Letters to the Editor

• @ weeping....

  [Read the article: A split Democratic decision]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  You know, I think those things matter, but not in the way you and I perceive them. Those things you mention are things that are slowly building around Obama’s name, but none of them are set in stone yet. Reading Salon, the Washington Post, the NYT, and skimming headlines on a handful of other sites, every day, it seems like ages ago that the whole elitist thing came up, but the fact of the matter is, that was April. A month ago. The specifics just haven’t had time to register. My parents are both smart, middle class people there, but I’d bet you $10 that neither one knows who Louis Farrakhan is, or could tell you which side of the gas-tax debate the economists favor. I asked my Mother, who she was going to vote for… she said she wasn’t sure about “that Obama” as she’d heard he had some unsavory people around him. I groaned inwardly, knowing that the Republican talking points were doing their job, just the way they did in 2000 and 2004.

  As far as Clinton goes, yes, to the political world, and those paying attention, she has rebranded herself a populist, working class hero, but my gosh… until she realized that the only places she was doing better than Obama were the places she’d least expected to win (I dare anyone to find one prognostication from more than three months ago saying that big margins in West Virginia and Kentucky would be key to her victory), she was playing the policy wonk. Heck… that was the criticism that started this race… that Obama was empty words while Hillary was the one geeking out on numbers. That was what I meant by her political judo… I really think it was an amazing turn that I’ve not heard many people mention.

  All of this is set against a place where people are still suspicious of Toyota trucks and where a shotgun or rifle less than forty years old is still untested (no lie… of the twenty or so guns owned by my three closest male relatives there, not a one was made later than the 1960’s. None of them are collectors… or even shoot much… they’re just average gun owners.)

  A couple years after moving away from home, living in the huge metropolis of Cincinnati while I went to college, I once watched my Mother, a bright woman who worked for the post office, and her husband (she remarried) look at the menu in a fast food restaurant they’d never been in before like it was written in Chinese. After a long minute or two, with neither of them processing anything they were reading, I suggested a couple things and they ordered. Despite being almost twenty years ago, that moment has stuck with me, as a simplistic, but shocking picture of what I left behind… just how long it takes to process new information there.

  As for Hillary’s “attempts to do the Rove thing” I’m not 100% sure what you mean… Dirty tricks? I don’t think anything Hillary or Bill has done have been truly Rovian… I think they are simply playing the political game the way they learned it, and that is why I’ve been cool to her since it was apparent she was going to run however many years ago. Hillary Clinton is an exceptional politician, and in the sense that she’s broken barriers for women across the country, I think she deserves respect, but I’ve never liked their brand of politics, and I like it even less now than I did. That won’t stop me from voting for her, if she somehow pulls out the nomination, but I’ll be wistful for what could have been. When you ask me what I think would have happened if she’d ran a different race, and not made her turn to the working class, well, I think she’d have won even fewer states and that the race would probably be over now, and no one would be paying attention to West Virginia or Kentucky…

  I don’t want to sound like I’m speaking for everyone who lives there. That area is complex and rich in culture, and if it’s not as diverse as many others, the people are warm once they get to know you. For every guy I know who still tells jokes with the N word, there’s one who is cursing the current SoB in the Whitehouse and knows someone who was injured in Iraq for no good reason. I wish that I could say that Obama has a good chance of winning there, but given McCain’s (long ago outdated) reputation as a Maverick, his veteran status, and the fact that he is old and white, I think it’s a lost cause this time around, and I think it would be just as lost with Hillary on the ticket as well.

  I’d really love to be proven wrong, though.

  Permalink Wednesday, May 21, 2008 01:29 AM