Those darn college students
Politico.com reports that Obama isn't likely to get the kind of voting surge among Pennsylvania college students that he did in Iowa. Although there are numerous "Students for Barack Obama" chapters at the state's 159 colleges, many students are registered in their home states. Which is too bad, because Pennsylvania has a whopping 680,000 college students.
In Iowa, students could sign up to vote the day of the caucuses and could choose which party's caucuses they wanted to be a part of. In Pennsylvania, we have party registration and closed primaries. There are arguments pro and con for this approach, but it does prevent a boatload of new supporters of a candidate from crashing the vote.
Back in the day, I was co-founder of Students for McGovern at Hope College and campaigned for him during the run-up to the Michigan Democratic Primary. This was about as hopeless a quest as you could take on in soundly-Republican Holland, Michigan. But we had a lot of fund and learned a lot. I ran as a precinct delegate and won, which eventually got me to the state Democratic convention as a McGovern delegate. And I still admire Sen. McGovern. Can't argue this fact: he would have been way better than Richard Nixon.