Over the past several months, Mr. Tusk orchestrated the abortive Harold Ford Jr. campaign against Kirsten Gillibrand, a frequent target of the mayor's ire; he ran the political operation of a group of charter school advocates, working alongside the mayor's own efforts, to lift the cap on charters throughout the state; and he has signed on as the top adviser to Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan, convincing the friend and golfing buddy of the mayor that there's a Republican path to the attorney general's office this fall.

Mr. Tusk's informal status as the mayor's go-to guy has its benefits for both sides. Mr. Tusk provides the outsource-able political muscle--capable of acting as a cudgel to supplement the administration's efforts from the outside--and at the same time reaps the returns of a particular, and potentially lucrative, niche on the flank of Team Bloomberg.

"The mayor cares about one thing, and that's who can get the job done. If you can get the job done, he wants you on his team," said Ed Skyler, a former deputy mayor and Mr. Tusk's best friend.

A source close to the mayor puts it more bluntly: "Not only does he want Bradley on his team, he wants him to be a quarterback."

It was Mr. Skyler who brought his friend into the Bloomberg orbit in 2002 for a one-year stint in the mayor's office. The two had met at Henry Stern's Parks Department in the mid-1990s; they had both graduated from Penn the same year, but hadn't known each other. Mr. Tusk had met Ed Rendell, then the mayor of Philadelphia, in 1992 and had become an intern in Mr. Rendell's office, which allowed him to forgo the poli-sci department and major in creative writing instead.

"His parks name was Ivory," said Mr. Stern, who thought Mr. Tusk's ability stood out even among the young talent in his department.

Mr. Tusk went off to law school at the University of Chicago, studied under Cass Sunstein, and brought back some of the scholar's social norms theory-including the use of shame to affect social behavior-to Mr. Stern and the Parks Department.

"Ivory thought up a slogan we put on signs: 'If you don't clean up after your dog, you don't deserve to own one,'" Mr. Stern recalled.

He left for Mr. Schumer's office, and later decamped for a career-making job as the deputy governor of Illinois to Rod Blagojevich.

Mr. Tusk came back to New York to work at Lehman Brothers. When Lehman collapsed, his friends in the mayor's office recruited him back with the promise they would keep him busy. He ended up wrangling support for the term-limits extension, and then, for the reelection effort, as campaign manager--his first job on a campaign.

It was a strange one.

The idea was to project the inevitability of Mr. Bloomberg's reelection, even though internal polls showed it to be a close race. The strategy stood to make Mr. Tusk's $100 million campaign look underwhelming when the numbers rolled in.

"Bradley knew what the margin would mean for him professionally and he could have easily put out stories sort of lowering expectations," Mr. Skyler said. "Bradley basically put the mayor first and him last. And I think long term, people recognize that."

But for Mr. Tusk, who is now hanging a shingle as Tusk Strategies, being on Team Bloomberg makes for a unique niche, one that could prove difficult to navigate.

Mr. Tusk's lusty embrace of the Bloomberg operative-for-hire role has paid dividends for him, but it also irrevocably altered his relationship with the New York Democratic Party, and in particular with the man who may well be the next leader of the U.S. Senate.

"Clearly, there were people who I like and respect, who define the party's position, who didn't want me to do that," said Mr. Tusk of his work for Mr. Ford. "At the end of the day, if I think candidate X is better than candidate Y, and X calls me to help them, I'm going to take it. That's just the way I am."

"I think in New York City it has now become fairly common for Democratic consultants to work for an independent candidate, and I think that's a reflection that a lot of New York voters have voted for an independent candidate," said Howard Wolfson, the longtime Democratic operative, who now works for Mr. Bloomberg.

But Mr. Tusk's decision to handle a Republican candidate for attorney general--even a relatively moderate one like Mr. Donovan--is a step across the aisle that many of his fellow Democratic consultants have been unwilling to take.

Mr. Tusk scoffs at the possibility that such blatant party-crossing could cost him the top candidates in both parties.

"Would I love to run a presidential campaign someday? Sure, theoretically, it would be fun. ... If some Republican or Democrat who I like and want to work for believes I'm the best person, they're going to hire me. I firmly believe that."

"It's something you can do," said Hank Sheinkopf, the longtime Democratic consultant who worked with Mr. Tusk on the mayor's most recent reelection and said the young operative would be in his top-five people to have in a foxhole with him. "When the mayor's not in office, it will be a little more difficult. We don't know yet what the Bloomberg legacy will be."

