This morning, just hours before the polls close in the keystone state, the Morning Dose comes from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, urging Pennsylvanians to vote for Clinton in today's primary:_____________________________________________________________
(...)If Barack Obama does well here or pulls an upset, the Democrats' leader in states, delegates and popular votes could be propelled to de facto victory.
If Hillary Clinton wins as expected, she should be able to fight on to the convention -- and a double-digit victory might give her momentum to seize the nomination.
For Pennsylvania Democrats, the smart choice Tuesday is Mrs. Clinton.
Mr. Obama's appeal with many Democrats is undeniable. He is the "rock star" of this election year; some supporters at his rallies have fallen into a swoon.
Those who have endorsed Obama have rhetorically swooned, too, designating him the future of American politics, while denigrating Clinton as a relic of politics past.
How ironic, since Obama owes no small part of his success to the grooming and support of Chicago's old-line Daley political machine.
In policy terms, relatively little may separate these two. Obama ranks as one of the most liberal U.S. senators, but Clinton is no conservative. Determining how they differ is difficult, though, because Obama is long on soaring rhetoric yet painfully short on record.
He has spent just three years in the U.S. Senate. Before that, he spent just eight years as one of 177 state legislators in Illinois. Before that, he was a university lecturer, a community organizer, a civil-rights lawyer.
Quite simply, this is no portfolio for a president, the world's most powerful leader. The presidency is no place for on-the-job training in the best of times -- and certainly not when the nation is at war, the economy is struggling, and federal governance in general is adrift.
More disturbing is what seems to be Obama's private view of America.
Start with the "God damn America" diatribes of his one-time pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (Obama claims he didn't know of these, even though he sat in Wright's church for 20 years.) Add his wife Michelle's remark about being proud of America for the first time in her life only because of her husband's campaign.
Now we hear Obama himself disdaining small-town, Middle-America attitudes and values -- a "clinging" to God, guns and bigotry -- as a legacy of bitterness.
Everyone utters stupidities now and then. Yet taken together and uttered repeatedly, they sound like a pattern of thought in the Obama household. It's a pattern the nation can't afford in the White House.
In sharp contrast, Clinton is far more experienced in government -- as an engaged first lady to a governor and a president, as a second-term senator in her own right.
She has a real voting record on key issues. Agree with her or not, you at least know where she stands instead of being forced to wonder.
Many of her views on domestic issues are too liberal for us, but on others she seems to have moderated. She told the Trib she opposes raising the cap on Social Security taxes, and she is less eager to raise income taxes than Obama.
More important, she is extremely knowledgeable on crucial foreign issues. Meeting with Trib editors last month, she ticked off an impressive list of international challenges and the solutions. (In Wednesday's Philadelphia debate, Obama praised George H.W. Bush's foreign policy -- apparently not realizing that one of its architects was then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, a man he regularly excoriates.)
As we noted at the time of that meeting, Clinton's decision to sit down with the Trib was courageous, given our longstanding criticism of her. That is no small matter: Political courage is essential in a president. Clinton has demonstrated it; Obama has not.
She has a real record. He doesn't.
She has experience of value to a president. He doesn't.(...)
