Back in 1992, when campaign staffers for Bill Clinton were going around saying, "It's the economy, stupid," they were hitting the nail squarely on the head.

Now, even in a Montana that has escaped the worst of the nation's economic slowdown, the din of that nail pounding is difficult to ignore.

With the state's unemployment on the rise, $4-plus prices at the gas pump, food prices soaring, retirement accounts plunging, and very real fears about being able to pay the cost of heating homes this winter, we didn't need any more bad news.

OK, how about Sunday's report that NorthWestern Energy customers -- customers who a decade ago were happily paying some of the lowest electricity prices around -- now are paying rates that range from 20 percent to 70 percent higher than any other major utilities in the region.

By now there's no need to dwell on deregulation, Montana Power's fiber optic telecom dreams, the sell-off of MPC's generating and distribution capabilities to separate companies and NorthWestern's subsequent need to buy energy for its customers at sky high, unregulated market prices. It's all pretty much water over the dams that Montana Power used to own.

But utility rates that really didn't have to be so high are one more economic headache -- among so many others -- that has to be a big reason why presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is spending so much time and money in a state normally seen as a Republican lock.

The poor economy, perhaps even more than the record of the current president on the war, the response to Katrina, and so on, may turn the tide to Obama, even in Montana. It surely doesn't help Republican John McCain to have an important economic advisor -- Phil Gramm -- who insists the economy is fine and people should just get over it. Now, that is stupid.