I'm writing to you this morning from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where I will be meeting up with I'm writing to you this morning from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where I will be meeting up with Barack Obama's "Road to Change" bus tour of the state today. The tour started last Friday in western Pennsylvania, headed through the rural middle, and today loops up to the post-industrial, coal-mining towns of northeastern Pennsylvania. Throughout, he's been mixing massive rallies with smaller, more personal events in diners and bowling alleys.
First stop today is Wilkes-Barre, a city of 43,000 that formed largely around the coal industry after it was discovered in the region in the 1800s. Then the tour heads to Scranton, a city of 76,000 whose foundation was also laid by the coal, iron, and steel industries. They then continue to Philadelphia, which is, of course, Obama's stronghold in the state. But it's places like Wilkes-Barre and Scranton where you find the kind of blue-collar, working class voters that Hillary Clinton is expected to fare better with here, as she has elsewhere. It's here that Obama will have to "channel his inner Edwards" and find his populist voice if he's to win new voters. Will he? Updates to come throughout the day.
--Kate Sheppard
