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Land of the Old

Noam Scheiber, after noting some of Barack Obama’s appearances on local sports media outlets, speculates “that younger, edgier sports chatter — most prominently on ESPN, but also on talk-radio stations across the country — seems to be injecting elements of African-American culture into white working-class minds, and in a pretty favorable light. (Who doesn’t love Stuart Scott?) I’m guessing it’s among the long-term trends that help Obama, if only at the margins.” Could be, though I don’t even know if that’s a sports-specific phenomenon.

But it serves as a reminder that Obama’s real problem in Pennsylvania isn’t just its large white working-class contingent, it’s all the old people “The census ranks this as the nation’s second-oldest state, with 15.6 percent of us being 65 or older.” That’s a deadly demographic reality for Obama in this state.

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