Mr. Tusk sees his role broader than the Bloomberg orbit. He has unrelated corporate clients and is currently working pro bono on Ed Koch's New York Uprising campaign for nonpartisan redistricting (it also employs two former Bloomberg aides), and sees his success on charter schools as the first of what could become a model for battling entrenched special interests in Albany.

"What I'd like to do is take that general set of policies and figure out, how do we corral all these different people and resources, who agree on all these different principles, to have one effort to get things done?" Mr. Tusk said.

"The era of the union special interests may be over as we know it--for the time being," said Mr. Sheinkopf. "So Bradley Tusk may be the right guy at the right time. This may be his moment."

rpillifant@observer.com

But Rendell flat-out declined when challenged to wear a Yankees skirt if his Phillies lose the World Series. The idea first came up when the Post wooded a photo of Shane Victorino in a skirt, and when asked about it on CNBC yesterday, Paterson said "I won't have to pay so I'll take the bet."  Paterson, unlike some other New York governors, is clearly backing the Yankees.

"Unbelievably, although Governor Paterson is a friend of mine and a great guy, he said yes," Rendell said of the skirt bet. "I believe it's okay for politicians to occasionally make a fool of themselves, but not make a complete fool of themselves, so I demurred from wearing a skirt based on the simple fact that I don't think the people of the commonwealth are ready to see my legs in a skirt."

I then asked Rendell why he was too chicken to wear a Yankees skirt, and whether it belied his public (required) claim that the Phillies will win in six games.

"Well I have the utmost confidence in the Phillies, but I've been a baseball fan all my life. I know that strange things can happen; the best team doesn't always win--the Phillies are clearly the best team in my judgment. I just think there are certain things a politican shouldn't do. For example, my predecessor as mayor of Philadelphia did a promotion for Disney--Disney was in town--and they asked him to wear mouse ears. He put mouse ears on--and I don't know if anybody's here from the Philadelphia Daily News--but it was a front page, full page, picture of the Philadelphia Daily News. And I vowed to myself seeing my predecessor in mouse ears that I would never be pictured in something completely stupid. In fact, I was asked by one of the T.V. stations, as a result of my diet, would I do what Kirstie Alley did and pose in a bathing suit to show people my new body. And I also concluded that Pennsylvania wasn't ready to see that either."

Later in the call, Rendell added: "I actually have pretty good legs, but I don't think they're made for a skirt."

.

This comes as Bloomberg and others head to Washington to ask the president for money to help rebuild the nation's infrastructure.

Bloomberg will appear on the show with Ed Rendell and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

For decades, he's irked his party's conservative base with one high-profile apostasy after another. But he's also made sure to throw just enough bones their way to prevent an intraparty uprising from toppling him—as when he beat back, by a scant two points, a withering Republican primary challenge from Pat Toomey in 2004.

Now, though, his luck seems to have run out. The Republican base, nationally and in Specter's Pennsylvania, is shrinking and lurching ever rightward. Somehow, the right has convinced itself that the real lesson of the Democratic landslides of 2006 and 2008 is that the G.O.P. just wasn't conservative enough. Where there used to be at least some space for breaches of conservative orthodoxy, there is now none in the Republican Party.

In that sense, Specter sealed his own fate last month, when he essentially brokered the compromise that allowed President Obama's $787 billion stimulus package—pilloried by the right as a step toward socialism—to pass over a Republican filibuster in the Senate. At a public event shortly thereafter, a grateful Vice President Joe Biden showered praise on his old Senate colleague: "It might not help you, my saying this, but this legislation would not have happened without you."

That's an understatement. In the wake of the stimulus saga, Toomey, Specter's '04 G.O.P. challenger, has revisited his initial decision not to seek a rematch next year; now, he almost certainly will. Biden's praise will surely be recycled into a Toomey ad or two.

The forces that saved Specter in '04—a helpful Republican White House, a higher concentration of moderates within the G.O.P., and more tolerance for diverse views among conservatives (a luxury they feel they can no longer afford in the minority)—are now inoperative. The anger over his stimulus move is intense, and won't abate as long as the economy is struggling. Specter's poll standing among Pennsylvania Republicans is at an all-time low. It's easy to see Toomey's two-point defeat turning into a 20-point massacre next spring.

