POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
MONACA — U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's planned meeting at the Penn State-Beaver campus today was called off because of Senate votes, his campaign said.
Obama's wife, Michelle, meanwhile, is scheduled to appear in the Philadelphia suburbs that day in her first campaign visits to Pennsylvania.
At a private event in Ardmore, she will read to children and host a women's roundtable. She will then hold public rallies at Abington High School and Villanova University.
ERIE — Bill Clinton told voters in this battered union town Wednesday that as president his wife would create manufacturing jobs, provide affordable health care and strengthen the middle class.Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd of about 500 people — some hooting and chanting — the former president laid out reasons he believes Americans should elect Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to the office he once held."America has to get back into the job-producing business," he told the rally in Erie, a town all too familiar with the pain of high unemployment.He was interrupted once by a man who blamed the former president's trade policies for job losses.At another event in Johnstown, Clinton praised his wife's resiliency."All the experts have danced on Hillary's grave and she just keeps coming back," he told a crowd of about 1,000 at the Greater Johnstown Senior High School."If she can win a strong victory in Pennsylvania, then I think she can roll through the rest of it," he said.
HARRISBURG — Arizona Sen. John McCain will be campaigning in central and eastern Pennsylvania at the end of the week.The Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting is scheduled to meet today with employees at Turbine Airfoil Design in Harrisburg, an event that is closed to the public.He'll also hold private fundraisers that day at the West Shore Country Club in Camp Hill and at The Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia.On Friday, McCain will host a town meeting at Springfield Township Country Club in suburban Philadelphia.
PITTSBURGH — Chelsea Clinton on Wednesday urged students at Pittsburgh's Point Park University to support her mother's presidential bid, saying the elder Clinton was "the stronger candidate" on issues important to young Americans.During an informal question-and-answer session with about 300 students, Clinton said she had been discussing with students and young professional groups across the country "why I so passionately believe in my mom, not only as her daughter but also as a young American, as a young voter, as a young woman.""I really do believe that on issues that are most important to me and I think most important to most of us, my mom is the stronger candidate and offers a really progressive agenda that I want to see in this country," she said.Clinton said she believed her mother was the most electable Democratic candidate because of her "distinctive" plans for the economy, her fiscal conservatism, her support of universal health care and her foreign policy stance.
