These are not gentle lands for Mr. Obama. A visit here in August found even deeper suspicions of him in Beaver County, where Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton beat him by 40 percentage points in the Democratic primary. Democrats outnumber Republicans, but voters here tilt either way in presidential elections. Full Story »
Posted by Chris Finnie
Its quality excels in that the reporter(s) managed to get the interview subjects to open up on a surprisingly deep level. If not the stressful economic crisis, it was presumably the reporters' skills, empathy or patience that achieved some almost embarrassingly frank remarks on the record. The article goes beyond conventional wisdom but specifies where its additional insight is based only on Beaver County and where it might inform understanding of the nationwide situation. The author finds the poetic in some mundane things, from figures of speech to the way a homebound voter interacts with everyone by window.
I hear the objection of one commenter, who's in a position to know, that the plain speech of the local people is an unfair thing to repeat in print, as a reporter would normally clean up the English a bit. I disagree in the case of such an in-depth article. I live in Brooklyn NY and I find that the uneducated, the so-called "thug" class, the immigrant, and the privileged rich alike are quoted in their own word usage when the Times prints a feature or column whose purpose includes portraying the type of speaker. I think it helps understand how the words were meant, so it's useful as well as fair.