Pundits may call the gas tax breaks Hillary Clinton and John McCain are talking about are gimmicks, and praise Barack Obama for opposing such plans. But to some voters, the idea doesn’t sound so bad. Talking to a few dozen seniors at a retirement home in Columbia City, Ind., Obama said such tax relief would save drivers only 30 cents a day, last just the summer, and not help prices long term. “That’s our plan?” he mocked.

But one woman wasn’t sure she saw the downside, especially if as Clinton has suggested, oil companies can be made to pick up the tab. “A lot of us are nothing but short-termers anyway,” she said, setting off laughs.

Obama said he wants to make oil companies pay the government more, but that he wants to spend that money on home heating subsidies and alternative fuel research. Instead of a gas tax break, he said, he’ll push for a middle-class tax cut. The woman, who declined to give her name to a reporter, said she’d already cast her ballot. She wouldn’t say who she voted for. She called Obama “a very nice young man.”