A foreign trip by Obama before the Pennsylvania primary (which is now rumored) would be a disastrous idea: First, it would appear to many as if he were conceding that he didn’t have enough foreign policy experience, and were doing a last-minute, cram-for-the-exam trip. Second, it would concede Pennsylvania to Clinton, and friends, Pennsylvania is NOT Ohio. Philadelphia is Atlanta, which Obama won decisively: a huge African-American core population, surrounded by well-educated, upscale white suburbs. Pittsburgh has a blue-collar image, but has been strikingly prosperous in the last decade. The rest of the state is socially not unlike parts of Wisconsin or Iowa, in which Obama did quite well. Third, a foreign trip would be reported by the media as if it were either a stunt or a rock-star tour. Neither image has anything to do with the issues faced by hard-working Americans who are staring into the abyss of a financial collapse. Fourth, Hillary would barrel through Pennsylvania, channeling John Edwards, asking “Where’s Barack? Why isn’t he here, answering your questions and listening to your problems?” She’d be on the scene, and he’d be AWOL from American democracy in action — that’s how it would be spun. Fifth, remember, it’s about delegates. Every one in Pennsylvania counts.
What Obama has to do is stay home, reframe the election, and refreshen our sense of what he stands for -- this way: “What kind of government are we going to have? A government of, by and for the special interests? A government in which the oil industry writes energy legislation and drug companies write health care laws? A government run by people who make negative attacks and refuse to release their tax returns? And how do we change government? Certainly not by returning to the past, by asking those who already had their chance to come back again and try one more time. No, it’s time to change the way we do government in America, and that can only be done by making a clean break from the past, from all those who are comfortable with Washington and have benefited from business as usual. It is not merely time for a change. It is time to remake our government altogether, in the image and in the interests of those who’ve been left out. This election is for you — the ones whose voices have been ignored, and whose votes have been taken for granted, and who were promised prosperity but instead got war and recession. The incompetence, the dishonesty, the negative attacks, the stranglehold of money on our government: All that comes to an end, when I walk through the front door of the White House, and take its power, and use it for you…”
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