Obama on defense in Pa. as McCain senses an opening

Barack Obama addressed a rally yesterday in Chester, Pa. The state is a traditionally Democratic prize Obama wants to win. (Keith Bedford/Bloomberg)

CHESTER, Pa. - This is football country, so let's use a football analogy: In the closing days of the presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama has the ball and he's driving deep into opposing territory. But John McCain is looking for a sack.

Obama has made big gains in his attempts to flip Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, and Colorado into the Democratic column. His advisers express delight that polls have tightened in Georgia, and that the GOP is now on the defensive even in Montana, where the Republican National Committee is reportedly beginning TV advertising this week.

But for all of the offense Obama is now playing, he and his campaign are having to mount a forceful defense of a big, vote-rich, traditionally Democratic prize: Pennsylvania.

It is the one reliably "blue" state where McCain, the Republican nominee, believes he has a shot, as he looks to compensate for the unknown number of "red" states that may slip from his grasp. Obama's advisers point out that almost every public poll over the last month shows Obama with a double-digit lead; if that holds, it would give the Illinois senator a far larger margin of victory than Al Gore or Senator John F. Kerry had in Pennsylvania in the last two elections.

Still, Obama's repeated visits here - he held rallies in Chester, outside Philadelphia, yesterday, and in Pittsburgh the night before - suggest that his campaign is worried enough about the state, which he lost handily in the primary to Senator Hillary Clinton, to maintain a major presence this close to Election Day. One of Obama's top surrogates here, Governor Ed Rendell, said yesterday that McCain's heavy campaigning in the state, especially in southwestern counties around Pittsburgh, was whittling away Obama's lead.

"I never thought it was a 10-plus lead to begin with," Rendell said in an interview. "This is still not a given."

At a morning rally in Hershey with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin that drew about 10,000 to a hockey rink, McCain continued to paint Obama as an old-fashioned liberal, an argument advisers said would help win over late-deciding independents and conservative Democrats.

"After months of campaign trail eloquence, we've finally learned what Senator Obama's economic goal is: to spread the wealth," McCain said.

McCain strategists identify Pennsylvania as one of two states, along with New Hampshire, where they can exploit an unreconciled rift left over from the Democratic primaries, in which much of the party's establishment supported Clinton.

McCain's political director, Mike DuHaime, said that the campaign, which operates a "Democrats for McCain" headquarters in Scranton, has detected greater unease with Obama among Democrats as part of the McCain campaign's direct contact with voters - in phone calls and door knocks - than is evident in media surveys showing sizable leads for Obama.

"Like us, they see it closer than the public polls," DuHaime said of the Obama campaign.

Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, a close McCain ally, added yesterday, "If they thought it was a slam-dunk, they wouldn't be spending so much time here."

McCain, though, faces an unfriendly electoral landscape in Pennsylvania. The Democrats, who have aggressively registered new voters this year, now have 1.2 million more people on their rolls than the Republicans; that's about double the advantage the Democrats had four years ago.

A win in Pennsylvania does not necessarily guarantee McCain the presidency, either. Assuming Obama wins Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, and Virginia (which the polls suggest is likely), McCain would still have to hold onto Indiana, Ohio, Florida, Nevada, and North Carolina - all of which President Bush carried in 2004 and any of which Obama could win.

Yesterday, on what his campaign says is his seventh trip to Pennsylvania since clinching the Democratic nomination in June, Obama pressed his case to more than 9,000 people under a cold, driving rain on the campus of Widener University in Chester.

"I just want all of you to know that if we see this kind of dedication on Election Day, there is no way that we're not going to bring change to America," said Obama, who traded his customary dark suit for jeans, a black rain jacket, and tennis shoes.

"When it's cold, when it's raining, when it's hard - that's when we stand up," he said. "That's when we search for a better future."

And the crowd - crouching under umbrellas, wearing trash bags, stuffed inside giant parkas - chanted, "We want change! We want change!"

"I've been standing here since 8 o'clock and I'm soaked to the core," 22-year-old Mindy James, a recent college graduate who is looking for work in communications, said around 10:30 a.m. "It's worth it, you know? It's worth it."

Obama's speech was largely the same closing argument he introduced Monday in Ohio, but he sprinkled in a few new economic attacks on McCain, arguing that McCain had "ridden shotgun as George Bush has driven our economy toward a cliff, and now he wants to take the wheel and step on the gas."

But Obama also accused McCain of having a more regressive tax plan than Bush, saying McCain goes further than the president in calling for new tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.

In Pennsylvania, McCain's strategy includes running strong on traditionally Republican turf in the state's rural center and northern tier, as well as peeling off white Democrats who supported Clinton in the state's industrialized northeast and southwest. McCain also hopes to keep Obama's margin of victory down in Philadelphia by carrying a handful of wards in white-ethnic neighborhoods where racial tensions have long influenced local politics.

Democratic officials in Pennsylvania have chafed at what they see as the Obama campaign's refusal to engage its parochial political culture, pointing to its decision to name a state director, Craig Schirmer, who has never worked in the state, and the reluctance to pay election-day workers, a common practice in Philadelphia. Obama recently dispatched a key aide, Michael Strautmanis, to soothe relations with elected officials and labor leaders.

"When is this campaign going to start respecting local people?" J. Whyatt Mondesire, president of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP, asked when Obama visited the city earlier this month.

Still, Obama will run up big margins in Philadelphia, and he will probably do well in Pittsburgh. Rendell said Obama had also succeeded in winning over swing voters in the Philadelphia suburbs. The key, Rendell said, are 10 counties in the southwest, including Beaver and Westmoreland, where Republicans have concentrated their attention.

"That's the real battleground," he said.

Rendell said he does not expect Obama to return to the state before Election Day. But Rendell said he will campaign in southwestern Pennsylvania on a bus tour on Obama's behalf this week, and that former president Bill Clinton will stop in the city of Washington, in the region, as part of his three-stop swing through the state today.

Obama will also continue to exploit his organizational advantages, relying on his hundreds of staff members, untold volunteers, and sizable advantage in paid advertising. Nielsen reported this week that Obama has run more than twice as many ads in Pennsylvania as McCain over the last several weeks.

One consequence of Obama's plan to compete in as many states as possible, Rendell said, is that it limits the time he can spend to protect a place like Pennsylvania.

"This disadvantage of contending in so many states," he said, "is it spreads you around a lot thinner."

Scott Helman reported from Chester, Pa. Sasha Issenberg reported from Hershey, Pa.

Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com; Issenberg can be reached at sissenberg@globe.com.