Keystone State Remains Vital to Obama

I think he'll lose it.

At Washington Post, "Pennsylvania becomes major battleground for Obama in 2012":

Every Democratic nominee in the past two decades has won Pennsylvania — and Obama did so by a comfortable margin in 2008 — but the state has grown less hospitable to Obama in the past three years. Republicans swept the 2010 midterms, winning the governor’s seat, a Senate seat and five congressional districts, including the 11th District, where Obama will appear on Wednesday.

Yet unlike other similarly challenging states — Ohio and Florida — where Democrats think they can lose and still win overall, Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes are still key to almost any path to 270 electoral college votes. “It’s hard to figure out a scenario for a Democrat to win the presidency without carrying Pennsylvania,” former Democratic governor Ed Rendell, a prominent Obama supporter, said. “It’s not impossible, but it’s very, very hard.”

Unemployment was 8.1 percent in October, and higher in some parts of the state, like Scranton, with a 9.7 percent jobless rate. The state's gonna need a jobs miracle for Obama to have a prayer. See New York Times, "Obama Is Facing a Replay of ’08 Hurdles in ‘Hillary Country,’ Pa."