FiveThirtyEight.com reports from Western PA - this is an interesting read!

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."

In this economy, racism is officially a luxury. How is John McCain going to win if he can't win those voters? John Murtha's "racist" western Pennsylvania district, where this story takes place, is some of the roughest turf in the nation. But Barack Obama is on the ground and making inroads due to unusually strong organizing leadership.

In Washington County, a bellwether in this traditional swing state that John Kerry carried by a mere 552 votes out of over 96,000 cast, the Obama campaign's mood is optimistic but very cautious. The campaign has registered over 4,000 new voters in this county, and over 1.2 million statewide.

...

Over in Indiana, PA and Northern Cambria, PA, volunteers fielded complaints of a massive wave of ugly robocalls both paid for by John McCain's campaign and those paid for by third parties. The third party call was interactive, and purported to be from Barack Obama himself. The call starts out reasonably, and then "Obama" asks what the listener thinks is the most important issue. Whatever the response, "Obama" then launches into a profane and crazed tirade using "n***er" and other shock language.

From what we've seen, this IS the McCain ground campaign. Robocalls count as "touches" on voters, as do direct mail pieces such as this one. As David Plouffe said in today's fundraising letter to supporters, "These tactics are all that the McCain campaign and their allies have left."

...

Strongly directed from the candidate himself, Obama's campaign organizers are taking nothing for granted, and the relentless organizing beat goes on. To accommodate the more spread out nature of the turf in west-central PA, over in the more rural upper half of Cambria County, Obama's aggressive campaign has organized its volunteers to improvise with phonebank and canvass staging locations out of apartments and offices after-hours.

"Our first night about a month ago," said volunteer Jim Sabella, "about four of us huddled around a one-bulb lamp to make calls." The apartment the volunteers used for the phonebank hadn't even had the electricity turned back on yet, and so they had to improvise. "We patched it through from the neighbors with an extension cord and just decided, we will do whatever it takes. Enough is enough, and we can't take another four years like the last eight." Now well-lit, the phone bank hosts several volunteers nearly every night of the week.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/on-...nnsylvania.html

[IAMX 3,055]

This must be a great electoral system when you still vote for a person you supposedly hate the ####### out of.

[rebeccajo 14]

I kinda think that was the husband's way of telling the canvasser to ####### off.............

[justashooter 430]

I kinda think that was the husband's way of telling the canvasser to ####### off.............

some people just don't get sarcasm. from somerset county coal mining stock myself, i understand western penna well.