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..wrote a good letter. To relate to small-town America is not hard, but you have to talk to them, not at them. You can't get lost in the trees and miss the forest which is what Obama is in danger of doing. You can't engage in a shouting match with McCain. Call a spade a spade. Call a lie a lie and move on. Don't wax eloquent cause eloquent while important is not as important as the truth. JFK and Roosevelt were patrician and rich, but they communicated by being themselves and had an innate ability to understand people not so rich or patrician. The best advice Obama has gotten so far is from Bill Clinton. And yes, it was a big mistake not putting Hillary on the ticket. I think he has yet to joust with humilite, but he at least is suiting up.
You have to relate to rural people with empathy. I don't think he has loads of it because he is from a different place, Hawaii and Chicago, and the latter was either Ivy League in Hyde Park or in other black areas early on. So he has no compass to tell him what and how rural small-town, mostly white, people think. They are no different than the rest of America. You could argue they are quintessentially America. They get cable. They get big city newspapers. But Obama's biggest problem is himself. He underestimated the need for Hillary, and he underestimate McCain believing that this was automatically a Dem year. It may be, but the Presidency is different. He thus has to overcome himself to reach them at the basic level. This is not donning a hunting outfit ala Kerry, or a stupid helmet in a tank like Dukakis. In fact he can not act differently. He is what he is, so don't try to change, as McCain is. Just change the rhetoric, get off the big stage, and get down in the dirt. Quit using legalese and gobbledygook and polispeak. Don't talk over their heads about some esoteric policy. KISS, keep is simple stupid, cause in reality it is.
If you tell them the truth, if you tell them why Bush-McCain policies are not only no good for American or the world, but no good for them, if you go to them and meet them and make them feel you understand them, then you can get their support. If you bat away McCain lies and slurs and take your eye off the ball, you will strike out.
