Another week without James and of course the big question was what the primary in Pennsylvania on Tuesday means. Of course, there’s a lot of numbers out there and I relied on the NY Times Election section which has very nice summaries of the delegate counts and projections. Then there’s always the weekly question about the every-changing polls—you’ll find that my answer reflects what I wrote in my blog earlier this week. In the end, some polls tell us what we want to here and others don’t. I propose to take all them with a grain of salt for the duration of this campaign.

The big scandal of the week was, of course, Obama’s comments about working class folks in Pennsylvania. This summary and analysis on Meet the Press, was pretty complete and insightful. This episode says a lot about the culture of American politics today: a ridiculously long campaign coupled with the ability to record and upload everything means that we analyze everything that comes out of a candidate’s mouth. We can watch it over and over, add our comments and send it around.

Is this Democracy at its best or worst? What will be final effect be on how campaigns are run? Will candidates moves toward more and more scripted encounters? Or will only the ones with exceptional spit-second judgment and control over their message survive? Your thoughts and comments, as always, are welcome…