Word: mccain
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With several once reliably red states like Colorado, Nevada and Virginia leaning perilously blue, John McCain urgently needs to win at least one big blue state on Election Day. And that state, he hopes, is Pennsylvania...
...first glance, the Keystone State doesn't seem like an obvious target for McCain and his running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Pennsylvania has been a reliably Democratic state in the past four presidential elections, it now has a million more registered Democrats than Republicans, and Obama can depend on strong support in its two biggest cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Polls show the Democratic nominee with a commanding lead of anywhere from 7 to 14 points in the state, up from a near tie in mid-September...
...soft, leaving him potentially vulnerable here. He lost the April primary contest to Hillary Clinton by 10 points, and even the state's Democratic governor, Ed Rendell, has said there are many culturally conservative voters who would have a hard time embracing a black man as President. McCain's campaign says its internal polling shows the gap between the two nominees to be 3 or 4 percentage points closer than the polls, putting McCain theoretically within striking distance in the past week. "It's do or die - this is his last stand, because he's got no other place...
...McCain has poured money and energy into the state in the final weeks, spending three critical days in mid-October here and hammering Obama as Barack the Redistributionist, an old-fashioned tax-and-spend liberal who wants to "spread the wealth around" and can't be trusted on national security. McCain was back in Pennsylvania earlier this week, while Palin arrived for a series of appearances on Tuesday. Both are likely to visit again before Election Day. "It's wonderful to fool the pundits, because we're going to win in Pennsylvania," McCain told supporters in Hershey on Tuesday...
...Democrats say they remain confident, but there are clear undercurrents of concern. Governor Rendell and party officials have asked Obama to spend more time in the state to counter the McCain offensive, and indeed the Democrat has made appearances in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia over the past couple of days to make his closing arguments. "John McCain's ridden shotgun as George Bush's driven this economy towards a cliff, and now he wants to take the wheel and step on the gas," the Illinois Senator told a wet crowd of 9,000 outside of Philadelphia on Tuesday...