The "NASCAR dad," or "Joe Six-Pack," or whatever else he has been called in recent years, is nothing other than the latter-day version of the Southern Dixiecrat. We have known for more than 25 years that this species no longer exists, having morphed into a peculiar creature who, once every four years, is somehow conned into voting against his own interests. This is hardly news.

And anyone who claims that Bill Clinton won the presidency by appealing to "Bubba;" Clinton seemed like him only superficially, and Clinton's substance, not just his style, let the electorate in on the joke in all those references to Astroturf-lined pick-up trucks: "Bubba" tends not to be a Rhodes scholar, and Clinton's refusal to hide that fact, but winning anyway, infuriated the right because it threatened their unwavering strategy of manipulating the electorate's lazy-mindedness and indifference to substantive issues. It was the very way Clinton defied their "conventional wisdom" (a phrase that is always an oxymoron) that so enraged Lee Atwater's surviving henchmen: after Clinton, it's easy to see for what they are the transparently fake and manipulative photo ops in which Bush "clears brush" as convincingly as an actor with no musical ability mimes piano fingering, failing to disguise the fact that this is a man who was born with a silver spoon up his nose.

In any event, "Bubba" is a constituency whose loss needn't be mourned by Democrats. People who, like turkeys, haven't even the instinct to close their mouths and get out of the rain before they drown will probably just get in the way of a reform agenda, anyway.

Auctorial intentions notwithstanding, Schaller's article seems not to be what it's presented as. It impresses, not as an objective report on a newly-discovered political phenomenon, but rather as the dismay of a mind that is accustomed to seeing the world in terms of stereotypes, cultural cliches, and sweeping assumptions, and is having trouble reframing its world view. It seems to me this "bulletin" is irrelevant to anything meaningful, and an unnecessary waste of bandwidth and your readers' time.

Anyone who characterizes opinions as "right" or "wrong" displays insufficient intellectual rigor to be credible as a "sage" in any field of intellectual inquiry. Readers will be better served when Salon learns to rein in its tendency toward hyperbole and taking dictation from publicists when describing its interview subjects.

Without value-judging what is called "bird dogging," I suggest to people who object to using audience plants at town hall meetings that we should reframe the sentiment "we need to get the money out of politics" as "We need to get the marketing mentality out of politics." For what else is "bird dogging" other than guerrilla marketing?