Maybe the reason people don't hold being worse off than four years ago against McCain is that Ted Strickland told them he would fix the state's economy and has done nothing, that Sherrod Brown ran on the economy and has only proposed job killing laws since he got to DC, and that the economy is very strong in other states. The voters are smart enough to realize that George Bush and John McCain haven't hurt Ohio and that Barack Obama can't help it, that the answer must be local, not national.