Some Pennsylvania political experts are skeptical that the same plan will work for Obama. A more realistic goal, they said, would be a loss of 5 or 6 percentage points, keeping Clinton from running off with a large cache of delegates.
"I don't think that Obama can roll up the same types of numbers that Ed did in the city and especially the suburbs," said Larry Ceisler, a Democratic political consultant. "Ed had been a fixture in this media market for 16 years. Obama is not going to come up with those types of numbers in the Philadelphia suburbs."
The Illinois senator hopes to beat such expectations by expanding the pool of Democratic voters.
One night recently, some Obama volunteers in Doylestown set about making calls to find people willing to sign Democratic registration forms. A script provided by the campaign said that if voters were undecided, the callers should note that "Sen. Clinton has said there's a choice in this race. And she's right. It's a choice between a politics that offers more of the same divisions, or a new politics of common purpose."
The work is often futile. Volunteer Naomi Plakins, 59, a medical malpractice lawyer, said one woman on the phone barked: "This is GOP country." Slam.
But every once in a while there was a small success. After finishing one call, Plakins threw up her arms and squealed: "Yes! He wants the form!"
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peter.nicholas@latimes.com