And that should be it for Specter, at least in theory: He can either go down swinging in a hopeless G.O.P. primary or acknowledge reality, announce that five terms is enough, and head off to retirement at age 80. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania's Democrats, who have lost Senate race after Senate race to Specter because his independent streak sits so well with swing voters, can lick their lips in anticipation of a general-election campaign against the far more beatable Toomey.

And yet, for some reason, Democrats are offering Specter a life preserver, in the form of inducements to switch parties and run as their candidate for another six-year term.

"We've tried—myself, Senator Casey, Vice President Biden," Pennsylvania's Democratic governor, Ed Rendell, said this week. "We've tried to talk him into it, but he's bound and determined to stay a Republican. He doesn't want to see Republican moderates vanish from the earth."

At a personal level, it's understandable why Rendell and Biden, who have long enjoyed cooperative and collegial relationships with Specter, would encourage him to join their team. (Presumably, Casey, who won his seat two years ago, enjoys a similar relationship.) But from a political standpoint, it's probably not in the Democratic Party's interest to convert Specter.

Granted, in the short term, a Specter switch—coupled with the seemingly inevitable seating of Minnesota's Al Franken—would give the Democrats the magic 60 Senate votes they've been craving. But 60 is just a number. There's really no reason to believe that Specter, even if he suddenly changed his registration, would morph into a party-line Democrat. Most likely, he'd be just as fickle and iconoclastic as he now is—hardly a reliable vote for every Democratic effort to end a filibuster.

Besides, why should Democrats settle for Specter, who would probably vote with the G.O.P. just as much as he votes with them, when they could very likely elect a far more reliable Democratic senator in '10?

Look at it this way: If Specter remains a Republican and battles it out with Toomey in a primary next year—his most likely course of action, at least for now—then Toomey will probably win and emerge as the G.O.P. nominee. Given his staunch conservatism, he'd make an ideal opponent for the Democratic nominee, who could paint Toomey as another Rick Santorum, who was drummed out of the Senate by Pennsylvanians in 2006.

But if Specter were to switch parties, the Republican nomination would be flung wide open. A more electable general-election candidate, one capable of navigating the conservative/moderate divide that Specter no longer can, might then emerge. Meanwhile, Democrats would face the prospect of an untidy primary, with Rendell and other party leaders (and interest groups, too: the A.F.L.-C.I.O. has promised to support Specter in a primary if he supports their "card check" legislation in the Senate) using their muscle on Specter's behalf while party activists push for their own candidate. Even if Specter were to win the Democratic nod without a fight, his general-election chances could be iffy—assuming Republicans picked a nominee other than Toomey.

The most politically advantageous posture for Democrats, it would seem, is to keep praising Specter but to stop begging him to join them. As long as tries to run for reelection as a Republican, the odds are good that the G.O.P. will nominate the supremely beatable Toomey. And if that's the case, Democrats might as well field a candidate who will side with them reliably in the Senate.

For months, it's been obvious that Chris Matthews would like to return to his native Pennsylvania and run for Arlen Specter's Senate seat in 2010. He's done nothing to silence media speculation that he'll be a candidate, declared on national television, "I want to be a senator," and even addressed the subject with top-tier Democratic donors. He's also turned his MSNBC show into something of a showcase for major players in the media and political worlds of Pennsylvania, all of whom will play a key role in their state's next Senate election. (Matthews has also been known to incessantly drop the name of "Eddie" Rendell, Pennsylvania's reigning Democratic governor.)

But the chatter took on new urgency in the last few days, with news that Matthews recently convened a meeting with Democratic leaders in Pennsylvania to discuss the 2010 race and also that he's actively seeking Obama campaign veterans to staff his prospective campaign. Mindful of prematurely losing his daily national platform on MSNBC, Matthews has (at least in public) been careful to talk around the specifics of his thinking. He called the staffing report "absolutely not true," for instance," though he has studiously avoided making any statement that might defuse talk of his candidacy. Clearly, this is a man looking to run.

But can he win?

The short, and obvious, answer is yes. Pennsylvania, as this year's results again affirmed, is a Democratic state in a Democratic region. Increasingly, voters in the Northeast, once a bastion of moderate Republicanism, have been turning on Republican office-holders simply because of their association with a national G.O.P. that is now dominated by religious conservatives from the South. This automatically makes Specter, despite his middle-of-the-road instincts on numerous issues, an endangered pol.

