Deja Vu

October 22, 2008

Oops

Tags:

elections,

John Kerry,

John McCain,

Michigan,

Pennsylvania

“McCain Fights to Keep Crucial Blue State in Play,” The New York Times, Oct. 22, 2008.

Mr. McCain’s advisers have contended that they do not expect white voters to reject Mr. Obama, of Illinois, simply because he is black. When Mike DuHaime, the campaign’s political director, was asked in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday what effect he thought race would play in Pennsylvania, he replied, “I hope there is none.”

Mr. DuHaime rejected comments made last week by a Pennsylvania Democrat, Representative John P. Murtha, who told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, speaking of his home base, that “there is no question that Western Pennsylvania is a racist area.”

Mr. McCain referenced Mr. Murtha’s comments in his third stop of the day, at Robert Morris University here, when he said, “I think you may have noticed that Senator Obama’s supporters have been saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania lately.” As the crowd booed, Mr. McCain became tangled up in the rest of his remarks. “And you know, I couldn’t agree with them more,” he said, to silence, and then wandered around in a verbal thicket before finally managing to say, “I could not disagree with those critics more; this is a great part of America.”

John Kerry rally, Taylor, Mich., Aug. 2004.
Few Michigan institutions—including Motown Records and the Big Three auto-makers—are as revered in the Great Lakes State as the University of Michigan football team, the famed Maize and Blue. Conversely, few institutions produce more ire among Michiganders than the Ohio State University Buckeyes football team, the Scarlet and Silver from Columbus.

“We just came from Bowling Green, [Ohio], and I was smart enough not to pick a choice between the [Bowling Green State University] Falcons and the, you know, all the other teams out there. I just go for Buckeye football, that's where I'm coming out….That's while I was in Ohio. Now I'm in the state of Michigan, and your great big "M" and a powerhouse of a team….”

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