Last week, The American Prospect‘s Matthew Yglesias mistakenly identified Ohio as a state that is “next door” to Missouri. He later joked on his personal blog, “East-coast elitism strikes again … All those flyover states look the same to me.”
Campaign Desk wonders if the same virus struck The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank this morning. Reporting on Bush’s appearance in Cinncinnati, Milbank wrote, “… other battleground states such as Michigan, Illinois and West Virginia were also among those losing jobs.”
We know it gets tricky distinguishing the farmlands of Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri. But Illinois, which has voted Democratic in the last three presidential elections, and where the latest poll shows Kerry leading Bush 53 percent to 37 percent, is most certainly not a battleground state.
–TL
Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.