4.30pm US EST/7.30am Oz EST
Woohoo we’re all in Pennsylvania or close to. Sarah Palin’s up in Erie, Biden’s in Williamsport, Hillary and Bill are next door in Ohio, Walnuts will be in Hanoverton Ohio tomorrow. These towns - York, Johnstown, etc – used to interest me, their wealth of old industrial architecture and machinery, like an outdoor museum of the twentieth century. Now, they’re a little depressing, all that energy gone to waste, all that work that vanished in two decades, all this neglect.
McCain/Palin are betting hard that the voters here will choose the ideals they identify with, rather than the reality of where that left them. Country first? McCain’s on the fly idea of a spending freeze on new programmes would condemn these places to a faster road to extinction, the young leaving for the west and southwest, or staying and getting poorer and, well, more bitter.
Palin’s speaking Erie, up north. She’s got a looser, more varied stump speech – talking about being a blue star mom (mother of a serving soldier) and to like people in the audience, and it;s working a lot better than earlier versions, which would suggest she’s definitely torn up the McCain team script. There’’s still the narky zingers, but there’s much more sense of one person talking to another, which is one way to do a campaign.
Palin’s really detached herself this morning – telling an interviewere that even if they lose, she’ll stay on the national stage. That’s as close as you get to a knife job, outside a Benihana (joan rivers joke). There’s kinda two and a half teams on the stump at the moment
