Maybe someone out there who knows the inner workings of EMILY’s List can explain to me why this group has not put money behind Becky Greenwald, the Democrat challenging loyal Republican foot-soldier Tom Latham in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district.

I have been going over the list of Democratic women running for Congress whom EMILY’s List is supporting, with a particular focus on the six challengers most recently added to this group in early August. I do not mean to knock any of those candidates, and I recognize that every race has its own dynamic.

However, after comparing Greenwald’s race to those of other candidates, I remain puzzled that EMILY’s list is not more involved in IA-04.  

Follow me after the jump for more.

A Geographic Analysis of PA, OH and VA General Election Polling

(Cross-posted on MyDD and Daily Kos)

A number of state polls have come out in recent days for Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia.  The numbers overall look good for Barack Obama, with him leading John McCain in Pennsylvania in all four polls released in May; Obama leading outside the margin of error in one poll in Ohio while being within the margin in two others; and a very competitive race in Virginia as well, with one poll there showing Obama up by seven points (links to polls used are provided at bottom of this diary).  What I wanted to do in this diary is to look at the regional breakdown in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia to examine Obama’s geographic areas of strength and weakness. 

The conservative pundits who favored Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani or Fred Thompson for president are fully on board with John McCain, but he still has a big problem with other elements of the conservative base.

Exhibit A: the results from the GOP primary in Pennsylvania last week. More than two months after it became clear that McCain would be the GOP nominee, he gained just under 73 percent of the vote from Pennsylvania Republicans. Ron Paul got almost 16 percent (more than 128,000 votes), and Mike Huckabee got about 11 percent (more than 91,000 votes).

Think about that. More than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania went to the trouble of voting for someone other than McCain last Tuesday.

McCain did the worst in conservative counties where Republicans need to run up big margins to have any hope of winning statewide in Pennsylvania:

Mr. McCain’s worst showing was in Juniata County, near the center of the state. He received only about 59 percent of the vote, while Mr. Paul took nearly 28 percent. In 2004, President Bush won Juniata with 72 percent of the vote.

Mr. Bush had his biggest win that year in southern Fulton County, with 76 percent of the vote. Mr. McCain picked up 71 percent there, but Mr. Huckabee had 21 percent, his highest percentage in the state.

The conservative Washington Times has more bad news for McCain:

The McCain campaign has said it is on the same timeline for uniting the Republican Party as then-Gov. George W. Bush in 2000. In that year, Mr. Bush won 73 percent of the Republican vote in Pennsylvania’s primary, held April 4. His biggest challenger was McCain himself, who won 23 percent, despite having dropped out of the campaign weeks earlier.

But McCain was a far more imposing figure in 2000 than Paul and Huckabee were in 2008, and McCain has also had more time before Pennsylvania to consolidate his lead than Bush had in 2000. To continue to post less-than-dominant showings will only prolong talk that McCain has more work to do within his own party.

And to truly match Bush’s 2000 performance may be out of the question for McCain. Out of 18.5 million votes cast in the primaries so far he has won 43.2 percent. By contrast, Bush finished 2000 with 62 percent of the Republican primary vote.

Then I learned from this diary by sarahlane that Ron Paul says he doesn’t plan to campaign for McCain, and Paul supporters outnumbered McCain supporters at the Nevada Republican Party’s state convention last weekend.

Finally, the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch has filed a complaint against McCain with the Federal Elections Commission. If you’re too young to remember Judicial Watch, this group repeatedly attacked Bill Clinton’s administration in the 1990s.

Click the link to read the MyDD post by Jonathan Singer. Judicial Watch’s FEC complaint relates to a possibly illegal in-kind contribution from a foreign national to McCain’s campaign.

As I’ve mentioned before, prominent bloggers have filed a separate FEC complaint relating to McCain’s failure to abide by the spending limits imposed on candidates who agree to take public matching funds during the presidential primaries.

Looks like Hillary is winning this thing by about 10 percent, 55-45 with 94 percent reporting.

If you just consider Pennsylvania’s demographics, that isn’t too surprising. However, we’re coming out of a month in which she was massively outspent by Obama, and the media narrative has been that she is unlikely to win the nomination now.

The official memo from the Obama campaign notes that Clinton failed to make significant gains in the pledged-delegate count. True, but what does it say about Obama that he couldn’t close the deal despite spending more than his opponent and having generally more favorable media coverage?

As a memo from the Clinton campaign pointed out earlier today, Obama spent a lot of money on negative advertising and negative direct-mail pieces in Pennsylvania. He still couldn’t make the sale.

I like the way Todd Beeton (a Clinton voter in the California primary) reacted to the spin from Obama-leaning analysts at MSNBC:

I have to say I was amused to hear Keith Olbermann announce with child-like glee at 8:01pm that the race was too close to call and how that had to make the Clinton campaign nervous. The subtext of his enthusiasm was clearly shadenfreude that Hillary Clinton was going to underperform expectations. I thought to myself: where the hell has he been? Time after time exit polls overestimate Barack Obama’s performance, not to mention that on election nights past, namely Feb 5th and March 4th, neither California nor Ohio, solid Clinton wins both, was called for her right away either. And sure enough, 93% in and she’s still up by the magic 10%.

Then just a few minutes ago, Keith asked an uncomfortable Tom Brokaw whether it is wise for Hillary Clinton to be Bush to Obama’s Gore in Bush v. Gore.

Riiight.

Seriously, at what point are these guys going to start holding their own candidate accountable for why this thing is still going on instead of complaining that Hillary is competing in contests that she is winning.

But Todd, didn’t you know that the Clintons are evil, and everything bad that happens to Obama is orchestrated by them?

I am glad that Clinton didn’t listen to the Obama fan clubbers who demanded that she drop out a month ago. There was record-breaking turnout today in a state that has not influenced the nominating process in recent history. Oh yeah, and Democrats made huge gains in voter registration in a critical swing state this past month.

In other news, a Democrat almost won a special election in Mississippi’s deep-red first Congressional district. Looking like a great year to be a Democrat!

What’s going to happen in Pennsylvania today?

Markos predicts a Clinton victory by 8 percent and more than 200,000 votes:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

Obama supporter poblano backs up his similar prediction with some interesting analysis:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com…

If Obama keeps this one close (within 5 percent), it will be viewed as a blow to Clinton. If she crushes him like she did in Ohio, it will not be enough to win her the nomination, but it will increase doubts about Obama’s ability to close the deal with Democrats. He massively outspent Clinton over the past six weeks in Pennsylvania.

I think Clinton will win, but not in a blowout: 53-47.

Put your predictions in the comments section.

Probably you knew that already, but techfidel provides this great analysis of the demographics in Ohio and Pennsylvania, going down to the county level.

The bottom line is that if the various demographic groups vote the same way in PA as they did in OH, techfidel projects a 57-43 victory for Hillary.

Click the link to see the maps and read the detailed explanation. There is also a spreadsheet you can download if you’re interested.