From a lengthy profile of "Regular Joe" on the trail in Ohio, in the LAT:

Here in the union hall, where CBS anchor Katie Couric has shown up in another sign of the fading Palin mystique, he repeats a remark that caused a stir days before: that wealthier Americans should be "patriotic" and pay more taxes to give those earning less a break.

Among other revelations, Biden is an "exquisitely tailored" "close talker" who wants to take many Republicans "to the schoolyard, you know what I mean?"

Update: On the Counterproductive Talking Point Perpetuation Watch, I found reporters calling swing states and rural regions "bitter" in two stories. Good doing guys:

The Washington Post on Scranton:

More than is sometimes acknowledged, residents say, this is a region wrestling with bitterness and backwardness, the kind that Aunie Frisch, who has Chinese ancestry, sometimes finds maddening.

Exactly 44 years after Lyndon B. Johnson became the last Democrat to capture the state of North Dakota in a presidential election, it looks like Barack Obama won't be the next.

The Associated Press reported this evening and an Obama spokeswoman confirmed that the Chicago-based campaign is pulling its 50-some staffers out of the heavily Republican state full of embittered small towns and shipping the workers east to Minnesota and Wisconsin, where the Democrat's prospects seem brighter and closer.