Jon Martin has an update:

Fortuitously stumping in Ohio today — where he picked up the support of an Operating Engineers local — the Republican sought to shift attention from Wall Street to Biden’s gaffe. “My opponent is against the expansion of nuclear power,” McCain said at a business stop in Strongsville, Ohio. “His running mate here in Ohio recently said that they weren’t supporting clean coal, either. And the fact is that their billions of dollars in higher taxes would kill jobs here in Ohio. That’s not what Ohio needs and that’s not what America needs. My economic focus throughout this campaign has always been pro-growth policies that will create jobs.” The slip-up provides McCain’s campaign an opportunity to resurrect an energy message that has, thanks to the financial crisis, been overshadowed of late. The campaign will make the case that Biden’s statement reflects Democratic opposition to comprehensive energy solutions. The hope: That this is one of those hybrid policy-cultural issues that, as with Al Gore’s coal views in 2000, enables them to paint Democrats as out of touch on local economic issues and a way of life. The Democrats are responding by essentially reiterating Obama’s stance on the issue, implying that this was merely a matter of Biden speaking out of school. “Senator McCain knows that Senator Obama and Senator Biden support clean coal technology,” says Biden spokesman David Wade. ”Senator Biden’s point is that China is building coal plants with outdated technology every day, and the United States needs to lead by developing clean coal technologies. The Obama-Biden comprehensive energy plan will invest $150 billion over 10 years in clean energy technologies, including incentives to accelerate private sector investment in commercial scale zero-carbon coal facilities. The Obama-Biden Department of Energy is committed to developing 5 ‘first-of-a-kind’ commercial scale coal-fired plants with carbon capture and sequestration here in the United States.”