"ARE YOU FROM IOWA?" I asked a lady with her teenaged daughter standing next to me at the Barack Obama rally Friday night on Independence Mall. She didn't look corn fed but she was wearing a gray T-shirt with the word Iowa across the front. "I grew up in Iowa but I live in Massachusattes now," she replied, adding, "We drove down for this."

Pennsylvania has been in the spotlight for so long in this presidential primary, and so much has happened during that time, it's hard to remember when Hillary and Barack weren't stopping by the house for coffee every morning. This must be what it feels like to live in Iowa or New Hampshire every fourth year with candidates offering to shovel your walk. Pennsylvania voters aren't used to this sort of prolonged courting by presidential hopefuls. But we sure got a taste for it over the last six weeks.

When the Hillary Express and the Obama Tsunami arrived in the Keystone State back in March, it seemed like the news media had grown impatient with the primary election process. The talking heads looked ready to explode if this thing wasn't settled in Texas or Ohio. But since setting up camp in Pennsylvania the national media seems to have lost that anxious "get it over with already" edge.

Perhaps because of the quickening pace of embarrassing campaign disclosures, starting with the Obama's Chicago preacher's post-9/11 remarks followed by Hillary's Bosnian sniper recollection and culminating in the media-fueled contraversy over "bitter" small town Pennsylvanians. What future generations may remember most about the Pennsylvania primary may not be the outcome, or the manufactured gaffs, but rather Obama's ground breaking speech on race at the Constitution Center. YouTube has made that 37 minute address accessable to anyone with a computer, and I believe it will be the one lasting memory to come out of this six-week focus on Pennsylvania.

Unless Obama wins tomorrow. If the Illinois senator can pull off an Iowa-like upset in the face of unbudging polls that have shown Hillary leading consistently, if not in double digits, it will be the coup de grace for the Clinton campaign. Certainly the barking of the news media hounds will be deafening if Hillary loses in Pennsylvania and contuinues her campaign through the Democratic National Convention. Pennsylvania is Hillary's to lose, and she better not.