PA roundup: Pick a poll, any poll; new Obama ad attacks new HRC ad

How close is the Pennsylvania race? Regardless of your opinion, there is a poll to appeal to your prejudices. If you think Clinton is headed for a double-digit win, you’ve got ARG (Hillary 57-37) and SurveyUSA (Hillary 54-40) on your side. If you prefer to believe that Obama is continuing to cut into HRC’s once-formidable lead, today’s LA Times/Bloomberg numbers (Hillary 46-41) are just what your inner spin-doctor ordered. If you just aren’t sure whether the race is particularly close, then may we suggest the newest Rasmussen vintage, which has Clinton holding a ‘tweener 9-point lead at 50-41? Josh Marshall thinks “the data show the race remaining unchanged. Despite a media maelstorm, we’re exactly where we were a week ago.”

But here’s a better question: What will change when Pennsylvania is over? Congressional Quarterly is projecting that a Clinton win there is likely to earn her a net gain of as few as three delegates, leaving the counting race essentially unchanged.  Let’s go all the way to the wall, though, and suppose that Barack Obama is able to bring enough new blood to the ballot boxes of Pennsylvania to turn all the polling of “likely voters” on its head. He wins Pennsylvania. And Hillary… stays in the race. Amid the media’s heated puffing to invest Pennsylvania with the utmost drama and significance, it is willfully forgetting Clinton’s pledge to fight to the bitter end. And if there is one subject on which everyone should take Hillary Clinton at her word, it is her own bottomless ambition and sense of entitlement.

It’s true that an Obama upset win in Pennsylvania could speed the day when the Clinton machine grinds to a halt short of Denver owing to a fundraising collapse. But that could take weeks or months to unfold, with plenty of additional collateral damage to the Democratic party in the meantime. And it’s not likely to happen. Odds are that HRC wins Pennsylvania, and the race is little changed as a result.

Parsing the polls: Which pollster out there is most reliable in this herky-jerky primary season? Big Tent Democrat of the TalkLeft blog makes a pretty compelling (though strictly anecdotal) case that it’s SurveyUSA. S/he writes: “SUSA’s results, including internals, for the three states nearest Pennsylvania in terms of location and demographics, New York, New Jersey and Ohio, were by far the most accurate. I’ll demonstrate on the flip.” Read the analysis. As noted above, the current SUSA poll has Clinton leading 54-40.

Obama answers Clinton attack ad: Within a day of the HRC attack ad targeting his comments on small-town Pennsylvania, Obama released a new spot that tries to defuse the issue.

Barack Obama: “Represent” (:30)