Slate has an interesting piece on John McCain's tour of America's "forgotten places":
McCain is planning to speak in inner cities, heavily African-American sections of the South, and poor sections of Appalachia. Most of his stops will be in areas where voters have traditionally supported Democrats... That no Republican nominee has done a tour like this before should signal that it's high-risk."
Will the risk pay-off?
Only if McCain's effort is sustained. If this tour looks like a stunt, then all the grand claims the McCain team is making for it—that the tour is driven by McCain's sense of duty and openness—will boomerang. As a candidate who wants to represent all the people, his aides say, he can't keep himself from going before all different kinds of people, even if it's a risk. But all that deep-convictions talk could easily come to look like a sham. McCain doesn't want to go out to prove he's the real thing only to end up looking like another phony.
When Iain Duncan Smith made his first visit to Easterhouse in Glasgow, the cynics expected it to be his last. In fact it marked the beginning of a sustained Conservative engagement with Britain's hardpressed communities. I hope that John McCain might be about to start something similar.