Clinton, Obama dash toward finish line
The Democrats make their final appeals to voters in Pennsylvania, site of a key primary on Tuesday. In Alabama, McCain lauds the civil rights movement.
SCRANTON, PA. — - Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton crisscrossed Pennsylvania today, seeking votes a day before the state's key presidential primary.
It is the first presidential primary in six weeks, in what has become a grueling and increasingly testy Democratic nominating process. Clinton continues to lead according to polls released today, but the latest financial statements show her campaign is being outspent and is deep in debt.
Clinton began her day in Scranton, where her father was born and where she spent summers in the 1950s and 1960s. At a rally at an ornate former Masonic temple, the senator from New York urged about 500 supporters to get people to the polls on Tuesday.
"In the next 36 hours, do everything you can, convince people to go vote who say they are not going to vote," Clinton said. "Take them to the polls. Call your friends and neighbors. Make the case for the kind of results that we desperately need in America again."
Clinton stuck to her main campaign themes, promising to work for universal healthcare, affordable college educations, renewable energy and an end to the war in Iraq and took only a passing shot at Obama's complaints about last week's debate in Philadelphia.
Obama was also traveling in Pennsylvania and will meet with prospective voters at Montgomery Community College in Blue Bell, Pa., this afternoon.
"I'm not predicting a win," Obama said in a morning interview with KDKA radio in Pittsburgh. "I am predicting it's going to be close. And that we're going to do a lot better than people expected."
The latest poll shows Obama, who has heavily outspent Clinton in Pennsylvania, still trailing in the popular vote. Clinton leads Obama, of Illinois, 51% to 44% among likely voters in the Democratic primary, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released this morning.
Despite the growing nastiness of the campaign and a false step by Obama, using the word "bitter" to describe small-town voters, the race remains the same. Last week, the same poll had Clinton leading 50% to 44%.
"Pennsylvania voters apparently made up their minds a couple of weeks ago and nothing has happened since to change them. An extraordinary turnout effort by Sen. Barack Obama's campaign could snatch this victory from Sen. Hillary Clinton, but that does not appear likely," Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a statement posted on the poll's website.
