# 81 But Pennsylvania is Not in Play

It appears that, days and weeks after I had listed Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, and Virginia in Obama's electoral vote total, John King and his Magic Board on CNN have done the same. I almost couldn't believe my eyes when I saw his board last night, Blue islands in parts of what for dubya had been a Red sea. I'm not surprised, of course, since Obama is running increasingly ahead in those states--as indeed he is in national polls as well, by his largest margin yet, 52 to 42--and McCain is now trying to make headway in Pennsylvania to compensate for the potential loss of five states that went Red four years ago. But Obama is still running a double-digit lead in PA, and shows no signs of losing it. He and Joe and Biden have been making occasional stops there, just to remind the voters that there's still an election coming up.

FL, OH, MO and NC remain tossups, though at this point Obama doesn't actually need any of those to win the election. However, it would be meaningful if he (a) indeed were to be elected president, and (b) were to garner more than 300 electoral votes. The larger the win, the more bargaining power he has with a congress that will likely have more Democrats anyway.

Once again, my familiar caveat: all bets are off if the polls don't reflect latent racism that occasionally bubbles to the surface.

One footnote: 55% of people polled by CNN/USA say that Sarah Palin is "Unqualified" for the Vice Presidency and to be President. The negative campaigning imposed on Palin by her handlers has backfired big time.

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