In theory, David Callahan, 39, should be a guaranteed vote for Barack Obama.
He believes "the Republicans are more for the companies, the Democrats more for the working people." Callahan was laid off at the end of July when the printing company he worked at pulled up stakes to set up a non-union operation in Hagerstown, Maryland. "I haven't filled out a job application in 18 years and now I've got to start," he said, sitting in the driver's seat of his SUV in front of the K-Mart on Frankford Avenue.
But Callahan is not a lock for Obama: "I'm just tried of seeing so much of him, he's started to turn me off. I'm kind of burned out; it's as if they already wrote him into office."
Callahan could be a fluke, and interviews with some 40 voters here, in surrounding suburbs, and in Reading, Pa., all suggest that Obama is positioned to win Pennsylvania and its 21 Electoral College votes by a narrow margin.
But one fact stood out in these on-the-street interviews: of the five subjects who had been laid off recently, all were either undecided or backing McCain -- none were committed to vote for Obama. Of these five, one was a Republican intent on voting for his party's nominee, but the rest were Democrats or inclined to support Democrats. They included Mike Cawden, a union factory worker nursing a Budweiser in the Blue Moon Café, a union carpenter named Frank (who would not give his last name), and Frank's wife who also requested anonymity.
Part of Obama's problem with these struggling voters dates back to the state's primary election when Hillary Clinton ran as the candidate 'in touch with' the white working class, implying that Obama's ties are to the upscale liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Clinton beat Obama in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary by 10 points.
"I loved Hillary," said Cawden. "I don't know how to read Obama. He sounds like he is with the working man, but I've heard that before." Frank's wife said she "wanted Hillary not just because she was a woman, but she was much more for the middle class." Obama, she said, "doesn't have the middle class in his bones." Her husband nodded in agreement.
By most measures, Obama should be crushing McCain in this state. The presidency of George W. Bush has been a disaster for the once-powerful Pennsylvania Republican Party which has experienced a 66,041 decline in registered voters since 2000, while the Democrats have added 516,044 voters.
Overall, the Democrats in 2008 hold a 1,067,625 advantage in voter registration in Pennsylvania, roughly comparable to the 993,577 advantage held by the GOP in 1952, the year of Dwight D. Eisenhower's landslide victory.
The Republican implosion has been most evident in the suburban counties surrounding Philadelphia -- Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery. In 2000, when George W. Bush first won, all four of these counties were majority Republican: together they had 859,687 registered Republicans and 511,660 Democrats. In just eight years, the two parties are now virtually tied, 754,565 Republicans to 716,208 Democrats, and the two most populous counties, Montgomery and Bucks, are now majority Democratic.
This part of Pennsylvania has been on the cutting edge of a regional suburban realignment from the mid-Atlantic up to Boston, as the Virginia counties near Washington, D.C., the tri-state communities surrounding New York city, and -- heading into the Midwest -- the counties around Detroit and Chicago have all been shifting from red to purple to blue.
Jeff Amerine, a transportation consultant and board member of the Schuykill River Heritage Center here, said that "in Chester County, you are almost forced to be a Republican. I was a Republican for years and years, a kind of a Rockefeller Republican. But this year, in order to vote in the primary for Barack, my wife and I changed."
Amerine, who has been voting Democratic in recent elections, is part of a wave that sent four Pennsylvania Republicans down to defeat in 2006 and gave Democrats control of the State House for the first time in 12 years.
Now the battleground state legislative fights are being conducted deep in what had been -- less than a decade ago -- solidly Republican turf.
As Starbucks and Borders reach farther into once rural Chester County, Democrats like Tom Houghton and Paul Drucker have solid shots at turning Republican State House seats blue. Eight years ago, in the district Drucker is running in, there were 12,961 more registered Republicans than Democrats; in the most recent count, the Republican registration advantage has collapsed to just 3,550.
These seats, like the Congressional districts that flipped to the Democrats, were explicitly gerrymandered in 2001 to preserve and protect Republicans -- a political firewall that could not last the decade.
Such trends, plus a popular Democratic Governor who has rejuvenated the state party's organizational structure, have made Obama the favorite to carry Pennsylvania on November 4.
The animosity toward Bush is palpable among white middle and working class voters, even among those who are undecided or inclined to vote for McCain.
Insofar as Obama faces any significant resistance in the state, it may be because many voters say they are still unsure of who he is and where he stands. At least a third of the voters interviewed (not a scientific sample) said they are not ready to make up their minds, that the portrait of Obama remains incomplete in their view.
"We need to know what the influences were, we need to hear more from him," said a Harley-driving, middle-class 52-year-old motorcyclist who only gave his first name, Paul. "He's done a great job saying 'we need change, we need change.' Well, any idiot can say we need change. He's a bright guy, let's find out where he really stands. We don't know enough about him, that's the bottom line."
The intensity of anger at President Bush is clearly hurting McCain.
"I'll tell you right now, I'm not going to vote for Bush," said John, who at 81 still drives a shuttle bus for a Northeast Philadelphia hospital. "You mean McCain," his wife interjected. John came back: "Obama would be a better President than McCain. With McCain, it'll be just like with Bush. There's no difference." His wife joined in, "We'll just have to take a chance on Obama. It's a chance you've got to take." John, becoming more incensed: "Bush gave a tax break to the rich. It's outrageous, he should have given it to the poor."
Mark Barish, a 43-year-old volunteer at the Phoenixville, Pa, fire department, said "I want a different direction. We have been imposing our rule on somebody else. Bush is a cowboy, and they didn't do the research [before invading Iraq.] It was revenge for his father."
Much of the campaign right now is a contest between Obama and McCain to see who can first define Obama to the voters, creating an image that sticks.
Pennsylvania Democratic consultant Doc Sweitzer contended that the state's economic difficulties, together with the disdain many voters feel towards Bush, give Obama a better shot at making his case to undecideds. "It's much easier for Obama to get the votes he needs, they agree with him on economics in a big way, they disagree with McCain. They are desperate."
Trends documented on Pollster.com support Sweitzer's argument.
McCain has been pressing his case intensely here, both with personal appearances and on television. His goal is to try to establish a portrait of Obama as a 'liberal elitist' by capitalizing on the groundwork laid by Hillary Clinton.
On Wednesday, the McCain campaign began to further expand the 'celebrity' critique by suggesting that underneath Obama's widely-heralded public persona there is a politician who will impose real costs on working men and women.
Over photos of Obama basking in the applause of thousands of supporters, the announcer on McCain's new ad, "Family," asks "Is the biggest celebrity in the world ready to help your family?" and then answers, "The real Obama promises higher taxes, more government spending. So, fewer jobs." Shifting to footage of McCain smiling as he greets voters, the announcer concludes, "Renewable energy to transform our economy, create jobs and energy independence, that's John McCain."
The pressure on the McCain campaign to move quickly to shape public perception of Obama is fierce. While many voters here in Pennsylvania are now unclear about Obama, the window of uncertainty will narrow considerably in less than three weeks. The Obama campaign and the Democratic Party will pull out the stops to block the McCain drive during the high-visibility Democratic convention August 25-28 to portray Obama as firmly in the camp of working men and women.
With the numbers so stacked against the GOP, "we have to make sure Obama leaves Denver bleeding, the more, the better," a high-ranking Republican operative said.
Doubts about Obama, especially among working class whites, have given McCain as outside shot -- with odds about four to one against McCain -- at winning Pennsylvania. Public opinion trends favor Obama, and the GOP would have to put in an enormous, and likely doomed, effort to push this Democratic-leaning state, which has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 20 years, into the McCain camp.