(At 12:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, and 98.9% of the votes counted, it’s Sen. Clinton 54.3%, Sen. Obama 45.7% and about a +10 delegate gain for Hillary. Not bad guessing on my part, he boasted.)

Since guesses about tonight’s primary in Pennsylvania are like belly buttons (everyone has one) and one is just about as good as another, my guess is that the primary will be about 54-46 in Clinton’s favor, with a net delegate lead of 10-12.

That said, I’d like to make a note or two about the fall campaign.

First, something’s happened with the Obama campaign that’s never, to my knowledge, happened ever before. He’s built an on the ground volunteer organization in every one of the 46 states where’s he’s campaigned so far. He didn’t use the Dem Party apparatus of teachers and union members, he built his own 3 million volunteers and contributors. About half of that 3 million donated an average of $100 each to his campaign. He’s declined the “old school” black organizations of street money in South Carolina and now in Philly in favor of his own brand of enthusiastic volunteers. The historical precedents are Goldwater and William Jennings Bryan and they aren’t really that close; Andrew Jackson, who created the Democratic Party in the first place, is the closest of historical analogies.

The unprecedented door to door canvassers and phone bankers are joined by another unprecedented aspect of the campaign.

Almost every voter in America has now seen a variety of repeated television commercials from his campaign. No campaign ever has spent so much money on television and radio for a year before the general election campaign. The vast majority of these ads have been the “meet the candidate” and “hope and change” variety. No Democrat has ever gone through a primary with so many “views” by the television viewing public and few have come anywhere close by the time November arrived and in the next six months, assuming his nomination, he will overwhelm even Republican ad campaigns of the past.

Finally, this is the first “YouTube” campaign. The internet has played a large part in this campaign in an unprecedented way for all three of the major remaining candidates. Obama’s campaign has seemed a quantum leap ahead of the others in this regard. His videos and blogging sites are 90-10 over the other two combined. Think about the Will.I.Am video, just for a single example.

The Clinton and Bush elections were the rise and flowering of the 24-hour news cycle cable elections, the Reagan and Bush I elections were the culmination of the 40 years of the television elections preceding them. It is difficult to assess at this point whether this campaign is like the break from the Civil War to FDR domination of the Republican Party and the Reagan break of Democratic Party domination that followed, but it “feels” like something brand new. I’m not suprised that the TV networks have not figured out how to cover or talk about this campaign, they are too busy with their short cycles of news.

No matter your partisan leanings, this is the first 21st Century election campaign and we are witnessing something remarkable, unique and historic. The political hack and historian in me is amazed. This is all aside from the fact that Obama is a mixed race candidate running against a woman, another remarkable, unique and historic event in America’s democracy/republic.

Blogblah