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With a 10% lead over Barack Obama, Hillary was able to pull off a great win in Pennsylvania last night. A lot of people have a lot of things to say, with most looking at Obama and wondering why he just can’t seem to “end the game.” For all of his rhetoric and all of his money spent, after 4 weeks in PA, he still lost by over 215,000 people… that’s a pretty big loss. Obama outspent Clinton in the state almost 3:1, spending at least $11 million dollars (according to his camp), yet just couldn’t bring home the “win.” So what is going on here? There are plenty of thoughts on the subject, for example this is from Anderson Cooper and deals with the “late voters”:

According to Yahoo News, the most recent local “search buzz” stats for Pennsylvania (as of yesterday) show that users in city after city searched the word “Obama” four times as much as they did the word “Clinton.” They were more curious about Obama from one end of the state to the other.

The problem for Obama was that his negative-related searches—searches of terms “Rev. Wright” and “bitter,” for instance – outnumbered all searches for Clinton by a margin of 7 to 1. While folks followed the rumor mill with Obama, even searching his name with Brad Pitt after reports surfaced they may be related, Clinton searchers predominantly focused on policy-related matters like “health care” and “economy.”

CNN exit polls show of the 18 percent of voters who decided their vote the final three days, Clinton handily won those voters 58% to 42%.

So are the comments and other issues surrounding Obama now coming to the front? Will this affect him in the coming races? He’s expected to win North Carolina, which is just 2 weeks away, but the latest polls show him with just a 9% lead, and with news like this:

Howard Fineman is reporting on MSNBC that Clinton will soldier on to North Carolina and to not be surprised if Elizabeth Edwards makes several appearances with Hillary and let her feelings be known who she stands with. He says that this could have a real impact there as they love Mrs. Edwards.

He did say that while this was likely to happen, John Edwards would remain “neutral” on the sidelines.

Clinton could feasibly win (as it says, they love Mrs. Edwards, and some will see it as a “silent” endorsement by John himself)… and if she does, what does that mean for the Superdelegates? Will they continue to support Obama, or will the tide turn, looking to Clinton as regaining her strength in time for the General Election? Also, according to Real Clear Politics, here is the current (estimated) popular vote results:

Popular Vote (w/FL & MI, Estimating IA, NV, ME & WA):

Barack Obama: 15,307,804 47.5%

Hillary Clinton: 15,319,525 47.5%

Iowa, Nevada, Washington & Maine Have Not Released Popular Vote Totals. RealClearPolitics has estimated the popular vote totals for Senator Obama and Clinton in these four states. RCP uses the WA Caucus results from February 9 in this estimate because the Caucuses on February 9 were the “official” contest recognized by the DNC to determine delegates to the Democratic convention. The estimate from these four Caucus states where there are not official popular vote numbers increases Senator Obama’s popular vote margin by 110,224. This number would be about 50,000 less if the Washington primary results from February 19th were used instead of the Washington Caucus results. This count also includes certified vote totals in Florida and Michigan.

You can either call this a statistical tie, or say that Hillary Clinton is now leading the popular vote. While it’s not any “official” indicator, it’s a lot to think about at this point in the game. It seems that also with the wind, she’s found new support in contributors with her website saying:

The campaign has raised more than $3.5 million since PA polls closed last night…last night’s fundraising total the was the strongest ever.

The unofficial reports (yet to be verified) are stating:

Clinton campaign Chairman Terry McAuliffe just announced that the campaign has raised $10 million from 50,000 new donors since the polls closed last night.

If this is true, Mr. Obama may face some serious heat in the coming weeks. Only time will tell what happens here, but I think it just got a bit more interesting. For those interested, here are the current remaining Primaries:

May 3: Guam
May 6: Indiana and North Carolina
May 13: West Virginia
May 20: Kentucky and Oregon
June 1: Puerto Rico
June 3: Montana and South Dakota

Let’s keep on watching and see what happens!

These are my daily “Good to Know” links for 04/04/08 … please enjoy:

Edwards would not accept VP nomination | MSNBC

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said on Thursday he would not accept the nomination for U.S. vice president as he did four years ago. Declines to say whether he would endorse Clinton or Obama. Good for him!

Personal Soundtrack T-Shirt | ThinkGeek

Looks like we're the fools here. The Personal Soundtrack T-Shirt was originally an April Fool's Prank… but due to overwhelming positive response and hundreds of e-mails screaming to "make the damn shirt already" we're putting this item in to production

The Peril of Obama | The Atlantic

The glamour of Obama may be hard to resist, but could it get the country into trouble if he wins the presidency? At the risk of bitter disillusionment, perhaps Obama hopes to do for the country what his father?s image did for him: provide a noble lie t

Server room during a rain shower | Google Video

Server room floods during a storm. Sends shivers down my spine!

