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Jonny Dymond

Jonny Dymond Washington correspondent

These are my reflections from the road on how Americans are meeting the country’s economic challenges

Newtown overwhelmed by media

"Go home, please, go home, all of you."

The man standing in front of me in the lobby of my hotel was not in the slightest bit aggressive, but he was very clear.

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Obesity rates fall in Philadelphia

What is the greatest single threat to Americans' safety and well-being in the coming decade? Al-Qaeda? Climate change? The towering debt and deficit?

Wrong, wrong and wrong. The answer is everywhere you go in America, sold over-the-counter and consumed in astonishing scale and quantity.

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Breakfast club gloomy on budget deal

Over bacon and eggs and bagels and muffins in a fancy hotel in Washington, one of the US capital's oddest double acts is sounding the alarm.

The American republic, say Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, is heading toward the edge of the cliff. Without a deal on tax and spending "we have no idea where it will go".

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Republicans must change or die

"We're going to get blamed if we lose," a Texan member of the low-tax, small-government Tea Party movement told me before the first presidential debate appeared to turn the election on its head.

A civil war may be about to break out between fiscal conservatives and what remains of the more moderate wing of the party, but it will be the wrong battle to fight.

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Right direction for Romney?

The music died when the first results came into Romney HQ in Boston - not metaphorically, but literally, as the jazz band that had been serenading Republicans stopped playing.

The chat died too as everyone watched the first results come onto the screen flanking the stage where Mitt Romney will at some stage appear.

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New fronts open up in US election

Up a flight of stairs, away from the organised shambles of the downstairs office, cigarette smoke and weariness hangs around the impressively rumpled figure of Caleb Faux.

On his office wall, posters for Truman, Kennedy and Johnson. On his television, the left-leaning news channel, MSNBC. On his desk, a choppy sea of reports and to-do lists.

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Romney finally finds his message

Just when you think you have utterly lost the will to listen to another Mitt Romney speech, he hits you between the eyes and comes up with something that really does resemble oratory.

It was a message that had he been able to hew to since the primaries - well, who knows where he would be right now, or where he might be on Wednesday.

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Romney's dwindling 'diner' supporters

Ma and Pa's Diner in Virginia is in a squat building by the highway - a place close enough to the airport to make it an anonymous hangout for travelling types. But it's actually a neighbourhood joint.

The counter is wooden; the jukebox is broken. There are five or six tables in booths, around the same number along the window.

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Obama's 'firewall' burning - Republicans

"Their firewall," said an uber-confident member of Team Romney, with a hint of glee, "is burning."

The "firewall' in question is the one allegedly dreamt up by Democratic strategists to stop dead any advance by the forces of Mitt: it consists of the Midwestern states of Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin (also referred to jocularly as the rust belt, the corn belt and the cheese belt).

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The selfless America outsiders don't see

Before the campaign, a couple of lines about the kindness and decency of Americans.

As I turned back onto the I-90 towards Toledo and eventually Detroit, after a nutritious burger and fries, a filter took cars onto the interstate across a lane of oncoming traffic.

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The strange Sandy-coloured campaign

When the day began it was almost a normal campaign here in Ohio; now, with huge winds and rain lashing down, what became the strangest campaign in modern history has ground to a halt.

As Mitt Romney wound up his speech at Avon Lake High School, word went round the media pack, penned in behind barriers from the crowd of bellowing supporters, that his campaign was cancelling any more events on Monday, suspending for Tuesday as well.

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Will weather rain on Romney campaign?

It wasn't supposed to start like this.

Right now, I'd hoped to be telling you about Mitt Romney's latest incarnation - the candidate of "big change" - strutting his stuff in Ohio.

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Welcome to my page

A warm welcome to my new page on the BBC News website. This will be the home for my reflections, from the road, on American life.

"Who is the most important person you've ever interviewed?" I was asked the other day.

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About Jonny

Jonny has been a foreign correspondent for 12 years, working in North America, Europe and the Middle East.

After following Mitt Romney in the final days of his 2012 presidential campaign, Jonny will continue to report from every corner of the United States, exploring how the country deals with relative economic decline and the challenge of social immobility.

Jonny is constantly surprised and delighted by the US and the astonishing variety to be found within.

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