At South Philadelphia diner, Bill scrambles for Hill

Wonder what a seven-week Pennsylvania primary campaign will be like? Ask Nick Poppa.

Sitting on a stool at the Penrose Diner counter trying to finish his eggs and home fries yesterday, the South Philadelphia retiree looked up and saw former President Bill Clinton standing next to him, working the room for his wife - presidential candidate, Sen. Hillary Clinton.

"I was making money while you were in there," a stunned and smiling Poppa told Clinton. "No question, things were going good."

Five days before crucial primaries in Ohio and Texas, Clinton took advantage of a speaking engagement at Penn to visit the Penrose, buck up the spirits of about 50 local supporters and talk a little politics with reporters.

"If Hillary wins in Texas and Ohio and Rhode Island, I think what happens in Pennsylvania could determine the nominee," Clinton said. "This state's been very good to our family."

Clinton brushed off the widely publicized defection of Georgia Rep. John Lewis, who switched from Clinton to Sen. Barack Obama this week. Clinton said Lewis was subjected to "awful" pressure to switch, and he took a swipe at Obama's posture on superdelegates like Lewis.

"The Obama campaign is not really consistent on this notion that the superdelegates ought to vote the way their districts and states did," Clinton said, "otherwise we would be having a press conference today to announce that Senator Kennedy and Senator Kerry and Governor Patrick in Massachusetts are going to support Hillary because she won Massachusetts by a resounding 15 points."

Obama campaign spokeswoman Amy Brundage said Obama hasn't said that individual superdelegates should abide by their constituents' views, but that the candidate leading in delegates committed from primaries and caucuses at the end of the process should be the nominee.

Gov. Rendell, a Clinton superdelegate, was asked yesterday if he would stick with her if Obama won the Pennsylvania primary.

"If it was 51-49, I might. But if it was 60-40, I wouldn't," Rendell said.

Clinton worked the Penrose Diner slowly yesterday, at one point giving a 10-minute discourse on health policy to Susan Borman, a single mother who's waiting tables at the Penrose and has no health insurance.

Later in the day, Clinton met briefly with about 50 of the campaign's most prominent local supporters, including Rendell, Mayor Nutter and City Controller Alan Butkovitz, who said Clinton gave "a quick, to-the-point political assessment."

"He said 'Ohio's OK, don't worry about it,' " Butkovitz said, "then it was a macro-geopolitical analysis of Texas, from the Houston area, to the San Antonio area, and so on. It was very impressive to this crowd."

"His view was, if she wins in Ohio and Texas that will cause a pause in the assessment of how the race is going," Butkovitz said, "and if she wins in Pennsylvania, it really comes down to a persuasion of superdelegates on the question of electability."

"He had a magical effect on the room," Butkovitz said. "You could see confidence going right from him to everybody in the room."

Clinton was in Philadelphia to deliver the opening address at the symposium on racial issues in America on the 40th anniversary of the Kerner Commission, which examined the roots of the urban riots of the 1960s.

Speaking at Irvine Auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania, Clinton said the nation had seen enormous progress in the past 40 years, but that "in the last decade, inequality has returned with a vengeance, and it does have a racial aspect." *

Staff writer Catherine Lucey contributed to this report.

You can learn more about the symposium at www.kernerplus40.org