I've just finished two days of canvassing in south central Pennsylvania, the bottom of the "T" that Carville described as "Alabama up the middle" and we've always called Pennsyltucky. We are McCain's firewall against Democratic turnout in Philly and Pittsburgh. We're where the Republicans have to run up the numbers to take Pennsylvania.
And they're not gonna do it.
Follow me over the rolling hills of southern PA....
I spent Sunday in the exurbs north of the Mason-Dixon line. We finished our walk list delivering door hangers on our first shift and came back for our next assignment at 2:00. There was no next assignment -- the field office had finished everything on their schedule in one shift!
The volunteer turnout must be tremendous.
So we headed up to York, where there's a lot of turf to cover. Before we got there at 3:00, they'd finished their walk lists. They gave us one of the completed ones and said "Just put a hanger on every address that isn't on this list."
Today, we got the next tier of voters. We were delivering door hangers to farms, to isolated houses, to clusters of development far from any town. I'm willing to bet no one has knocked on these doors for any election, yet here we were.
Walking up to one house, we met a classic southern PA redneck, who looked at us and said, "Obama. Don't worry, I'm with ya buddy." We dropped a hanger at a house deep in the woods with cars up on blocks. We dropped lit at a farm with an Obama sticker on the barn.
We finished our shift, got back, and like yesterday, all the walk lists were done.
I have never seen a campaign as organized as this one.
I've never seen a campaign that had enough volunteers to do everything they planned to do.
In two days of the vaunted Republican 72-hour GOTV, I haven't seen a SINGLE McCain canvasser.
Kossacks, I think the Pennsylvania firewall will hold. And if PA holds, Obama wins.