Hillary took a 10 point lead over Obama in Pennsylvania last night, showing Obama still has trouble connecting with the middle class- especially in a place where the Clintons have strong roots and connections to local politicians.
But it’s not enough for Hillary to overcome the lead in votes that Obama has nationwide, and unless something impossibly catastrophic should happen to Obama in the near future, there’s virtually no chance that she will ever be able to make up that difference.
So with the race continuing on further still, and each Democratic Candidate throwing knockout style punches at each other with neither going down for the count, it will get only uglier still until something or someone puts a stop to it.
With the super-delegates still waiting in the wings to make their final decisions, will they side with Hillary who just refuses to die and who plays largely to the usual Dem base, or will they side with Obama and all the unusual votes he carries with him- hoping the base will fall in place behind any candidate come November- so long as it’s not a Republican?
And speaking of Republicans, what is John McCain up to while the Dems go tooth and claw?
…McCain, who compared the struggles of Youngstown to his own back-from-the-dead campaign, insisted that in the end workers would be better off through retraining and education programs in technology he has promised them as president.
“I can’t tell you that these jobs are ever going to come back to this magnificent part of the country,” Mr. McCain told another questioner, Sam Carbon, a student at Youngstown State, who asked Mr. McCain about how he planned to save American jobs. “But I will commit to giving these workers a second chance. They need it, they deserve it. I know that’s small comfort to you, but I can’t look you in the eye and tell you those steel mills are coming back.”
Mr. McCain, who was on the second day of a weeklong tour to the country’s “forgotten places” while his two Democratic competitors battled for the nomination in Pennsylvania, sought to strike an empathetic note in the midst of his sober message.
“I’ve been left recently in the unfamiliar position of facing no opposition within my own party,” Mr. McCain said in remarks before he took questions at the public forum, which was held at the university. “And as you might recall, it was a different story last year, when I could claim the unqualified support of Cindy and my mother — and my mom was starting to keep her options open.” (Cindy is Mr. McCain’s wife.)
“Back then,” Mr. McCain continued, “there were some very impressive front-runners, there was a very formidable second tier of contenders, and then there was me.”
Despite being written off as “a hopeless cause,” Mr. McCain said, “a person learns along the way that if you hold on, if you don’t quit no matter what the odds, sometimes life will surprise you. Sometimes you get a second chance, and opportunity turns back your way. And when it does, we are stronger and readier because of all that we had to overcome.”
Mr. McCain added: “I bring up all this today, my friends, because the men and women of Youngstown know what it feels like to be counted out. You’ve been written off a few times yourselves, in the competition of the market. You know how it feels to hear that good things are happening in the American economy — they’re just not happening to you.”
Afterward, Mr. Carbon, a Republican, said that Mr. McCain’s answer had partly satisfied him, and that he would vote for him in November. He said he understood that manufacturing jobs would not return, but “I was looking for more about his views on tariffs and taxes on imported things.”
McCain’s vote for, and continued support of NAFTA, which is a program many in places like Youngstown hold responsible for the loss of American working class jobs in the first place, left many bitter, and some believe was a cause for him losing primaries to Mitt Romney who spoke out for change of NAFTA in areas that had been hit hard by the loss of factory jobs. But with talk of re-education and replacement jobs for those workers, he may win some of those folks back.
Of course… education is not exactly something America is excelling at, at this very moment- something no Candidate is really talking about.
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