A friend was helping at a John McCain event in a very republican area, Bucks County Pennsylvania. The event was held at a company owned by a big bucks Republican contributor.
The event was to have been held there three weeks ago, but they couldn't even draw a crowd, so they hit the phone banks and rescheduled it for late last week. A resounding dispassionate and unexcited group of 1,000 attended. They had to turn a whopping crowd of 50 away when they ran out of "legal" room.
While my friend was showing a reporter where the Press parking was, he struck up a conversation with the reporter.
It turns out, she's been covering the entire McCain campaign. He remarked how white a group had assembled. She laughed and said that McCain's Advance people try to find any ethhnic attendee and seat them up front in camera range. It's called "rearranging the flowers" by the team. She added that they were subtle with the move at first, but now they simply say things like: "Hey black guy, sit here".
It was the most staid, unexciting political events he ever saw. McCain was an hour and a half late. No one cared. Even the protesters (anti-war, unions, families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Obama supporters), were polite and low-key.
McCain arrived in the "Straight Talk Express" with no fanfare at all. He spoke. He left. The crowd left. The papers found nothing significant in his speech and they left.