Earlier today, President Obama traveled to Arcadia University in Pennsylvania for a health-care pep talk. While his speech was chock full of his usual hyperbolic criticism of the insurance industry, it is the town, Glenside, Pa., that is the real story. Glenside, in Montgomery County, is part of a ring of small towns and suburbs around Philadelphia that will be a key political battleground this year. As the Bucks County Courier Times reports, a couple hundred people gathered outside the campus to protest Obamacare:

Among them were local organizations such as the Thomas Jefferson Club and the Kitchen Table Patriots as well as Republican candidate for the 8th Congressional seat Mike Fitzpatrick, who addressed the group.
“We can’t sit back any longer with what’s being proposed for our healthcare system,” Fitzpatrick said. Fitzpatrick also called on Democratic U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy to hold a “face-to-face meeting” on health care.
Murphy was not expected to attend Obama’s speech. He has scheduled a press conference in Ivyland at the same time to announce $300,000 in federal funding for Bucks County emergency operations.

Murphy’s absence is telling. Columnist J. D. Mullane has more:

Congressman Murphy appears to be MIA on the event. Instead he will award $300k to a local EMT squad, sources say. Let’s see… There’s a big election coming and the biggest gun in your party is local. What do you do? Have a pic taken with the president, so it’s 1A in all the papers, or have your pic taken handing out a large cardboard check? Hmm…

Murphy beat Fitzpatrick by about one percentage point in 2006, as part of the Democratic sweep. In 2008, he easily won reelection against a political neophyte. Now, in a rematch with Fitzpatrick, Murphy seems to be realizing, at last, that being an avowed Obama ally won’t necessarily play well in the ’burbs this year. His vote should be closely watched. If suburban, self-proclaimed Blue Dogs like Murphy start to jump off the Obamacare train, it’s over.