As an Obama delegate candidate in Bob Brady's First Congressional District (Button 23, Second Column), I have been closely assessing the Obama campaign's role in the context of Philadelphia politics and Philadelphia history as I have been participating in it.

No campaign has ever had the potential for voter mobilization that this one has.

Ed Rendell set the recent record for driving up voter turunout when he got over 220,000 votes for Governor in 2002, beating Bob Casey by over 3 to 1.

Look for Obama to far exceed Rendell's total, and Clinton to far exceed Casey's total.

This race is going to change assumptions about Philadelphia voter apathy for years to come. It is going to show that if you give people a chance to vote for something meaningful, they will take it.

Shortly after I posted a comment calling for greater education on how to vote for President, I got a call from fellow YPPer and activist Karen Bojar sugguesting I blog on this subject. So here we go.

THE MOST IMPORTANT VOTE TO CAST IS THE ONE FOR PRESIDENT. The number of delegates a Presidential candidate receives in a given Congressional district determines the number of delegates he or she receives. A Presidential candidate who receives 85% of the vote or more--a possibility for Obama in the First and Second Congressional Districts--will win all of the delegates.

In Karen's 2nd Congressional District, represented by Chaka Fattah, nine delegates are at stake, five women and four men. They will be initially apportioned by votes for the Presidential candidate, and then apportioned again by sex. It is both possible and precedented (and for many annoying) that the top vote getters do not necessarily win.

We have not even reached the upcoming Democratic South Carolina primary yet, and already the Presidential withdrawals are mounting.

On the Republican side, former Senator Fred Thompson today joined Congressmen Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter on the Republican side in the withdrawal column. Democratic Senators Joe Biden, head of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Chris Dodd, head of the Banking Committee, have already withdrawn.

Withdrawals have a cumulative effect, both forcing onetime middle tier candidates into the bottom tier and making withdrawals more socially acceptable and politically predictable.

Recently, we had a heated controversy here over my view that the Pennsylvania primary discriminates against Pennsylvanians, by being held after many candidates are eliminated from contention and usually after each party has already selected its nominee. I said I would like to see more voting rights for Pennsylvanians than currently exist.

2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry has recently weighed in over a similar controversy in Nevada, about whether Nevada's pathbreaking workplace voting sites in Las Vegas should be banned in the aftermath of the active Culinary Workers Union endorsement of Barack Obama. To the best of my knowledge, workplace voting is something that does not exist anywhere in the country outside of Nevada at this time. Kerry clearly also clearly favors voting rights expansion.

Kerry posted his remarks today on the TPM Special Guests Blog, at http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/specialguests/2008/jan/16/let_the_people_vot....

Barack Obama's strong and rising support in public opinion polls indicates his campaign is for real. He is now winning in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina--the first three states to vote--and defeating all five Republicans seen to have a chance to get the Presidential nomination in head to head national matchups.

I spent parts of a couple of days for Obama in New Hampshire in December, and will go back for several more days on January 5. I am impressed that Obama has the right experience--a mixture of strong character, state government, and federal experience--and the kind of strong national base that can help him lead the Democrats to both victory and an administration of which the country will be proud.

There is no shortage of anger, cynicism, or defeatism in our country today. But the national mood of our country starts from the top. Obama at his best has similar inspirational qualities to John F, Kennedy at his best.

In the strongest sign yet of the growing national effort to establish a national minimum wage that will get a minimum wage worker with two dependents out of poverty, Senator Ted Kennedy has pledged to introduce a bill establishing a federal minimum wage of $9.50 for 2009.

This is the strongest proposal yet made by a national figure, trumping John Edwards' goal of $9.50 for 2012. If it is accompanied by a cost of living increase (press accounts were unclear), as the Edwards proposal was, it will also be of even greater help to low income workers than my 2006 and 2007 legislative proposal to raise the minimum wage to $8.15 in 2008, $8.75 in 2009, and $9.35 in 2010, with an annual cost of living increase thereafter.

In a pathbreaking victory for public health, and a stunning defeat for tobacco interests, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives voted by over two to one (141 to 62) to support a very strong anti-smoking in public places bill. The House took a Senate Bill, Senate Bill 246, and greatly strengthened it from the version that had passed the Senate, although the bill was not as strong as it had been in Senator Stuart Greenleaf's or Representative Mike Gerber's original version.

The bill now goes back to the Senate, where Governor Rendell and anti-smoking activists will be lobbying very heavily for it and pro-tobacco interests will be working to delay a final vote for as long as is possible.

The House vote in favor of it was finalized at 8:31 p.m. on Monday, July 16, 2007. The positive vote count trickled up as Speaker Dennis O'Brien obligingly left the voting board open so that everyone could take whatever time they wanted to make a final decision on how to vote on it.

At about 11:15 p.m. on Monday, July 9, 2007, at a press conference held in the Governor's reception room, all sides announced they had reached agreement on a 2007-2008 budget agreement. The agreement included major spending increases for mass transit and highways, early childhood education, and innovative new programs in energy conservation and medical cost containment. $300 million of surplus state funds--almost half the total-- will be saved for future use.

Furloughed workers return to work today. In all likelihood, they will be paid for their unwanted day off. Rendell's decision to make the furloughs, while of questionable legal necessity, was widely credited by the negotiators for bringing the impasse to an end.

The enabling legislation to implement the agreement still has to be finalized, checked, and doublechecked by members and staff. With all sides working together cooperatively, this task should be completed by the end of this week.