I was in Erie, Pennsylvania this weekend, partly because an aimless road trip can be good for the soul when things are stressful. You wouldn't think that there was a federal election driving through Buffalo or Niagara Falls, just signs for the state assembly, sheriff, DA, judges and the county coroner (!). So I drove the extra hour to Erie, Tom Ridge country. It's nice because drivers on the NYS thruway are good, they don't block the left lane, and traffic on I-90 is never bad like the 401. Except I got cut off once with a bald, fat guy in a pickup with Ohio plates. Was that Joe the Plumber?
Man were things different there. I couldn't get much in the way of pictures, the sky was cloudy and dark, but was it interesting. I saw a truck with Obama-Biden ads covering it and playing on loudspeakers Obama speeches and pleas to get to the polling booth. The Obama office downtown was huge and packed with people. I drove to the suburbs to the south, by I-90, well-heeled areas, and even there Obama signs on lawns were everywhere, and outnumbering McCain signs by 5 to 1. Many of the McCain ads did not have his running mate on them, but most of Obama's signs had Biden on them.
If you think FPTP is bad here (and I think it is), the Electoral College is really messed up. States like New York or California or Maryland are completely ignored while states like Ohio, Missouri and Florida are pandered to. This time, we see Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, get all the attention as well as the perennial swingers, a bit different.
What would things be like if he got Tom Ridge? There were a few choices that might have worked. For a short time, Palin seemed to be a shrewd, Rovian choice, but has seemed to backfire more than it should have.
