Saturday

After Friday's "Trump: Hillary Waging Costly 'War on Energy' " (see below), Saturday became "attack Hillary/ignore Donald" day. A Google search of potential Clinton and Trump news stories yields numerous AP reports (see the polls below, for instance) that might have been used in Saturday's edition. Despite the possibilities, the Intelligencer went with just one Clinton AP story:

Obama Coalition Not Carrying Clinton

There were no Trump national news stories but there was a front-page Trump story by Casey Junkins:

Ohio Lt. Gov. Taylor Will Vote for Donald Trump

Yes, a Republican lieutenant governor will be voting for Trump! Amazing! (For those readers outside the Wheeling area -- trust me, I'm not making this up. The story does go on to tell us that she may run for governor.)

Saturday's Mike Myer column, "A Long Record of Dishonesty," consisted of a recycling of most of the right wing anti-Clinton attacks of the last twenty-five years. Myer even admits that there is nothing new in the column -- his justification for the column is that

(m)any of the people who will vote for Clinton in November hadn't been born when she began making headlines for her lies and shady deals.

Unsourced and filled with the predictable (for example, Vince Foster is dug up from his grave once again), it's a vicious column even by the low standards set for his columns.

Today

The Sunday News-Register's news section carried one story about the campaign, "Candidates Prepare For Debate." (More accurately, they printed the first half of an AP story about preparations for tomorrow's debate.) When the locals shorten an AP article, it's usually a good idea to see what gets left out. The original AP article was shortened at the bold point:

"Imagine the practice and the training of 13 years of reality television on 'The Apprentice' and then imagine Hillary's experience reading hundreds of papers," said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a Trump adviser who has been talking through policy with the candidate in recent days.

Clinton aides fear Trump will indeed be judged more for his performance than his grasp of the numerous challenges that pass across a president's desk. They've been flummoxed by Trump's ability to sail through the campaign without fleshing out many policy positions and glossing over past statements that he no longer views as politically palatable.

On Friday, the Clinton campaign released 19 pages of what they called Trump's "seven deadly lies," including his false assertion that he opposed the Iraq war from the start.

"Even if he meets some kind of lowered bar of being semi-coherent and not having any outbursts, it's hard to imagine he'll avoid his own propensity for lying," said Brian Fallon, Clinton's campaign spokesman. . .

Hey, here's an idea for a future Myer column: "Trump's Seven Deadly Sins." Yeah, right.

AP news articles that the locals missed

The locals did miss a number of AP articles from the last three days. A couple of them explain Associated Press/GfK polls which appear to be ongoing. From late last week:

Deplorable? Trump more so than Clinton, AP-GfK poll finds

The article begins:

It was supposed to be her “47 percent” moment.

When Hillary Clinton said that half of Donald Trump’s supporters belonged in a “basket of deplorables,” Republicans thought they just might have found her campaign-crushing-blunder.
The gaffe, they hoped, was a way to cement an image as an out-of-touch snob, just as Democrats did four years ago to Mitt Romney after he said “47 percent” of voters backed President Barack Obama because they were “dependent on government.”

But a new Associated Press-GfK poll finds that Clinton’s stumble didn’t have quite the impact that Trump and his supporters wanted. Instead, it’s Trump who’s viewed as most disconnected and disrespectful.

And here's an AP poll headline from Friday:

AP-GfK Poll: Majority of Americans fear Trump presidency

Finally, there's also this AP poll that asked about trust:

Americans are more likely to trust Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump to handle a variety of issues facing the country, even when it comes to national security topics that have been a major focus of his campaign, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.

Trump is trusted slightly more than Clinton on just one key issue: job creation.

Note -- these three AP stories may be part of one larger poll. My point is that they were issued as three separate AP stories any one of which the locals could have used but didn't. There were obviously additional stories such as reactions to Charlotte, their foundations, and foreign policy issues. Instead of these issues, all we've learned in the last two days is that the Obama coalition is not carrying Hillary, that both candidates are getting ready for Monday's debate, and that Ohio's lieutenant governor is going to vote for Trump.