And it's not like Specter is all that beloved in Pennsylvania: He won 53 percent of the vote in his 2004 re-election campaign, came within an inch of losing that year's G.O.P. primary, and was nearly unseated by Democrat Lynn Yeakel in 1992. For Matthews, as with any potential Democratic nominee, this would be a winnable race.

Plus, Matthews knows a thing or two about campaigning. He unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 1974 and worked as a staffer to Tip O'Neill before turning to the media world, first as a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and then as a television personality. A Matthews campaign wouldn't be a case of a naïve journalist trying his hand at politics; it would be more like Pat Buchanan, a Nixon and Reagan aide-turned-columnist and CNN host, deciding to become a candidate for office.

Still, none of this means that that Matthews would be a particularly strong candidate.

First, a reality check is probably in order when it comes to his "celebrity," which supposedly would fuel his campaign. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that fully 60 percent of Pennsylvania voters don't really have any idea who Matthews is, despite his decade-plus run as an MSNBC personality, his numerous appearances on other news and entertainment shows, and his occasional role as the subject of a "Saturday Night Live" parody.

In a state as large as Pennsylvania, this is still better name recognition than the average congressman enjoys, but it hardly constitutes an overwhelming advantage. There is probably a tendency by political junkies to overstate Matthews' significance to the average voter, since Matthews' show is part of many junkies' daily diet. But the "Hardball" audience is generally less than one million viewers, spread out over all 50 states. To the majority of Pennsylvanians, the mention of his name generates only vague familiarity, at best. Not surprisingly, the same Quinnipiac poll found Matthews lagging 12 points behind Specter, 45 to 33 percent.

This makes it unlikely that Matthews would receive a free pass to the Democratic nomination. There are many ambitious Democratic politicians in Pennsylvania, and a chance to move up to the Senate doesn't come around often. Joe Sestak, a retired Navy vice admiral who won a Congressional seat from the Philadelphia suburbs in 2006, has encouraged talk of a future Senate campaign - and is also sitting on around $3 million in campaign funds. Allyson Schwartz, a congresswoman also from the Philadelphia area, also seems interested. In a crowded field, she could benefit as the sole female candidate. Other names figure to emerge. Defeat in a Democratic primary would be a very real prospect for Matthews.

Here, a comparison can be drawn to Al Franken, a celebrity candidate who had little problem securing the Democratic Senate nomination in Minnesota this year. Franken was probably about as well-known as Matthews at the outset of the campaign, but among much the Democratic base he was a beloved figure, having authored a series of best-selling books that savaged prominent conservatives. This made it difficult for Democrats to deny him the nomination. Matthews, though, is a more polarizing figure among Democratic activists, as well known for his critiques of the Iraq war as he is for his assaults on Bill and Hillary Clinton. He would not command the instant affection of his party's base, as Franken did in Minnesota.

The Franken comparison is also noteworthy because of how his campaign seems to be ending: on the short end of a very winnable race. Minnesota, like Pennsylvania, is a Democratic stronghold where voters feel alienated from the Sun Belt-centric national G.O.P. Norm Coleman, the Republican senator up for re-election this year, was a supremely ripe target for Democrats. But he appears likely to survive, mainly because he used Franken's celebrity to make the race as much a referendum on the challenger as the incumbent.

Something similar could happen to Matthews. No, he's not as much of a comedian (at least not intentionally) as Franken was, but he has consistently used his various media platforms to make utterances that vary between inflammatory and just plain weird - like his infamous comment about "a thrill going up my leg" while Barack Obama spoke earlier this year. He's also fond of talking about racial and gender politics in dated and almost stereotypical terms, as evidenced by his obsession with Hillary Clinton's wardrobe and physical appearance. As with Franken, Matthews could find his own words being recycled into damaging television ads and talking points, either in the general election or in a primary.

You can't blame Matthews for taking a shot at this. He says he's always wanted to be in the Senate and now he has an opportunity to run for it. But if Pennsylvania's Democrats end up deciding he's not their best bet to take out Specter, well, you can't blame them for that, either.

And remember: When he lost the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries earlier this year, Hillary Clinton and her supporters claimed that Obama wouldn't be able to carry either in the fall. Today, it looks like those two states are going to hand him the presidency.

"I have, like, zero interest in Sarah Palin," said Nutter, speaking to a scrum of reporters after an Obama event in Vernon Park. "You know people are focused on Senator Obama and trying to figure out what John McCain is talking about and I think Sarah Palin's 15 minutes of fame were up a long time ago."

