Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., told several thousand at a rally in McGonigle Hall last Tuesday that no state better deserved to decide who would be the next U.S. President than the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as reported by The Temple News [“Clinton stresses job experience at campus rally,” LeAnne Matlach, March 11, 2008].
It stung with the type of pungent impersonality of a form letter, as if Clinton might have shared those same thoughts with any collection of supporters from any state in the union. So, here’s our chance to hold her to it.
The Pennsylvania primary may very well decide whether Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., will get the chance to vie for the title of leader of the free world against Republican candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.next November. So, Philadelphia, the state’s largest city, has come under intense national attention, which means you have, too. Obama will almost certainly make an appearance at Temple as well. They’re here, so let’s get out of it what we can.
March 24 is the last day to register to vote for the April 22 primary. Particularly if you intend to register as a Democrat, it may have never mattered more.
In a sit-down interview with The Temple News last fall, President Ann Weaver Hart remarked how much more active the student body was at the University of New Hampshire, where she was formerly its top chief. She credited that activism to, among other things, the state’s role in national politics, considering that the Granite State hosts among the first presidential primaries every four years, as it did this cycle.
On our end, it surprised no one when, like so much other legislation, a proposal to move forward Pennsylvania’s considerably later primary failed amid partisan wrangling in Harrisburg.
Funny thing is, almost five months later, the Democratic votes in New Hampshire and in subsequent primaries and caucuses have only further muddled the fight between Obama and Clinton.
Almost five months later, the nearly 20 percent of New Hampshire’s vote that went to former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., seems terribly silly.
Pennsylvania, perhaps now the Democratic decider, is grounds for a lot of promises from the two remaining Democratic camps. Philadelphia, holding oodles of the commonwealth’s delegates, is now not just a campaign must, but an unquestioned battleground.
Almost five months later, you’re the focus.
