Allentown endorses Obama

The Allentown Morning Call has endorsed Barack Obama. You know, that town full of blue collar folks offended by his straight talk about bitter feelings in the heartland. . .

Pennsylvania's Democratic voters on April 22 will choose between two candidates in the presidential primary. Both are qualified to become the nation's chief executive. They have more similarities than differences. But, The Morning Call recommends that Sen. Barack Obama be nominated, and we offer three reasons.

The first is the quality of his campaign. It has surprised the experts by moving him close to the finish line against bigger, more established political machines and it has communicated his basic ideas well.

The second is his message of hope and change. It conveys a vision of the nation's future that is in tune with the tenor and consensus of most Americans.

And third, and most important for the Democratic Party at this moment in history, there is Sen. Obama's ability to inspire.

The other Democratic candidate on the ballot here, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, has focused their criticism on Sen. Obama's relatively short resume. But there is nothing naive or amateurish about the campaign he has assembled. We wish he (and Sen. Clinton) had paid more attention to the Lehigh Valley, of course. It is Pennsylvania's third-biggest metropolitan area and it deserves better than one visit by him and zero by Sen. Clinton this deep into the campaign.

But, he has done a good job of building a Pennsylvania organization. It has had to climb a steep hill, given that Sen. Clinton has the biggest share of high-profile Democratic officials' endorsements. Using the Internet, e-mail and old-fashioned storefront headquarters, he continues to build a corps of supporters here. And, at least so far, his has done a better job than the Clinton campaign of keeping the campaign positive.

In fact, while both candidates are members of the same U.S. Senate, Sen. Obama is the one who has distinguished himself as the better agent for changing Washington. Remember, on the issues, the differences between the Obama and Clinton platforms are thin or non-existent. He has set himself apart by enunciating a vision of a different America, one that people recognize as resting on the nation's founding principles. His vision calls upon ''the better angels of our nature'' just as Abraham Lincoln did in 1861.

Sen. Obama offers that vision to a nation that, like President Lincoln's, is divided. It is not about to set out on a literal civil war, but Republican and Democrat, young and old, conservative and liberal have much to fight about and are at each other's throats with little provocation. Finding common ground is the key, and Sen. Obama is better able to do that than Sen. Clinton. She has become a polarizing figure, an image that stems in part from the bitter partisanship of Washington during President Bill Clinton's administration. It was not for nothing that the journalist James B. Stewart called his book about the politics of those years ''Blood Sport.'' That rancor was not primarily Hillary Clinton's fault, but it is real, it persists, and her campaign so far has not dealt effectively with quelling it.

Then, there is his ability to inspire. It starts with his unmatched oratorical skills. His speech in Philadelphia on March 18 about race in America will join the greatest speeches in this nation's history in future textbooks on that topic. The combination of his scholarship, career experience and personal style leaves listeners at first rapt and then inspired. His oratory soars because he has a desire to listen to and represent all Americans -- the ''vision thing'' as President George H.W. Bush once called it. Sen. Clinton, by contrast, too often just sounds like a partisan, and that isn't change.

Sen. Clinton has made much of her ''ability to lead'' on day one in the Oval Office. Past experience like hers is one thing, but leadership also depends on having a vision, plans to pursue that vision, and an ability to inspire others to follow. On those grounds, Sen. Barack Obama is well-suited to lead, and The Morning Call recommends his nomination in the Democratic primary.

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Don't Be Fooled: Obama Is Actually Leading
Hillary By 1-2 Million Votes

Sean Christensen explains why Obama's popular vote lead is even wider than most believe. From the Huffington Post.

Late Update: There are some discrepancies between the figures for the popular vote between different news sites, and would alter my calculations substantially depending on who you believe. For example, in Kansas, CNN claims that 36,887 STATE DELEGATES represented the Kansas voters, whereas Real Clear Politics claims that 36,887 VOTERS represent the total. In contrast, CNN claims 406 STATE DELEGATES represented Alaska, whereas Real Clear Politics claims that 8,868 VOTERS represent the total. This, of course, is the reason to pursue the truth in these matters, and if Real Clear Politics says that only 36,887 'actual voters' came out to vote in Kansas, as opposed to, say, the 302,612 voters who came out to vote in Arkansas, which has virtually the same population, then I stand corrected. But it shouldn't stop the DNC from making a clear attempt to make sure these turnout numbers are correct.

Many DNC insiders fear that if Hillary Clinton manages to lose the pledged delegates, she may still take the lead in the popular vote, thereby causing the superdelegates to make a hard decision as to which candidate they should choose come August. Their fears are rooted in the notion that Clinton is only behind by roughly 800,000 votes, and that she could feasibly catch up with a big win in Pennsylvania.

They'd be wrong.

In fact, Obama leads in the popular vote by anywhere between 2 million to 3 million voters. How is this possible? The reason lies in the ever elusive math of the Democratic caucus.

When voters everywhere were watching the returns of, say, Kansas on Super Tuesday, most of them naturally assumed that Barack Obama won 27,172 votes to Hillary Clinton's 9,462. But those aren't voters they're counting, they're really just more delegates. County delegates. The county delegates represent an undefined amount of peoples' votes, depending on how many people arrive to the caucus and how many county delegates are assigned. This number could be anywhere from 5 to 100 people and beyond.

Since there is no exact number of how many votes are actually represented in a caucus, let's just round it out to 20 voters per delegate, out of morbid curiosity. That means each delegate, on average, represents about 20 people, and we will multiply the final tally by 20.

Therefore, in Kansas, Barack Obama gained 543,440 votes to Hillary Clinton's 189,240 votes. This is a far wider margin of victory than Clinton supporters would like to admit, but decidedly more accurate.

But let's just say, for arguments sake, that we're overestimating how many people a county delegate represents. Let's call it 10 rather than 20. Then the tally becomes 271,720 votes for Obama, and 94,620 for Clinton. Still a substantial victory. And that is the absolute rock bottom lowest average estimate.

If we apply this math to all of the caucuses, the results are astounding. But to be fair, we won't count Texas for the final tally. Their caucuses were basically repeat voters who most likely voted in the Primary earlier in the day. Also, there are no clear figures as of yet for Washington and Wyoming.

There have been 13 caucus states so far in the Primary and Clinton has only won one of them. Obama handily defeated her in Iowa, Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Colorado, North Dakota, Nebraska, Washington, Maine, Hawaii and Wyoming. Clinton won Nevada.

The current tally of county delegates (that are available) for these states, has Obama at 366,764 and Clinton at 156,563. When we multiply these numbers by 10, it puts Obama at 3,667,640 and Clinton at 1,565,630, a margin of roughly 2 million votes.

When this math is applied to the final tally, it puts Obama ahead of Clinton by 2,300,000 votes, a far cry from the 800,000 most DNC insiders think is the estimate.

Obviously, there is no way to truly estimate how many people these county and city delegates represent. But the fact remains, these caucus tallies are not accurate depictions of the popular vote, nor are they representative of any singular person or voter. Multiplying these figures by 10 gives a far more telling story towards the truth. And when the Clinton Campaign makes blind claims that they may somehow trump Obama on the popular vote, they may not clearly realize how far behind they actually are in the count.

There are many people who estimate that a state pledged delegate represents roughly 10,000 voters. So, in August, the DNC members need to ask themselves this one question: If a state pledged delegate does not represent a single voter... then why should a county delegate?

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