

Michelle Obama campaigning in Philadelphia last week — one of many political luminaries to blitz the Keystone State this year. (Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images)

— If it’s Wednesday, it must be Michelle Obama. Not to be confused with Tuesday of last week, when Joe Biden came a-courting. Donald Trump visited rural Manheim in Lancaster County on Saturday.

Hillary Clinton returned on Tuesday of this week with an event in suburban Haverford, about two weeks after her last visit to the Philly area. That was a couple of days before Trump stopped by Geno’s Steaks (cheese­steaks, not porterhouse), the ­neon-and-Cheez Whiz photo op in South Philly.

Barack Obama? Bill Clinton? Yep. Everyone wants a large chunk of Pennsylvania, and by large, we mean all 20 of its electoral votes. Politically speaking, it’s always sunny in Philadelphia.

For years — non-election years, mind you — Pennsylvania has often seemed an afterthought among the East Coast cognoscenti, not so much flyover country as train-through. Now it’s winning the popularity and swimsuit competitions. Pennsylvania is this election’s Florida and Ohio.

Ohio is no longer all that, not the way it was in 2012 or 2004. The Democratic nominee hasn’t visited that state since Labor Day. The New York Times argued “Why the whole Trump-Clinton election could probably just be held in Pennsylvania.”

Most days, it seems as though it is.

“We’re so sexy and important,” says Maria Kefalas, a sociology professor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “I think voting in Pennsylvania has become the coolest thing to do if you’re a millennial.” All 70 of her students are registered, many of them switching from their home states to vote in Pennsylvania, now the center of the electoral universe.



Donald Trump makes a stop at Geno's Steaks in Philadelphia on Sept. 22. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea greet supporters in Haverford on Tuesday. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Trump and Clinton have visited Pennsylvania — technically a commonwealth — more times than any other state, according to Travel Tracker, a site that charts the candidates’ campaign stops in the primaries and the general election.

Tim what’s-his-name and Mike who-dat might have campaigned here, too — actually, Kaine was scheduled to be in Philadelphia on Wednesday evening — although with all the political star wattage, who would notice?

The state has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992. In 2012, almost 2 million votes, one-third of the 5.67 million presidential votes cast, came from Philadelphia and four surrounding suburban counties. Although the state is home to almost 1 million more registered Democrats than Republicans, the race has tightened, giving Clinton a lead of only 2.4 points in an average of polls.

Geographically, Philadelphia, the state’s largest city — and, more important, its largest media market, seeping into Delaware and southern New Jersey — is a quick trip from Washington or New York. In the District, Clinton owns a home, and Trump, so we’ve heard, operates a hotel. In New York, Clinton has an estate, and Trump has a tower. Both nominees are registered in New York, normally the red-hot center of everything, but not in presidential elections, when it is the bluest of blue states.

[For $805 a night at the Trump Hotel, you deserve what you get]

Democrats have opened 55 offices in the state, almost two dozen in Philadelphia and its suburbs, and hired hundreds of paid staffers. Some neighborhoods resemble Airbnb networks. It’s become bragging rights to have a campaign staffer bunk in your home. And it’s become a destination for political volunteers, who keep arriving from nearby states that are foregone conclusions.

Clinton ads have become ubiquitous on television. Trump is buying ad time as well.

In an almost 10-minute “Will and Grace” reunion election video, released Monday and viewed on YouTube more than 5 million times, Grace (actress Debra Messing) says, “It’s all going to come down to undecided voters in Pennsylvania, anyway.”

Which describes David Capone, 21, a math and theater major at West Chester University in suburban Philadelphia. In early April, Trump held a rally on campus with supporters lining one side of the street for blocks while opponents faced off on the other.

“This is my first time voting in a presidential election, and it seems like a bizarre one,” Capone says. “There’s so much going back and forth. Every time I try to get a clear picture, things change.”

Like Ohioans before them, Pennsylvanians are becoming spoiled by the attention, getting accustomed to all the wooing.

Camille Carr, Kefalas’s daughter, has already met Clinton twice. She has her autograph. Camille has seen President Obama once. At 16, she already seems like a political veteran, like many Pennsylvania teenagers these days.

“Joe Biden’s the last on her list,” Kefalas says. Like something out of Pokémon, “she wants to collect them all.”

Which, the way things are going, shouldn’t be a problem.