On Pennsylvania

By Tuesday it will have been 42 days since the polls closed in Mississippi. A six week intermission during which the candidates have marched on, the media has piled on, and the mood has soured. There have been real controversies, phony controversies, and non-controversies. There have been charges and counter charges, allegations and counter allegations. But there has been no voting. On the morning of April 22nd, in Pennsylvania, the Democratic primary will resume. For the first time in more than a month, there will be an actual and for real result to report.

And when the polls have closed and the votes have been counted, the outcome will be that Senator Hillary Clinton has won.

That result will be analyzed, broken down, evaluated, and over-analyzed by a pundit class desperate to fill the minutes of a 24-hour news cycle. Common sense will be the big loser. Because it will be the first contest in six weeks, Pennsylvania has been elevated in a way that is usually reserved for the first contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. It is an unfortunate and poor choice for that honor, because the fact is that far too much attention has already been paid to the residents of the Keystone State.

Barack Obama was right when he described the population there as bitter. They are clinging both to their guns and their religion, and to a worldview that is terribly outdated. Longtime Clinton associate James Carville once famously quipped, “Pennsylvania is Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west, and Alabama in between.” Or maybe it was Paoli in the east and Penn Hills in the west. Does it really matter? Isn’t the more important question why it is that this is an accurate description of a major northeastern state, one that all involved expect to be blue in the fall?

And make no mistake—it is accurate.

In November of 1994, during the so-called “Republican Revolution” that saw the GOP beat back the Democrats and take control of both houses of congress for the first time in forty years, a majority of Pennsylvanians voted to send a young, fresh-faced rising star of the Republican Party to the United States Senate. At the time he was a two-term congressman from the Commonwealth’s 18th district. His name was Rick Santorum, and today he is best remembered for comparing homosexual acts to what he called “man on dog sex.”

Rural and conservative, the Pennsylvania 18th borders West Virginia to the west and has been firmly in the hands of the GOP for the vast majority of the last hundred years. That Santorum could win there in the fall of 1990 is no real surprise. That he could win statewide only four years later is. Reelection in 2000 was not a problem, nor would it have been in 2006 if the homosexual comments had not come to light. Santorum was defeated that year by Democrat Bob Casey, himself most notable on the national stage because he is that rarest of rare being in the Democratic Party—a pro-lifer.

This is Pennsylvania.

Adlai Stevenson gave us what I believe to be one of the most important quotes of the 20th century when he said, “In a democracy, people usually get the kind of government that they deserve.” On election night in 2004, when the fools in Ohio reacted to their irrational fear of gay marriage by rewarding George W. Bush with an undeserved second term, Stevenson’s words never rang truer. Despite what some polls are indicating, I fear the residents of Pennsylvania are about to make the same mistake.

There are no good reasons left to vote for Senator Clinton, only bad ones, but on Tuesday in the Keystone State it will not matter. Anyone who argues they are voting against Barack Obama because he offended them with his comments on guns and religion is a liar. Theirs is a vote he was never going to get. Sometimes the most blatant lies are the ones we tell ourselves. When we tell them in the privacy of the voting booth, we make them that much worse. The truth is this: If you vote for Clinton now then you have no one left to blame but yourself. These next four years will be your fault.

Democrats in Pennsylvania have a choice to make. I wish I could believe they were going to get it right.

The pick: Hillary Clinton by 10%