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The latest polling of six key battleground states shows President Trump holding on to his working-class base against former Vice President Joe Biden. After Biden announced his presidential bid, WPA Intelligence conducted a poll of Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and found Trump leading overall in those six states by a margin of 46 to 44 percent, reports the Washington Examiner. In the individual states, Trump leads in four: Wisconsin (46 to 42 percent), Florida (48 to 44 percent), Iowa (49 to 44 percent), and Texas (49 to 42 percent). In Pennsylvania, Trump is down only by a...

Surely it can’t hurt Mitt Romney’s heretofore nonexistent blue collar appeal to have a member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour endorse him. Grammy-award-winning comedian Jeff Foxworthy, known for his popular “You might be a redneck if … ” series, tweeted his support for Romney yesterday. “Time for Republicans to unite behind Gov. Romney, a great leader who can win the White House and rebuild our economy for all Americans,” the funnyman, known for telling “redneck” jokes, tweeted on Thursday. Romney’s son Tagg called the nod “very cool” on Twitter, writing, “I am a huge Blue Collar Comedy fan.”

It’s been quite a week for “Joe the Plumber,” aka Joe Wurzelbacher of Ohio. His comments elicited a telling moment of candor from Barack Obama, who insisted that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” The redistributionist tone of Obama’s remarks received plenty of attention, not least from John McCain; they were a rare – and disturbing – insight into the mindset of an unusually disciplined candidate who has been remarkably under-covered by the press. Not surprisingly, things soon took an ugly turn for Joe. In an effort to discredit him, the media camped out on his...

What happened to the Democratic Party? Just a few generations ago, the party of Franklin Roosevelt went to bat for the little guy, the common man, the everyday Joe the plumber. Not anymore. Now, the wealthy elites who run the Democratic Party have declared war on working-class Americans while pretending to defend them against greedy and heartless Republicans. Those would be the same Republicans whose vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, doesn't just talk about working-class people but actually embodies one and yet has been savaged by liberals. And those would be the same Republicans who have devised a tax plan...

KOKOMO, Ind. -- Last month, in this once-sturdy auto town of 60,000, two white women sounded off at a union hall when talk turned to politics. "I feel like a white female or a white male has fewer opportunities than the black man or the black woman because of all the special treatment and special programs they have gotten," said Marla Hightower. "If Obama is elected, what's going to happen?" "That is just stupid," Ginny McMillin, the head of her local, shot back. "People are saying 'we don't want a black man.' Shame on America for thinking that!" The exchange...

On a swing through Pennsylvania last month, John McCain visited a Manheim Central High School football practice — not to ingratiate himself with the players, who weren't even old enough to vote, but to identify himself with the gritty, down-home lunch bucket values of small-town football. "This is a blue-collar town," Manheim's coach said in his introduction of McCain. "We don't have a lot of flashy athletes. We don't come out with a lot of flash." But the coach explained that his team works hard, plays with discipline, and comes through in the end. "A lot like John McCain," he...

He's a member of the steelworkers union, a registered independent and has championed the need for vocational - not Ivy League - education in his home state. He works the night shift in North Slope oil fields, fishes commercially in icy waters and flies around snowy Alaska in a floatplane, all the while winning four cross-state snowmobile championships. At home, he happily navigates between hardworking man's man and hunky Mr. Mom to the five Palin children, comfortable in his role as rock-solid support spouse to wife Sarah's power career. Now, with her historic nomination as Republican vice-presidential candidate, some are...

MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. - Michigan's history of racial tensions is tugging against its Democratic tendencies, giving Barack Obama fits when most everything else potentially benefits Democrats: a soaring unemployment rate, shrinking auto industry and depressed housing market. The first minority candidate with a serious shot at the presidency is not running as well as his Democratic predecessors among working-class whites in this pivotal Midwestern swing state, partly because of the color of his skin. "I've got a lot of friends ... (who) are like, `Oh, no,"' when it comes to voting for a black presidential candidate, said John Martin, a...

GREEN BAY -- Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden on Monday stressed his middle class upbringing, his ties to the Roman Catholic Church and his appreciation of the Green Bay Packers in this blue-collar, heavily Catholic region of the state. Biden talked about the difficulties the Fox Valley region is facing, referencing the closing of the NewPage paper mill in Kimberly. "You lose a job, you not only lose your ability to care for your family, you lose a sense of human dignity, you lose a sense of your own self worth," Biden said. "This used to be a country...

The San Francisco Chronicle published an article on September 7 masterful for its underhanded back slapping of John McCain, Sarah Palin and anyone who would vote for them all while pretending to say how successful the McCain/Palin ticket is in garnering support since the end of the GOP Convention. Nearly every "positive" thing said about Republicans and anyone who would vote for McCain was framed as a negative and the way this article states its case proves as one of the most perfectly sly pieces of pro-Democrat propaganda I've seen in a long time. It's so good that you don't...

