- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I hope Obama is planning to visit lots of small towns, because he does need to sell himself to people who don't have the sort of background he does.
Obama cannot afford to blow off rural voters because the electoral college gives them power beyond their numbers. (We could go on for a long time about the injustice of this, but that's another topic.)
But I think if he speaks to people directly, and asks for their vote, he could do fine. Working class people in the boonies know the country is messed up and needs a change. Their kids are serving in Iraq and they're not happy about it after 6 years. They want Obama to act like they exist and ask for their votes.
For example, Harold Ford, Jr. in Tennessee did far better that anyone dreamed he would, and came very close to winning the US Senate seat Bob Corker now holds. Ford is a guy with a huge liability--the Ford political machine is infamous for every sort of corruption, and his uncle, a state senator, was about to go to trial. But statewide, "Junior" won a clear majority of female votes and carried a number of rural counties by impressive majorities. How? He drove over, walked into these redneck joints with confederate flags on the door, shook their hands, talked with them, and said he'd be so grateful for their vote. And they liked him for that.
Obama is all that, and then some. But the campaign should address this estrangement of rural voters. Target ads, make appearances--and make the ask. He needs to de-mystify himself to these folks.