Asked if he detected a racial undercurrent in the McCain attacks, Rendell said, "Not particularly. I think they're just stupid. They're dumb." He added. "They're all dumb. When people are facing the challenges in their own lives that they're facing, no one wants to hear that stuff. It's just dumb. You know, tell us what you want to do. I mean if he's got a plain for the mortgage bailout, explain it to the American people. You know, that might get people's interest."

Rendell also said that he and Nutter had been arguing that Obama should campaign more intensely in Philadelphia for some time.

"No question the mayor and I were clamoring to get into Philadelphia and we were clamoring to do this type of day," he said. "We had a little bit of a tug with Chicago but I think Chicago is pretty happy."

"Everyone in Germantown will know before they go to sleep tonight that Barack Obama was in Vernon Park," said Rendell. "Not down at Center City, not in Independence Hall, but down in Vernon Park."

At each event, Obama was introduced by Governor Ed Rendell, who plainly laid out the campaign’s mission to the crowd.

“Fifty-three percent this Election Day won’t cut it, right?” Rendell said during an event in Germantown, referring to the Democratic turnout of the Philadelphia area during the primary. “I want to see Philadelphia go over 70 percent.”

The day started early, in North Philadelphia's Progress Plaza, where Obama stood, in shirtsleeves, in a square surrounded by stores with signs like “Auto Tags,” or “Dollar World. We Are Open.”

He talked about the economy, warning that John McCain would be about as successful at managing America’s affairs as President Bush has been. But his tone, to the delight of the audience, was fiery and at times almost spiritual.

Wandering around the podium, Obama said things like, “Parents, you’ve got to parent, and fathers, you’ve got to father.” He moved comfortably and confidently on the stage and let his diction slacken into folksy familiarity. He talked about the need to “invest in cities” and relayed an anecdote about his love of sweet potato pie. At the end of his speech he talked about the possibility of the children or grandchildren of the audience members becoming president.

“We have a history of overcoming, Philadelphia!” he said.

“It doesn’t seem real,” said William Jennings, a 32-year-old satellite technician from Philadelphia who was in the church. “Until the day that he is announced, and he’s in that office sitting in that seat. Then it’s real.”

But Jennings also said he felt more willing to help Obama’s cause after seeing him in the economically depressed neighborhood.

“I like that he comes to the inner city,” he said. “I like the change he’s talking about and he seems sincere. He’s talking about what’s really going on.”

After the event, during which supporters cheered from the middle of the street between cars passing in opposite directions, the candidate and the press buses and the police and Secret Service motorcade that follow him rushed to a rally outside the Mayfair Diner, a staple of political stumping, in the northeast section of the city. Here a more integrated crowd awaited him. Hipsters perched their chins on tattooed arms as they looked out the window from above a “Shop ‘N’ Go” on the corner. Teamsters held up “Workers Win With Obama/Biden” signs. A band dressed up in sequins for the occasion. (Not everyone was so pleased. One man stormed out of a house directly adjacent to the diner, grabbed his crotch and screamed, “John McCain.” Three police officers stood watchfully on the other side of his fence and the Secret Service patrolling on the silver roof of the diner momentarily turned to look at him. Then they picked up their binoculars again to inspect the crowd.)

“If any of your neighbors say, ‘I’m not sure,’” Rendell said a few minutes later when introducing the candidate, they should be reminded that “we’re drowning. Drowning!” Obama, in his telling, was the man waiting to pull everyone out.

When he took the stage, Obama, as he did in his first appearance of the day, acknowledged what he said were McCain’s efforts to “tone down the rhetoric” at his rallies and honored the principle of disagreeing while still being respectful of each other. Some black members of Congress have said they detected racism in the McCain campaign’s “not one of us” line of attack against Obama in recent days, and blamed the Republicans for inciting crowds to threaten Obama. The McCain campaign maintains that the Obama camp is itself playing the “race card.”

Obama, however, spent most of his time talking about money, and quickly moved into the economic frustration that has caused his campaign to surge over the last month.

“But when it comes to the economy, and what families here in Philly are going through, John McCain just doesn’t get it,” he said, near one of the city’s pretzel stores and an Irish bar called McDoodles. He said that instead of talking about the economy, McCain’s advisers had made it clear they want to “spend the final weeks of this election attacking me instead.” As a result, he said, “we’ve seen these nasty attacks, and I’m sure we’ll see much more over the next 24 days.”

