To some extent it seems surprising the McCain campaign would choose Grand Junction Colorado to make his last appearance. While there is no doubt that we are one of the critical counties in the nation this election cycle but the stop makes me wonder about how the McCain campaign is reading two or three of the other bellwether battleground states.
As Ohio is absolutely crucial to his win and even in the tilted polling we see is either even or within striking distance one would think he would spend his last day in that area.
Or given what this observer thinks is the state of the race in Pennsylvania, ESPECIALLY since the publication of Obama's comments about bankrupting the coal industry.
Wyoming and West Virginia are the top coal producers but Pennsylvania is not too far behind and the rural areas are full of coal miners and businesses that rely on the industry. Ohio also has an important coal industry.
Perhaps the McCain campaign believes they are better off there than the media is indicating.
We are still sorting through some of the data that our subscribed to polling operations are supplying through the drill down process of secondary and tertiary questions which are often more revealing than the ultimate response.
We will post our best guess for outcomes and scenarios in the next hour.
In the meantime we might mention for comedic relief, one of our daily newspapers bloggers attempting to probe the meaning of McCain's late visit and if it was intended somehow to have some effect on local candidates.
To answer the implied question -- yes, it is a bad thing for Bernie.
Any action that energizes the local Republican base and pulls out conservative tendencies is bad for Bernie. Of course, people who pay attention to what's going on at the legislature are also bad for Bernie -- this just highlights it.
Otherwise, we think it's a bit of reverse hubris concerning the importance of Mr. Buescher to think that John McCain is flying here on Election Day to somehow harm his chances in this election cycle.
