When Palin belittled Obama's history as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side -- suggesting he was a do-little activist while she, as the former mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska, had "actual responsibilities" -- Sandy Ryan, 59, clicked the remote.
"That's enough of that. I switched over to 'House Hunters,' " she said with some disgust over dessert with a group of women from the senior housing complex she manages.
One of a dwindling number of coveted undecideds, Ryan gets a firsthand view of retirees forced to choose between food and medication. She is not convinced Obama has the experience to be president, but Palin only reinforced her concern that McCain would mean four more years of divisiveness and gridlock.
Patty Tobal, a 63-year-old retired nurse and lifelong feminist, shut off the TV set and went to bed. The promise of a woman on the ticket had piqued her curiosity, but she found Palin's sarcasm offensive and her priorities out of touch.
"We don't need any more fighting in Washington," Tobal said while having her hair done at a little shop on Route 40, where the customers go longer between appointments in these hard times. "Women are not for women just because they are women. We are intelligent enough to make a conscious decision."
Life here is basic and hard. Coal miners still work the mountains. The upscale Nemacolin Woodlands Resort just down the road is replete with shops and restaurants that Uniontown residents can't afford.
And residents describe their downtown, where a portrait of native son and five-star general George C. Marshall covers a building several stories high, as "quaint but sad."
If these women are any indication, the threat to Obama's camp is not that they will side with McCain but that they will stay home, as Heckman, the restaurant chef and single mother of two, says many people on her block plan to do.
But those disenchanted voters could be balanced by newly inspired ones, such as Jennifer Glisan, 23, an emergency medical technician who saves lives every week but cannot afford health insurance. Clinton's gender was enough to awaken her political interest, but Palin's failed to hold it.
"I think Palin is a fake. She will run the economy into the ground," Glisan said after catching glimpses of the vice presidential nominee's speech between emergency calls.
"I have to kill myself every day at work to earn enough to pay for gas to get there. I think Obama is sincere. I think we need a change."
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faye.fiore@latimes.com
peter.wallsten@latimes.com
Fiore reported from Uniontown, Pa., Wallsten from St. Paul, Minn.
