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"FacebookPinterest\n\n\"Did you see him?!\" the woman behind me, a Rhode Islander in Pennsylvania to visit her daughter, asks the new friend she made in the crowd.\n\n\"WOOOOOOOOOOOIdiiiiiiiidwooooooooo!!!!!\" the other woman, a former Hillary Clinton supporter turned Republican from North Wales in Montgomery county, shrieks. Mitt Romney's campaign bus just rolled past, and this quick glimpse of his grinning, silver-haired visage is the most this side of the Yardley Pennsylvania rally will see of him tonight. The best-prepared supporters got to Stony Brook Farm, just off the exit on I-95 a half hour north of Philadelphia, around 2 p.m. The rest got stuck in a miles long traffic jam until police closed the exit; then we prowled the back roads and parked anywhere we could find\u2014traffic islands, in front of the dumpster at a nearby Dunkin' Donuts, on the shoulder of the highway. We trekked at least a half-mile in the dark through a muddy field to the stadium arena where 25,000 people gathered to hear him speak.\n\nFor once, the always-on-time candidate is himself 90 minutes behind schedule, leaving extra time for the throngs to push through security toward the edge of the rally, leaving nauseating piles of food refuse on check in tables in their wake.\n\nThe Romney bus rolls up and parks directly in front of this section of the crowd. Besides the broad side of a bus, and the backside of the scaffolding of a banner welcoming visitors to Bucks County, there is not much to look at beyond a big yellow Thackray crane holding an American flag. It too seems to be shivering in the November chill. There's even less to hear. Some lift their hoods, tilt their chins into their coats and try to blow on stubby frozen fingers for warmth. Others generate heat by joining group chants, pumping their handmade signs in the air and screaming back at Romney things he'll never hear. Romney mentions the debates, and someone screams \"YOU DID A GREAT JOB!\" When he mentions Obama, they chant \"Send him home! Send him home!\" and somebody invariably yells \"TO KENYA!\" There are mischievous giggles course through the crowd of assembled partisans. Romney tells the Pennsylvanians he's glad to be here, an under-dressed young man ahead of me says \"We are too!\"\n\nThis is the last piece in the Romney's-going-to-win-Pennsylvania jigsaw puzzle: a dazzlingly huge political rally complete with a fireworks display that'd put any municipal fire department in the state to shame. Though it's been largely overlooked during the campaign, in the final days of the race the state has returned to its rightful place as ground zero for campaign spin. Every Republican, from the North Wales woman (who wouldn't give her name) to Senator Pat Toomey is reporting a sense that the ground is shifting away from the president. Democrats still find this argument hilarious (witness David Alrod's promise to shave his mustache if the president loses here) and spent the evening of Romney's rally gleefully circulating a quote from a Republican official The Daily confessing that Romney was making ad buys in the state because there was nothing else to spend money on.\n\nBut what about this huge crowd? In a way it shouldn't be surprising. I grew up in the northwest corner of the state. Democrats might win elections in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but the vast swaths of Pennsylvania that aren't Philly and Pittsburgh are either solidly conservative or right leaning\u2014in other words, fertile ground for a candidate like him. Pennsyltucky, as the vast red middle of the state is commonly called, almost always elects Republicans to local office and to Congress. In 2008, Democrats, and the Obama campaign in particular, undertook a frenzied effort to recruit new members to the party. They took advantage of population shifts in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties\u2014Bucks, Berks, Montgomery, Chester, Delaware, Lehigh\u2014which are tending toward more affluent, educated and diverse voters than the state's shrinking white working class population. Over time, those counties are becoming ever more critical in determining who gets the state's 20 electoral votes. In 2008 the effort to register new voters yielded 474,000 new Democrats, giving the state party a remarkable 1.2 million registered voter advantage\u2014something neither party had ever done before. On election night Obama was rewarded with a ten point victory, the largest margin of victory since Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater. But Obama's big win in 2008 was not evidence of some major ideological shift: it was good organization and ground game. This time Romney, unlike McCain, gets to run against Obama the first term president, not the change agent/cultural phenomenon/Democratic deity he was then. It's very hard to imagine Obama can hold on to a ten point lead this time around. But as for Romney's chance to beat him, Neil Oxman, a Democratic strategist quoted in The Daily article, put it best: \"You would have to have a turnout model that is so unbelievably bad for [President Obama] to lose.\"\n\nRead more on Death Race 2012\n\nWhat If Romney Had Picked Christie?\n\nThe Kids Are All Right\n\nIn Post-Sandy Brooklyn, Taking a Moment (or Many, Many Moments) to Ercise the Franchise\n\nWhat The First Lady Says That No One Else Can\n\n Follow Marin Cogan on Twitter for more updates from the political scene in Washington and on the campaign trail."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/romneys-pennsylvania-gambit-more-or-less-crazy-than-mccains>