The McCain campaign had surely been hoping to scoop up the Clinton voters in places like Pennsylvania's Lackawanna county who didn't rush behind Obama's primary coronation. But a Scranton Times-Tribune look at one of Hillary's strongest areas--the town of Carbondale--finds grudging support for Obama:
Carbondale is almost 99 percent white, according to the 2000 census, and full of the working-class and elderly voters who tended to overwhelmingly support Mrs. Clinton. Since the primary, both Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain have aggressively courted this demographic and see it as key to a potential victory.
[Former Hillary supporter Sal] Graziano has many doubts about Mr. Obama, the Illinois senator, chiefly his inexperience.
“He hasn’t been a senator that long,” Mr. Graziano said.
But he is voting for Mr. Obama anyway instead of Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee and Arizona senator, though he has voted for Republicans before.
“I do need to look for some change,” he said. “I can’t take four more years of exactly the same economic philosophy.”
--Michael Crowley