Richard Whalen

Trying to impress the all-important voters of Pennsylvania – the primary with Senator Barack Obama is on April 22 -- as well as the 800-plus superdelegates who will decide the Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke in Philadelphia on March 24 on the nationwide collapse in housing values and soaring mortgage foreclosures that are terrifying anxious middle-class homeowners.

Speaking about the housing crisis, Clinton said to the University of Pennsylvania audience: “The Fed extended a $30 billion lifeline to prevent Bear Stearns from imploding; homeowners, on the other hand have received next to no assistance.” In her plan, partly for symbolic reasons, Clinton urged that Congress provide $30 billion – the same amount of federal aid to the Bear -- to help states and communities minimize the number of foreclosures.

She proposed “tapping two former chairmen of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to lead a high-level emergency working group to recommend ways to overhaul at-risk mortgages.”

FYI: Volcker is for Obama; Greenspan is a Republican; and Rubin is for Rubin (see below).

Clinton endorsed federal legislation to expand the government’s ability to guarantee restructured mortgages, which she said would expand banks and other lenders dealing in mortgages. She also said she would introduce legislation to provide mortgage servicers – middlemen between lenders and homeowners – with legal protection from legislation when they modify mortgages. “Let’s be clear,” she said, “when families are losing their homes, that’s also a financial crisis.”

Clinton’s longtime pal and adviser, Bob Rubin, featured in her speech, told an aide over the weekend that Clinton’s private polls continue to slip, showing her neck-and-neck with Obama, although publicly published polls show her ahead in the state. At stake are 158 delegates, to be awarded proportionately.

In Pennsylvania, Republicans and Independents are switching their registration to vote in the Democratic primary. Last week, Democrats added a staggering 22,000 new registrants in a week, an average of 132 an hour sees this switch as a conservative ploy to vote for Hillary because she will be easier for McCain to beat than Obama.

Hillary knows she needs to win Pennsylvania – not just win – but win big. The last possible nail in her coffin: an endorsement of Obama by John Edwards.