Ross Ching: Eclectic 2.0 | Rossching.com

This is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. The entire movie was shot using a digital SLR still camera and pieced together using Quicktime Pro and Final cut Pro. Since it was shot on a still camera, all the raw footage is 1080p HD.

Outsourced Comcast Tech Goes Vigilante On Xbox Cheaters | dslreports.com

A Convergsys support technician outsourced by Comcast may have gone a little overboard in a quest for videogame vengeance. After getting packet flooded by some fellow gamers on the Xbox Live! service, the rep decided to use Comcast support systems to wage

Come back for more links tomorrow!!

The coverage starts at 9PM, so get ready for action live on ESPN4!!

What better way to settle the fight between Democratic Presidential Hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama than with a winner-take-all, fight-to-the-finish, loser-goes-home-crying good old fashioned deathmatch? ESPN4 brings you all of the action LIVE, tonight at 9PM ET. Each candidate will take part in several events, officiated by libertari-pendant candidate Ron Paul. Challenges will include:

The Dick Cheney skeet shooting contest. What better way to prove you’ve got the poker face that it will take to negotiate treaties with hostile world leaders than by taking a load of birdshot to the face?

The Dennis Kucinich dwarf toss. Who’s got the strength to toss the mini-congressman to the other side of the aisle?

The Al Gore 20000k Eco Fun Run. Which candidate can go the distance? Who can do it with the least carbon emissions, and without suffering an Inconvienient Stroke?

The Alberto Gonzalez “I Don’t Recall” Relay. If history has shown us anything, it is that “forgetting” is part of being a good leader. Who can finish the race without letting any facts out?
The George Bush Constitutional Hurdles. Sure, clearing all those hurdles will be tough. Why not just knock them all down?

Catch all the action LIVE, April 1st at 9PM ET, and vote for your favorite candidate by texting your vote to 040108. (Vote does not apply to residents of Florida or Michigan.)

EDIT (April 2nd) – Gotcha!  April Fools!!

With so much time being spent on polls and such on the 2008 Primary, Electoral-Votes.com decided to start a running Electoral Vote map. The first map is a Barack Obama vs. John McCain, and the other is Hillary Clinton vs. John McCain. He will be updating the maps daily, and here’s what he has to say about them:

Starting today and until we have a Democratic nominee, two maps will be available for the general election, one for Obama-McCain and one for Clinton-McCain. Links to them will be given below the main map. Please keep in mind that in politics, a week is a long time and 7 months is forever. If you doubt this, check out the electoral college graph for 2004. Notice that Kerry was ahead by 125-150 electoral votes all summer, until the Swift Boat ad started, which precipitated a huge decline from which he never recovered. This graph will be run again this year, but we need a pair of nominees first.

Nevertheless, from a quick inspection of the Obama-McCain and Clinton-McCain maps you can see graphically what you probably already knew. Hillary Clinton is a traditional Democrat and does well in places Democrats usually do well in. She also does well in Florida due to the large number of New York snowbirds who live there in the winter. If she is the nominee, you are going to see a monumental traffic jam Nov. 1 all up and down the East Coast as hundreds of thousands of snowbirds drive down to Florida in time to vote there Nov. 4. Of course, McCain can neutralize her by picking popular Florida governor Charlie Crist as his running mate.

Clinton also does well in the rust belt, but if the economy is in deep doo doo come November, any Democrat can win those states by just talking jobs jobs jobs instead of tax cuts. Obama’s strength is in the red states. He might be able to win Colorado (which has been trending blue anyway) and Nevada. No matter what the map shows, he’s not going to win North Dakota unless buffalos get the vote real quick. But he could easily force McCain to spend real money in states that ought to be no-brainers, like Texas (SurveyUSA’s poll shows McCain ahead of Obama there only 47% to 46%). In short, Clinton’s slogan will be “Kerry + Florida whereas Obama will be playing Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy.

So, with all that… what do the current numbers show? Let’s take a look. First up, Obama/McCain:

Electoral Votes: Obama 231 — McCain 292 — Ties 15

Ouch. Hello President McCain as of today’s numbers. Now it’s on to Clinton/McCain:

Electoral Votes: Clinton 268 — McCain 246 — Ties 24

Would you look at that? Hello Mrs. President as of today’s numbers. Interesting! It’ll be neat to see how these maps change over the course of the next few months!