Obama lost in Pennsylvania in so many ways that to a Hillary champion, it's nothing short of laughable!

Excerpted from a blog

April 23, 2008,  9:49 am

A Tough Spin

By Chris Suellentrop

Dick Polman – the Philadelphia Inquirer national political columnist breaks down the post-Pennsylvania math for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama at his Inquirer blog. “Obama’s attempt last night to spin the defeat was empirically absurd,” Polman writes.

He elaborates:

Problem was, Obama lost all the older voter categories, starting at age 45.

He lost white people, both genders.

And with respect to every background, he lost the working-class folks, the union members, and the non-college educated.

He lost suburbanites, small-town dwellers, and rural residents.

He lost the white Catholics and he lost the Jews.

He lost the culturally-conservative Democrats on Bob Casey’s home turf by a 3 to 1 margin.

And let’s return to the racial factor for a moment ...

... There is a jarring and highly sensitive finding that showed up in the exit polls. Thirteen percent of white voters statewide said that the race of the candidate was important to them; of those voters, 74 percent cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton. This is arguably a warning sign that Obama may face a higher racial hurdle than many observers have generally assumed.

An arguably bigger problem is his persistent deficit among late-deciding voters. I mentioned here yesterday that, in most primaries, Obama has stumbled at the finish line because voters making up their minds during the final 24 hours have tended to break for Clinton, the known quantity. Well, in Pennsylvania it happened again. Eleven percent made up their minds on the last day; 6 out of 10 wound up breaking for Clinton, thereby padding her victory margin.