Obama: John McCain is Costing us Jobs in Industries Nobody Needs Anymore

James Taranto highlights a new campaign ad from Barack Obama which blames John McCain for not helping the workers of a Corning plant in State College, PA. The ad doesn't tell the viewer what the plant made, but Taranto does:

“A new television ad released Wednesday by Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign highlights the closure of Corning Inc.’s plant in State College, Pa., and accuses Washington with Sen. John McCain’s help of selling out the workers,” the Associated Press reports.

So what did Corning make at the plant? The ad, which you can see here, does not say, but the AP story does: “glass tubes for television sets and computer monitors.”
...In modern times, the CRT has given way to superior technologies such as plasma and liquid crystal, which take up less space and provide superior picture quality. This is an enormous blessing to all Americans who watch TV or use computers.

It’s hard to imagine a more backward-looking position than mourning the decline of the picture-tube industry. What’ll Obama do next, promise to restore American supremacy in the manufacture of buggy whips, iron lungs and floppy disks?

We recently bought our daughter a 19" TV for her dorm room. The TV was in box not much bigger than a briefcase - not a tube in the thing. Perhaps Corning Inc. should have looked at newer technologies and converted the plant to produce those. You can't blame politicians because a company can't keep up with new technology.