But now, after a chaotic introductory week that sparked national debates on McCain's judgment, Palin's experience and even her teenage daughter's pregnancy, the initial signs are not entirely positive for the reinvigorated Republican ticket. Interviews with some two dozen women here after Palin's convention speech found that these voters were not swayed by the fiery dramatic speeches or compelling personal biographies that marked both the Republican and Democratic conventions. Instead, they were thinking about the price of milk -- nearly $5 a gallon -- or the healthcare coverage that many working families here cannot afford. Even if they admire Palin's...

Democrats do not think that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's arrival in the enemy camp changes Sen. Barack Obama's path to the White House. As far as they're concerned, Republican John McCain's running mate is President George W. Bush. As Obama told voters in Pennsylvania on Friday, "This race is not a personality contest." That bet is about to be tested. Independent observers in Ohio think Palin does change the race, enhancing the GOP's appeal - not among the women who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, but among white men. They say Palin's most potent weapon may even be her snowmobiler,...

Posted on Sat, Sep. 6, 2008 Biden gets mixed welcome in Northeast Local Dem leaders say race is issue for many voters By DAVE DAVIES Philadelphia Daily News daviesd@phillynews.com 215-854-2595 DEMOCRATIC vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden went stumping for votes yesterday in Northeast Philadelphia, where Democrats need to earn the love of Democrats who voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the April primary. He worked a diner, gave a rousing speech on bread-and-butter issues at a union hall, and reeled off a memorable line tying the Republican candidate to the unpopular team in the White House. "My friend...

The Republican presidential candidate signalled his intentions by using his first weekend of campaigning since his party's convention to launch a political raid into the heart of Reagan-Democrat country, home of the fabled blue collar voters who Mr Reagan captured from the Democrats in the 1980s. Mr McCain, and particularly Mrs Palin, met with a rapturous reception as they held a rally in Macomb County, Michigan, where pollsters first identified the breed of patriotic conservative, blue collar workers who the McCain camp now believes hold the key to victory in November. On Friday night in Sterling Heights, Mr McCain's selection...

Joe Biden once got in trouble for plagiarizing a speech and inflating his academic record. So it will not surprise you to find that his famous working-class background turns out to be mythical. But it may surprise you to learn that Biden isn't the one who has trouble with the facts. In his Wednesday night speech at the Democratic convention, Biden referred to "those of us who grew up in middle-class neighborhoods like Scranton and Wilmington [Delaware]." In the video preceding his address, he said that the people he knew as a boy didn't regard themselves as working class but...

Joe Biden once got in trouble for plagiarizing a speech and inflating his academic record. So it will not surprise you to find that his famous working-class background turns out to be mythical. But it may surprise you to learn that Biden isn't the one who has trouble with the facts. In his Wednesday night speech at the Democratic convention, Biden referred to "those of us who grew up in middle-class neighborhoods like Scranton and Wilmington." In the video preceding his address, he said that the people he knew as a boy didn't regard themselves as working class but as...

As the campaign gears up, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are courting the working-class voters whose decisions could sway the election. Watch out, Bruce Peterson -- the presidential campaign is coming after you. Peterson, a political independent from Coon Rapids who works at a manufacturing plant, is worried about disappearing jobs and has not decided yet if he wants Barack Obama or John McCain in the White House. "We really don't know much about him," Petersen, 54, said of Obama as he shopped at an Anoka County discount store Saturday. "But I definitely don't like McCain because of the...

DENVER: When most people think of Joe Biden, they think Senate longevity, confidence, a liberal with a free-wheeling impulse to give you his never-to-be-humble opinion. What they don't think of is a man who could have a great impact in Pennsylvania. The question becomes: Can he make his impact as broad as Hillary Clinton -- another Scranton native -- did in the Pennsylvania primaries? Hillary glowed in Pennsylvania. She made Pennsylvania her second home and it stuck with voters. John Kerry, married to the Heinz ketchup heiress Teresa, did the same thing in his runup to the 2004 election. He...

Nothing makes me feel sorrier for the once powerful local bosses of each political party than the spectacle of a modern nominating convention. In their glory days, these wily neighborhood sloggers would listen to speeches, size up the appeal of each candidate against hometown tastes, wheel, deal and finally make the thousands of individual decisions that would eventually choose the nominee. Today there is only one big decision to be made, and the job belongs to a TV programmer, not a political boss. Conventions are little more than soundstages now. Everything from the backdrop to the musical choices asks the...

OK .. so that's just my guess, but let's see how close I hit this one. Wherever I went during the last weekend – whether a charity golf tournament on Saturday or just hanging around the club or the airport on Sunday – the talk was of Obama and his sense of entitlement and arrogance. Last week there were several media stories – even from far-left MSNBC – about Obama's arrogance and sense of entitlement. I particularly like the quote from Bonnie Erbe – quite the liberal, Ms. Erbe – about Obama's recent efforts: "From using a logo resembling a...