In Bush Stronghold North Carolina, Obama Pulls Even With McCain; "unfathomable"

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: In Bush Stronghold, Obama Pulls Even With McCain
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: October 20, 2008

....It is through voters like (Lorie) McCoy, who moved to North Carolina eight years ago, that Mr. Obama has achieved a milestone: He is now running neck and neck with his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, in the state, and is even slightly ahead in some polls. This once-red state is now a raging battleground, along with a few others where Mr. Obama has sought to expand his electoral map.

“For a Republican to be tied at this point in the election in North Carolina is unfathomable,” said Hunter Bacot, a political scientist at Elon University, which Gov. Sarah Palin, Mr. McCain’s running mate, visited last week.

No Democratic presidential candidate has won North Carolina since Jimmy Carter did so in 1976. The state has long been a bastion of cultural conservatism; it was in Greensboro last week that (Sarah) Palin said she loved visiting the “pro-America” parts of the country. But this is a new landscape, even from four years ago, when President Bush defeated Senator John Kerry (and his running mate, John Edwards, of North Carolina) by 12 percentage points in the state.

The turnabout can be traced to an influx of new voters and a change in demographics; a slowing of the state’s economy and the collapse of the nation’s financial system; Mr. Obama’s extensive ground organization, huge financial advantage and amount spent on television (seven to one over Mr. McCain); the state’s large population of blacks and students; and Mr. McCain’s neglect of the state....

***

As the economy has slowed, the Obama campaign has...stuck to its game plan, building a corps of 17,000 volunteers, registering voters and now focusing on getting them out to vote....The fruits of their labors are beginning to show. The state registered 600,000 new voters this year, 48 percent of them Democrats, 21 percent Republicans, the rest unaffiliated. In early voting, which began Thursday, more than 114,000 people had gone to the polls — 64 percent of them Democrats, 21 percent Republicans and 15 percent unaffiliated....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/us/politics/21carolina.html?pagewanted=all

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. I hope Seelye chokes on it

Bushfan Journalists get to eat shit now.

[Cha]

5. Yeah, she's been a disgrace

to journalism.

Yay for Obama's ground game though..without which we'd be nowhere!

[Eric J in MN]

2. "the collapse of the nation’s financial system"

It didn't collapse.

Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. AIG was bailed out. Other companies merged.

None of those things equals a collapse of the financial system.

[Marsala]

3. All five major investment banks went under to some degree

They no longer exist as independent investment banks. That's a collapse. The entire system didn't go, but it was close. Very close.

[Eric J in MN]

4. If the 5 biggest had all declared bankruptcy...

...then the thousands of other investment banks would have been eager to provide service to their ex-customers.