The Baumgarten Report

NORTHWOOD, OH – Forget Joe the Plumber and support for John McCain. The guys who run the local Toledo area plumber’s union hall like Barack Obama.

Local 50 business manager Tom Joseph says most of the guys his union represents make $60,000-$100,000 or more a year. Certainly not the $250,000 they’d have to make in order to be affected by Obama’s tax increases.

Speaking on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com, Joseph said if any of them did make $250,000 or more a year they should pay more in taxes.

His union is actively supporting Obama. Busy getting out the vote.

Joseph thinks he and his union are far more representative of plumbers here in Ohio, and elsewhere in the nation.

The issue, he says, is not Joe the Plumber, who is being used, Joseph argues, to divert attention from the unseemly packages the former heads of Wall Street firms that have crashed are getting.

The polls put Obama and McCain at a statistical dead heat in key state Ohio. Joseph recognizes this. But believes the Buckeye State will go for the Democrat.

Significant, if correct, because never in history has a Republican been elected president without carrying Ohio.

YOUNGSTOWN, OH – Politics dominates discourse in Ohio, a key swing state in this year’s presidential election.

At Rotellis Restaurant, first time voters Michele and Rebekah don’t agree on who they’ll vote for. But they do agree that they’re going to vote.

“I was really excited to vote,” Michele said of her opportunity to cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton in the primary.

“Me too,” added Rebekah, whose primary vote went for Ron Paul.

Michele isn’t certain who she will vote for, even though all of her peers, including her boyfriend, say they’ll vote for Barack Obama.

“I was for Hillary but now I’m undecided,” she says.

“I don’t like either of them.”

She says the negative campaigning is turning her off to both candidates.

“They bash each other all the time,” she says. “I don’t like negative people in general.”

Rebekah is also undecided. But she knows she will not vote for Obama.

“I just think he has a lot of empty promises,” she explains.

“He says a lot of vague things.”

What of Obama’s mantra of change?

“Change is inevitable,” says Rebekah. “It will happen anyway, on its own.”

Rebekah, whose brother is in the Army, is also disturbed by what she perceives as Obama’s lack of support for the military.

“My brother’s going there, to Iraq,” she says. Obama’s lack of military experience, she says, “has me worried.” She likes, however, McCain’s record of military service, which, she says, would serve the country well if he is elected president.

Carol, the restaurant manager, however, is solidly for Obama.

She likes that he was “very calm” during the last debate, never losing his composure. She says she found McCain’s demeanor off setting.

That’s the form. What about the substance?

“I don’t think either of them is telling the truth,” Carol says.

“I think both of them say what they think we want to hear.”

We’ll keep focused on Ohio for the next two days. News Talk Online will be live from Columbus on Monday and from Toledo on Tuesday at 5 PM New York time. CLICK HERE to join in the conversation.