and mitch mcconnell has caused this, he almost single-handedly has done that in kentucky and he s been a big component of the polarization in washington. so whoever it is that runs against him is coming from a good position, except if you take a wrong position on the colt. in 2004 when i ran against an incumbent jim bunning i put $160 meals in my and how is she going to overcome the coal issue and you can t overcome coal in kentucky and quite frankly, the future of the country depends on where we move coal to. we ll have to leave it right there. former kentucky, lieutenant governor. i do appreciate you making the drive to the studio. thank you. thank you, craig. switching gears here. the nation s oldest civil rights group is taking on new york city the naacp and the hispanic federation have joined the soft drink industry in a lawsuit to stop the city s ban on those big
is too close to call. so very hard to say right now. jon: so, when we re watching returns from ohio tomorrow, stephen, what should we look at? you should look at not only what is going on in the big cities, we can all agree i believe that the incumbent president will carry the cities, will carely cleveland. will carry perhaps the core of columbus and will carry cincinnati. you have to look at the exurbs to see what happens there. these are places the republican can be counted on to get 60 to 70% of the vote. does the democrat cut into that margin by two or three or four points or not? or use the urban vote come up, city core vote come up three or four points to outweigh that. a couple of places to look interesting. if you go to ohio s earn border, you re talking coal country. as you know governor romney really pushed the coal issue pretty hard. we re talking about some issues like jefferson county ohio, which is where
retirement in february. those are two seats they thought in the republican column, so now not so sure. that fight to net four seats is tougher. this is the fifth debate between the two. let s start off with kaine here. allen targeted him when it comes to coal, which was brought up in the presidential debate. energy. the president on the campaign trail going at mitt romney again on energy policy and the issue of coal and fracking in this country. nevertheless where is kaine s week spot at this point? george allen thinks it s on the coal issue, because he s talking to southern virginia. you have northern virginia, very diverse. it s been breaking towards to the democrats where tim kaine needs to really rack up march jiven margin. you have the southern part of the state that depends on coal. george allen has been stressing the energy issue and
ohio. for instance, the southeast ohio they re really hammering the coal issue. also cultural issues because there are a lot of democrats in southeastern ohio but not many liberal democrats. you also say that because of regionality of ohio, 96 field offices, three times the number that romney has, does that mean he can be more segmented in his messaging? it does. in some ways that s a little misleading because the romney people are using republican hea headquarters. they have these little offices in a box. they set up instant phone banks, what have you. they re very mobile. they can get around the state. it s two competing things. i guess we ll see on november 7th which is better. right. you know ohio senator, rob portman. he s been governor, romney s sparring partner in the practices for the debates. he said this about team romney s new focus on the house. take a listen.
don t want to run it in ohio. i think the issue is they need another state. we figured out that if you give obama all of john kerry s states, give him knew mexico where he s favored and give him ohio, guess where that gets him, 269. that means we re at a tie, 269, 269. none of us welcomes that scenario. that means that the president s going to need one of these other states. iowa is a close one because it s another industrial midwestern state. nevada, you know, another possibility. virginia, obama needs one more if he s going to get ohio and romney gets all of the others. one of the key weeks ahead for us. thanks. speaking of mistakes, one battleground has the best track record of picking the winner of presidential elections since 1900. ohio. no republican has won the presidency without winning ohio. that s why we ve seen team romney campaigning there aggressively in the last few