McCain-Palin Still Don't Get It, Never Will

The attempts of the John McCain-Sarah Palin to wrest Pennsylvania's 21 electoral votes from Barack Obama and Joe Biden are comic . . . or perhaps tragicomic is a better word.

Take Tuesday. Please!

The Keystone State was enveloped in wind-whipped rain, except in higher elevations where there was wind-whipped snow, prompting McCain to cancel his first rally and leaving it to Obama to tell 9,000 stalwarts who turned out in the southeastern city of Chester that "a little bit of rain never hurt anybody."

When McCain, with Palin at his side, finally braved the elements and took the stage at an arena in the southcentral city of Hershey, he was doing his best Elmer Fudd on the first day of rabbit season imitation, a deliciously apt allusion offered by Dennis Roddy in a savagely funny but accurate analysis at Slate about what makes Pennsylvania voters tick.

Poll after poll and focus group after focus group reveal that not only have attacks on Obama's character turned off those vital on-the-fence independents, but they may be the single biggest reason that the campaign has squandered what was a close race not that many weeks ago and is not making headway in the voter-rich Philadelphia 'burbs where voters are far more concerned about the economy.

Yet there they were referring to Obama as "an old-fashioned liberal" who would be "redistributionist in chief" if elected, would "lose the war" in Iraq and, horror of horrors, is "interrupting the World Series for an infomercial."

They still don't get it. And never will.