Pennsylvania Votes

And who will the winner be? The answer is the perfect legal response.

It depends.

If the margin is sufficiently large enough for Hillary Clinton, she will not only claim victory in the state, but once again claim that she's the only one who can take on McCain and win in the general election in November because she's consistently won big states while Obama has done better in the smaller states.

If it's a narrow margin, Obama will claim victory because he will continue to lead in the number of delegates and the popular vote, although neither Obama nor Clinton have enough delegates to win outright before the convention.

At this point, it doesn't appear that Obama can win the state, and there are reports that he's already left the state. If you're trying to win the state, or at least keep things close, the last thing you want to do is appear that you've given up. It's the same problem that affected Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson in their abortive races for the GOP nomination. Hillary could capitalize on this in her last dash through the state, and gain a bit of momentum as voters go to the polls.

UPDATE:
There's already signs of record turnout among the 8 million voters. There's also reports of malfunctioning voting machines. It's going to be a long day.

UPDATE:
Polls have just closed and results are starting to trickle in. It's still way too early to call a winner, though that isn't keeping MSNBC and others from calling the state for Hillary. The key areas to look at are how the candidates do in Philly and the surrounding four counties. That's a harbinger for how the state will go and what the margin of victory will be.

The most likely scenario is that Hillary wins (indeed, that's the case), but not by a big enough margin to make up the deficit in the popular vote or the delegates. On to the brokered convention they will go.

If Obama somehow makes it close, he could claim to win by losing - with pressure increasing on Hillary to exit stage left. Again, I don't see her quitting because she keeps winning the big states, so again we'd be watching for a brokered convention. I really don't see Obama winning PA outright, but if he did, that would put real serious pressure on Hillary to quit the campaign. I'd put odds on that happening around 5%.

The real big winners out of this whole mess? That's going to be the media outlets - who get yet another stay from the silly season because the Democrats haven't quite gone according to their grand plan to be united before the convention.