the question is: does obama need them in the general election? he has them in other parts of the country, except for ohio and pennsylvania.
nyt: From the diner where I talked to Keyser, I drove over to Gleason’s Bar, around the corner from my old house. That, too, was a sort of a reality check after spending a few days dwelling with Obama’s devout enthusiasts. Eight men sat around the bar, and not one of them supported Obama.
The cascade down the job ladder — with one job not as good as the last — is a particularly working-class syndrome. It is the sort of slide that makes a person less likely to take a chance and more prone to cling to the familiar. Marty Clark, whom I knew in high school, worked at the mill and then as a longshoreman and now has a nonunion job driving a truck. “I don’t know Obama that well,” he said as he sat at the bar at midafternoon on St. Patrick’s Day. “It seems to me like he’s got no experience. She’d be the way I’d go.”
Steve Woods sat drinking a Coors Light and talking with his buddies. A Philadelphia Phillies spring-training game was on TV, and he glanced up at it every time the audio picked up the crack of the bat. I asked him if the presidential campaign interested him. “Absolutely,” he said. Rapid fire, he told me the issues he cared about: “No. 1, gas prices. It’s killing everybody. No. 2, immigrants. They should go back to Mexico. Three, guns. Everybody should have the right to bear arms. In fact, everyone should have a gun in this day and age.”
I wondered if he was a Republican. “Are you kidding?” he said. “I’m a Democrat all the way. I hate Republicans.”
