tennessee, Susan A. Davis of California and Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona were among the uncommitted superdelegates who attended the reception.

And both candidates had an opportunity to work their undeclared colleagues during a marathon of budget votes on the Senate floor Thursday.

The battle for superdelegates is fierce and often features competing arguments about who will fare best in the general election.

Obama’s supporters note his victories over Clinton in the swing state of Missouri and a series of heavily Republican states as evidence that he could expand the Democratic base of electoral votes. Rep. Robert C. Scott, D-Va., who has endorsed Obama, said the Illinois senator could become the first Democratic presidential nominee to win Virginia since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Clinton, he said, would not fare as well.

“I don’t know anybody who that seriously thinks Clinton can carry Virginia,” he said.

Many Democratic Party officials also believe he will help their candidates for offices lower on the ballot by boosting turnout among African Americans and young voters. Clinton, they contend, could unintentionally drive up turnout among Republicans who are anxious to prevent her from winning the White House and depress turnout among the new voters Obama has brought to the party.

Clinton supporters note that she has won most of the biggest electoral college prizes on the map so far.

“I think it’s more important to look at electability and electoral votes,” said Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher, a California Democrat who backs Clinton.

The factors weighing on the elite set of superdelegates include their view of who matches up best against McCain, who voters prefer for the nomination, who would they be able to influence in the Oval Office, who helps or hurts them in their own re-election bids and who is best for the party’s long-term political prospects.

“All of that has to be considered,” said Rep. Tim Holden, a Pennsylvania Democrat who has not made an endorsement.

In Canonsburg, as is the case in much of Pennsylvania, Clinton has a long head start. Not only was her husband popular here as president, but Obama may have a daunting task in persuading some longtime Democrats to support him even in a general election.

In a town where many Democrats still back the Iraq War and local officials boast of having the second-biggest Fourth of July celebration in the state — behind Philadelphia — Obama is seen by some voters as insufficiently patriotic because he was photographed in Iowa last year with his hand at his side during the playing of the national anthem. His wife, Michelle Obama caused a stir when she said in stump speeches in February that she was proud of her country for the first time “...not just because Barack has done well, but because people are hungry for change.”

When it comes to red, white and blue, there’s no gray area in Canonsburg.

“What I don’t like about him the most: He will not salute the flag,” said Joan Oshanka, 77.

“I don’t like him because he won’t acknowledge our flag,” said Minnie Konovich, who sat with Oshanka. “He just stands there and does nothing.”

It is an uncommon threshold question for a political candidate — whether he or she takes pride in the country — particularly one who is seeking national office.

But it is raised without reservation here.

The sentiments of Canonsburg Democrats echo those of others in the region, according to political analysts, and across the border in faded industrial centers in eastern Ohio where Democrats favor Clinton. Clinton won Ohio by 10 percentage points on March 4, a margin built in rural areas and cities that have been hit hard by the loss of industrial jobs.

Pennsylvania’s economy is better than Ohio’s, but the Democratic voters in the two states are not terribly dissimilar.

“This is a good state for her, even better than Ohio,” said G. Terry Madonna, a longtime Pennsylvania political analyst who heads the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in the south-central part of the state.

Obama could win Pennsylvania if he builds a huge lead in Philadelphia and wins its suburbs and the battlegrounds in the Lehigh Valley and the south central part of the state, Madonna said. It’s an uphill fight, but not impossible.

Clinton needs to win big in southwestern Pennsylvania to help offset Obama’s expected strength in Philadelphia.

“For Hillary to win the state, she’s got to do well there,” he said. “She’s got to win that region and win it overwhelmingly.”

Clinton so far has maintained double-digit leads in most Pennsylvania polls.

Democrats can ill afford to lose swing voters in closely contested states they have won in recent years, particularly Pennsylvania, which carries 21 electoral votes that would be hard to make up elsewhere on the map. Democratic nominee John Kerry won Pennsylvania 51-48 in the 2004 presidential election.

A big Clinton victory in western Pennsylvania, coupled with her success among working-class white voters in Ohio and an earlier win in Arkansas, could persuade some Democratic superdelegates that she would fare better than Obama in the national battle over the electoral college.

Others will certainly view Obama as a stronger general election candidate because of his ability to increase turnout among African Americans and appeal to some political independents.