He added, “You know and I know America is not working the way it should be right now.” Mocking McCain’s much-mocked remark about the fundamentals of the economy being strong, he said that where he was from, a job was fundamental. He addressed himself to people who feel their jobs are endangered: “These are the Americans I’m standing with. These are the folks I’m fighting for.”

Since primary season, Obama has faced questions from prominent Democrats about his ability to appeal to working-class voters just like those assembled in front of the Mayfair Diner. But the economic woes have provided both the passion to Obama’s stump and substance to his vague promise of change. As he put it at his second event on Saturday, “Change means rebuilding this economy.”

Obama spoke more haltingly that he had at the day's first event at Progress Plaza, and less passionately. These were the voters that wanted economic aide and not inspiration, so there was no mention of “overcoming.” He made no mention of sweet potato pie, only a coconut cream he ate at a rural diner in Ohio, and of “a yearlong supply of cheese steaks” Rendell had promised him. For a rhetorical crest he stressed that most American families began with someone coming from another country in search of a better life for their children.

After the speech, the motorcade then made its way down Germantown Avenue, where some of the broken-down houses still had blue “Hillary for President” signs in the bay windows. Stores were boarded up and there were shopping carts and broken glass under the concrete overpasses. With sirens heralding his passage through the narrow streets rarely traveled by presidential candidates, residents, almost all black, came out of their stores and houses to cheer. One man dressed in a sparkling striped suit played his flute as the caravan rolled by.

In Germantown, in the northwest section of the city, Obama again appeared before a mostly black audience at Vernon Park and talked again about the harsh McCain attacks of the last few weeks. He called them “rough stuff” that he could take for another four weeks, but that the country couldn’t take for another four years. He said the attacks were distractions, and that McCain was trying to “hoodwink ya. You know what I’m talking about.”

He called the members of the audience brothers and sisters. When explaining that his economic plan would cut taxes for Americans making less than $250,000, he polled the people in the audience to see who made that much. One woman raised her hand.

“That sister is making more than a quarter million dollars—you might want to go meet her,” he joked to the men in the crowd.

And the sweet potato pie came back in a big way.

“You gonna make me some pie?” he said, interrupting his own anecdote about ordering pie in the Ohio coffee shop. “What are you gonna make? Sweet potato pie?” Someone else offered to bake him a sweet potato pie. “We might have to have a sweet-potato-pie-eating contest,” Obama said. “I could be the judge. I know my sweet potato pie.”

Obama finished the daytime sweep in West Philadelphia, where he spoke at an intersection by Billies Boomer Lounge, the Bushfire Theater of Performing Arts (presenting “Mojo Secrets”) and the “Hope Rising Child Learning Center.” Thousands cheered him on the streets and families craned their necks to see him better from the porches.

Throughout his speech, he invoked all the “bamboozled” and “sweet potato pie” lines he could conjure, and again framed his candidacy as an achievement that many of the crowd’s grandparents would never have thought possible. But his most consistent applause lines came every time he talked about what he would do as “president of the United States of America.” Clearly, in places like West Philadelphia, there are a lot of people who still can’t believe what they’re hearing.

So, how was Mayor Nutter feeling Thursday morning, after he listened to Joe Biden address the Pennsylvania delegation’s breakfast? “I think this week has been tremendously helpful,” he said. “I was very clear with the public. And I think people understand that in Democratic primaries, people can support who they want to support. But this is an adult business with adult consequences. We take our politics very seriously in Philadelphia.”

Despite everything, Nutter said, he was looking forward to hearing Obama’s speech—not the least of which because he appreciated the historic step it represented for black Americans—and he said that the wounds of the hotly contested primary had healed.

“You can see who’s standing next to me,” Nutter said, nodding to his right. “Congressman Fattah.”

Chaka Fattah, an opponent of Nutter’s in the 2007 mayoral campaign, represents a West Philadelphia district and has family connections to the Black Power movement of the 1960s and '70s. He supported Obama. “I don’t mean to minimize the fact that we had a tough primary, but when you have an organization that’s vital, you have competition for leadership,” he told me. “When Kennedy ran against Carter [in 1980], Ed Rendell and myself supported Kennedy and the party establishment of that time supported Carter.”

This campaign, of course, turned out differently than that one. “I’ve been involved in a lot of other insurgency campaigns,” Fattah said. “This is the first time I’ve seen the insurgency win.”

