Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab vest for Friday, September 19th, 2008. I'm David Blontz, here in the Slate Washington office.

Joining us from Slate New Haven, Emily Bazelon. Hi, Emily.

Hey, David.

And then from somewhere, somewhere in a swing state, I'm guessing, is John Dickerson and Barack Obama.

John, you seem to have an Obama speech in your background.

That's right. You can hear the senator in the distant background.

We're in northern New Mexico about an hour and a half from Albuquerque.

So can you tell him that now it's time for him to be quiet because we're taping?

Well, in fact, somebody has just fainted.

So he's telling the crowd that the EMTs will be there any minute because Obama was late about an hour and a half.

And we're in the middle of the nearest shade is about an hour away.

So everybody's been out in the baking sunshine for the most of the day, actually.

What kind of speech is he giving?

Is he talking about the market?

It's actually not a very good speech.

He gave much better speeches in Las Vegas and Elka, Nevada yesterday.

He's blown all of his best lines, and basically he continued to beat up on McCain about the economy

and how McCain's various responses to it this week give us the sense of his inability to handle the issues of the president.

And then now he's being to the, you know, we're all one United States.

Is he doing a 2468?

Who do we appreciate?

No, but he was casting.

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