The headline on Huffington Post reads: "McCain Could Be Forced Out of Pennsylvania." The story:
Many speculated that McCain would now turn his focus to Pennsylvania. But United Steelworkers International president Leo Gerard tells the Huffington Post that the state could soon go the way of Michigan.
"We're seeing -- from the several hundred of our people working every day, hand-billing at the plants -- the last two weeks have really been breaking Senator Obama's way," Gerard said over the phone from his office in Pittsburgh. "In particular, I think folks are sort of not taking John McCain as serious as they were, when they see his vacillation last week. 'I'm not going to debate. I'm going to whip House Republicans into shape. Not."
We shouldn't be surprised when it happens. We see it in the polls, you just saw its harbinger in Michigan, and I see it on the ground in Chester County. It's in my neighborhood, the other neighborhoods, my commute to work, at the grocery store, downtown...EVERYWHERE I look, Obama rules the day. I realize I live in Obama-friendly territory (Philly burbs), but you don't get 15-point Quinnipiac leads without the help of some of that proverbial Scranton "hard working American, white American" scrappiness and an assist from the Western portion of the state.
What I'm witnessing at my job, though, is the loud ringing of a bell tolling for McCain's chances in Pennsylvania. There, people have been fired over politics. It's forbidden. During the primaries, I would occasionally hear the Engineers on the east side of the office faintly discussing the latest news. But they were lucky enough to have a department unified in progressive values. My side of the building? Not so much.
On my side of the building, the typical water-cooler gossip during the primaries centered around Jeff Lewis's latest freak out, "Dancing with the Stars" or a colleague's latest, feeble attempt to perform a dog whisperer stunt. My side of the building loyally respected the "Politics strictly prohibited rule."
Not lately, though. Discussions about the latest political news--always flattering about Obama and bemused about McCain/Palin--have permeated the entire office.
My very own boss, a staunch Republican, has transformed into an Obama voter right before my eyes. It was a slow, painful process, but it's complete. It began early during the primaries, when I watched in horror as my boss mocked a colleague's daughter for supporting Obama. I remember her asking something to the effect of, "is her support informed, or is she just taken in by the rapture?"
After Obama clinched the nomination, she conceded to me that she hadn't really followed the substance of the primary campaign and was mostly paying attention to the superficial (e.g., the bitter, the clinging, America's chickens coming home to roost, Arugala, etc.). But now that she was paying attention, she admitted Obama was growing on her. At that point, her transformation became a rapid and visible process. Soon, she was probing me for details on his policy positions (e.g., "He doesn't really want to overturn the second Amendment, does he?"), worrying about his poll numbers and ridiculing the McCain/Palin ticket (often).
Yesterday, it came to a head. Our resident bitter, clingy small-towner, also a staunch Republican (and the mother of that Obama supporter mentioned earlier), overheard my boss skewering Palin's folksiness. Despite the A-B nature of the conversation, it caused the offended party to explode. She reacted by playing the Midwestern card, the "y'all" card, the small-town card and the "you're elitists, making fun of my religion and guns and blah, blah, blah" card. She even threatened to pull the HR card. But my boss wasn't parodying the Midwest, small-towns or the three G's; she was parodying stupid.
In brazen defiance of the employee handbook, Republican was pit against Republican over a Democratic Senator named Barack HUSSEIN Obama. And to think that these same two had teamed up to roast Obama and his "cult" following only a few months ago.
Maybe this kind of insanity and party flipping is normal here in PA (my family just moved here from Florida last year). Where I'm from, though, you are lucky if a Democrat votes democratic, let alone a Republican votes for our party. So I think the Huffington Post article is right, and I recommend you all (y'all) brace yourselves for news of McCain abandoning the state. Or throwing away his money here.
That said, I need to go get some coffee and register some voters...
cross-posted on MYDD