“I think any Democrat wins,” said Rep. John P. Murtha, an undeclared Pennsylvania Democrat who is likely to influence the votes of other superdelegates when he makes his commitment.

Like the party’s ground-level voters, the elected leaders and party officials who collectively are poised, as superdelegates, to choose the Democratic nominee are basing their individual decisions on a variety of factors, and Murtha is offering few hints about who or when he will pick a candidate.

“We’ll see,” he said.

In Louisville, Ky., six hundred miles down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, freshman Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth sees political protection in an anticipated increase in the number of African American voters if Obama is the Democratic nominee.

Yarmuth topped veteran Republican Rep. Anne Northup by 5,921 out of the 241,965 votes cast in a 2006 3rd District race that included two minor candidates. But that was an midterm election with low voter turnout. In 2004, there were 328,139 ballots cast. Northup won re-election that year with 60 percent of the vote, despite President George W. Bush’s 51 percent to 49 percent loss in the district.

Yarmuth is facing a rematch with Northup this year, and he thinks a ticket headed by Obama will help his fortunes. He endorsed the Illinois senator in January.

“In my district, there’s no question Barack would be better,” Yarmuth told CQ Politics in an interview in the Capitol this week. He said African Americans made up about 10 percent of the electorate there in 2006. If Obama is the nominee, he said, “My guess is it will be three-to-five percent higher.”

It’s not just in Kentucky where Democrats in marginal districts will have to weigh who helps or hurts them most.

There are four first-term Indiana Democrats, none of whom has endorsed Obama. Andre Carson, Baron P. Hill, Joe Donnelly and Brad Ellsworth have not tipped their hands.

CANONSBURG, Pa. — New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will win the majority of popular votes and the Democratic presidential nomination “if she gets a big victory in Pennsylvania,” former President Bill Clinton told a packed senior center in this borough south of Pittsburgh Tuesday.

And if Canonsburg is any indication, the New York senator is on track to do very well in the Keystone State.

President Clinton worked the western part of the state while his wife was in the eastern half at the front end of a six-week sprint until Pennsylvania’s primary.

“Hillary, Chelsea and I expect to cover Pennsylvania like a wet blanket between now and April 22,” he said.

Echoing his message that Hillary Clinton had to win the March 4 Texas and Ohio primaries to stay in the race — which she did — Bill Clinton said the New York senator needs to run up the score in Pennsylvania to build momentum in ensuing primaries, win the overall popular vote and secure the nomination over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama .

“I think she’s got to win a big victory in Pennsylvania,” he said. “If she does, she could be nominated.”

A poll released today by SurveyUSA has Clinton leading 55 percent to 36 percent with a 4 point margin of error. The survey was conducted March 8-10.

Nearly eight years after he left office, Bill Clinton remains popular in this overwhelmingly Democratic enclave, according to residents and local officials.

Some attendees of the town-hall style event said they like the idea of getting two presidents by electing Hillary Clinton. Others said they were voting for the senator on her own merits.

“It’s about her,” said Samuel J. Amorose, 86, a longtime local labor leader.

Amorose recalled sitting in the Oval Office in the mid-1990s after being invited along with a handful of other senior citizens to discuss Social Security and Medicare with the president. Hillary Clinton was engaged in the meeting, he remembered.

“These are down-to-earth people, he said.

Perhaps more troubling for Obama — and Democrats in general — is the resistance many of the Democrats here have to his candidacy.

Several die-hard Democrats said they would vote Republican and back Arizona Sen. John McCain if Obama wins the Democratic nomination.

The reasons for the lack of enthusiasm for Obama range from his short record in the national political sphere to a perception that he and his wife, Michelle Obama, are not sufficiently patriotic.

“I’d vote for McCain,” said Rosemary Sobeck. “I don’t think [Obama]’s got enough experience.”

Minnie Konovich, who sat in the front row, said an image of Obama standing without his hand over his heart during the playing of the national anthem hurt him, in her eyes.

“I don’t like him because he won’t acknowledge our flag,” she said. “He just stands there and does nothing.”

Asked whether he would be there if the telephone rings at 3 a.m. in the White House — a reference to a controversial Hillary Clinton ad suggesting she is better-equipped than Obama to handle a crisis — Bill Clinton indicated that won’t be his call.

“I will do whatever I am asked to do if you elect her president,” he said. “I’ll do whatever she wants me to.”