Dunkirk

I hope this ends up being Obama's Dunkirk, but we'll see.

Check Telegraph UK, "US election 2012: the battleground of Dunkirk, Ohio":

Fifty days before the US presidential election, The Telegraph meets the residents of Dunkirk, Ohio - the kind of town that will decide who wins.

On US Highway 68, down the road from an empty factory site and table-flat corn fields sits a windswept, one-street town called Dunkirk, Ohio.

There is a church, a café, a bar, a fire station and a population of about 875 people who are feeling the cold winds of global economic change.

It is Saturday morning and in Dunkirk's tiny, one-chair barbershop, a group of middle-aged men have gathered to chew the political fat. It's the kind of crowd that usually can't agree on the time of day, but Republicans, Democrats and undecided voters are unanimous: the US economy is in a hole, and no-one seems to know how to climb out of it.

The debate is spirited. The problem, says 56-year-old Richard Walden, is Barack Obama's rampant welfare culture: "People come to me and say that if they can't make $15-18 dollars (£9-£11) an hour, it ain't worth them working," he says. "That just ain't right."

Perhaps that's true, says Pete Brunow, 54, a vocal Democrat and former high-school football coach who brought glory to the town in 2004 by winning the Ohio state championships, but that the benefit culture is a symptom, not the cause, of the problems facing rust-belt towns like Dunkirk.

"The real problem is that there are too many 10-dollar-an-hour jobs," he counters, with a shake of his head, "There are always going to be people on welfare – always have been, always will be – but the problem is that the jobs we do have today are too poor-paying." Such barbershop debates are often drowned out in the raucous gaffe-spotting and point-scoring that monopolise much of the airspace of modern US political campaigns, but they go straight to the angry, despondent heart of Middle America.

Over the next 50 days, up until polling day on Nov 6, the people of Dunkirk, Ohio will provide a touchstone for The Telegraph's election coverage, providing unvarnished comment on the fizz and froth of the national campaign.

The story of Dunkirk's decline is one that has been repeated in thousands of towns across Ohio, a must-win battleground state that has borne the brunt of the fall-out from globalisation, and where Mr Obama will campaign again today.

More at that top link.