US election diary: The Great Schlep

"If Barack Obama does not become the next President of the US, I'm blaming the Jews," says the sharp-tongued Jewish-American comedian Sarah Silverman. Not all Jews, she explains, but elderly conservative ones who have retired to Florida.

Watch Sarah Silverman's "Great Schlep" video

That's why she is campaigning for The Great Schlep, which aims to persuade Jewish grandchildren to "get their butts" on a plane to Florida on the weekend of 11-13 October to tell grandma and grandpa that Barack Obama is neither a Muslim nor anti-Israel and thus swing the crucial Florida vote.

Related articles

• Crisis derails John McCain's fightback
• Dominic Lawson: Why should anyone trust Joe Biden?
• On The Campaign Trail
• Search the news archive for more stories

"Schlepees" are furnished with a set of talking points including one headed: "He's black. Let's talk about it!" Silverman – who is always as offensive as she is funny – says on her Great Schlep video an elderly Jewish woman can easily be shown how much she has in common with a young black man: "Both love tracksuits, their car of choice is a Cadillac, they like bling and money and jewellery ... and all their friends are dying."

* Didi Lima was named to head up John McCain's Hispanic leadership team in Nevada in August. Hispanics are a crucial voting bloc in a state where polls show Mr McCain in a dead-heat with Mr Obama. But the Republican Party's communications director for Nevada has lost her job after the following outburst: "We don't want [Hispanics] to become the new African-American community.

"And that's what the Democratic Party is going to do to them, create more programmes and give them handouts, food stamps and cheques for this and that. We don't want that. I'm very much afraid the Democratic Party is going to do the same thing they did with the African-American culture and make them all dependent on the government and we don't want that." Ms Lima has now been "removed from her post".

* As the rival vice-presidential nominees prepare for their only debate, this Thursday, anxiety is building in the Democratic Party that Joe Biden will blow it with a sexist remark directed at Sarah Palin or make one of his famous gaffes.

The Irish-Catholic son of Scranton, Pennsylvania, whose mother Catherine Finnegan told him to bloody the nose of any bully he encountered, is getting sensitivity lessons from a galaxy of Democrat women, including Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. But deep down many Democrats must wish this debate was between Mrs Palin and Mrs Clinton. Now that would be a blood sport worth staying up for.