Fattah said that “the Obama campaign has put together the most significant field operation ever seen in the state of Pennsylvania”—one that, at least during the primaries, operated largely independently of the Philadelphia Democratic machine. For instance, Obama eschewed the customary practice of putting out “street money,” cash payments that candidates in the city have traditionally doled out on Election Day to precinct bosses and ward heelers. His campaign now must integrate its organization with this traditional Democratic infrastructure. Congressman Bob Brady, the burly former carpenter who runs the Philadelphia Democratic Party, stayed out of the primary battle and did not attend the convention, but I was warned not to read to read too much into that—he is apparently phobic about planes. (And also elevators.) Rendell, who is much beloved among the party faithful, has been playing the lead role in redeploying the troops. At a delegation cocktail hour on Wednesday afternoon, I met Josh Uretsky, a long-haired 31-year-old who introduced himself as the co-chair of Philadelphia for Obama. “I think that among the political elite, it’s coming together faster than a lot of people expected,” he told me.

Still, in Philadelphia, all politics is personal, and not everything has been fixed. At the same cocktail party, I met Tom Knox, a former banker and deputy mayor who is now running to succeed Rendell when his term expires in 2010. “He’s said in the past that I was his largest fund-raiser,” Knox said, though he added that Rendell had been known to exaggerate on occasion. “I was probably the only Obama guy” within the Rendell circle, Knox told me. “They were pissed. All right, maybe not ‘pissed’—I would say they thought I was stupid.”

For supporting Obama?

“For going against the machine,” Knox replied.

“Rendell told me he always thought Obama had a strong chance of winning the primary, and if he did that, of winning the general, too,” Knox said. But he said that Rendell backed Hillary “because the Clinton administration did more for the city of Philadelphia than anyone had ever done.”

So, was he expecting Rendell’s support when he runs for governor?

“This guy is a consummate politician—he never gets mad at anybody,” Knox said. He paused for a second and corrected himself. “Or, he doesn’t stay mad.”

“It was a mix of Obama and Clinton donors,” said Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who hosted the event with Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, as he left the meeting “Dodgeball” room of the Curtis hotel. “And a lot of those folks go back with me to 2000 when I was the DNC chair. We discussed ways to legally help the Pennsylvania and Ohio Democratic parties, to strengthen the parties, which will strengthen their abilities to get what is called a coordinated campaign going. To do things like registration and turnout, to direct money to the parties to do that, which helps us in our state reps race, it helps us in our State Senate race and helps us in our Congressional race and it also helps us in presidentials.”

Rendell emphasized that “that money cannot be used by candidates. It cannot be used by candidates. It cannot be used for television. It has to be used for what are called party-building activities. But party-building activities help the guy running for state rep, they also help the guy running for president.”

Asked if he felt as though he were restarting from scratch after the long primary season during which he emphatically supported Hillary Clinton, Rendell said, “A little bit,” but added, “Of course our state laws in Pennsylvania and Ohio are much more liberal than federal laws, with less limitations.”

The meeting lasted about one and a half hours and was attended by donors such as Bill Titelman of Pennsylvania, Morris and Barbara Pearl of New York, Richard Richman of Connecticut and Bernard Schwartz of New York, a close associate of Bill Clinton.

“We talked strategy, we talked a lot of things,” said Strickland when asked what was asked of the donors. “These are friends that Governor Rendell and I have had over the years and obviously are interested in Ohio.” He added, “It was an effort to communicate what we think we must do in Ohio and Pennsylvania to have a chance of winning.”

Schwartz said the governors expressed a lot of confidence at the meeting.

“It would look as if we are ahead now and we have a lot of tools going forth,” he said. “There was a lot of emphasis today on the amount of organization on the ground. And the point made that in the case of Pennsylvania that the winner of this campaign is not only important for presidential politics but for redistricting that comes in the future, so it is a very important election. And both have indicated that it is the organizational ability of Obama plus the Democratic organizations within the parties.

“Republicans can’t win the election without Ohio, and we’re focusing on that.”

He added, “There is a lot of confidence being expressed now, by both the governors, and the people doing the fund-raising. This is the time that everyone wants to go out and do it. There are joint state parties that are non-federal, and the governors are making that point. There are issues here that can be made available vehicles for people who are maxed out. But we shouldn’t think of being only donors. There are a lot of people in this country who are not maxed out and organizing them is extremely important. And I’m focused on that.”

Remarking on the fact that Obama and Clinton donors both participated in the meeting, Schwartz said, “I think the party has really now come together for the first time. We’re the Democratic Party again.”