Obama strategists said Monday that they expected to announce a series of additional endorsements by uncommitted superdelegates shortly after Pennsylvania votes. A strong showing by Obama in Pennsylvania would give superdelegates more comfort in coming forward, but a bad loss might send them back to the assessment stage.
The electability question: After a grueling, six-week campaign, Pennsylvania voters have the unusual job of picking between two bruised candidates.
Previous contests have focused on the electorate's excitement over each of these two history-making contenders, with some party elders even calling for the two to share the ticket in November. But during the course of the Pennsylvania primary, Obama faced criticism for his relationships with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and Bill Ayers, a onetime member of the Weather Underground; for not wearing a U.S. flag pin on his lapel; and for his comments about small-town voters, which some people took as elitist.
And Clinton took heat for exaggerating the danger she faced as first lady during a trip to Bosnia.
Each candidate increasingly has attacked the other for these perceived missteps. And the excitement of electing the first black president or the first female president in a Democratic landslide has turned to concern that the eventual nominee instead will limp into the fall campaign -- dragging his or her dirty laundry for every Republican ad maker and opposition researcher to see.
The question is whether these exchanges have turned off any sets of voters and diminished the eventual nominee's chances in the fall.
As Democratic strategist and uncommitted superdelegate Donna Brazile put it Monday, Pennsylvania might show whether the "tone and the tenor of the campaign has worn voters down."
Arizona superdelegate Don Bivens, who has not endorsed a candidate, said he would be watching the exit polls closely today to measure how each would do in his state in the general election.
"I do pay attention to the drilling down in the numbers," he said. "You look at how they will do in your own state and region: How did women come out, how did blacks come out, how did whites vote and Hispanics?"
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peter.wallsten@latimes.com
