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• Monday, April 14, 2008 09:19 PM

  Solution

  Obama's comments, while not offensive, in my opinion, were clumsily stated and his clarifications have been similarly imperfect. While I find it rather hard to believe that a couple of comments made in April are going to make or break his election chances in November, I think that he probably has alienated at least some voters and brought to center-stage the rift within the Democratic Party (and within American society as a whole) that Michael Lind more or less correctly identified.

  This is problematic although not disastrous for Obama, and the solution is very simple: select a running-mate who shares his views on the Iraq War and the economy, but who comes from the small-town-Appalachia Scots-Irish stock discussed in Lind's article. Indeed, a running-mate who wrote a fascinating book about the Scots-Irish experience and the role of the Scots-Irish in American society, and who treasures his ethnic identity deeply; a running-mate who is a Vietnam veteran--and, unlike Navy bomber pilot John McCain, a Vietnam veteran who served on the ground as Marine infantry and experienced the relentless horror of a war gone bad. A running-mate who is probably the country's most prominent example of a Reagan Democrat: a man whose economic interests and views clearly lie (and have always lain) with the Democrat party, but, feeling justifiably embittered by highly-educated liberal elites, became a Republican and indeed served as Reagan's Secretary of the Navy. Now, thanks to the hijacking of the Republican Party by crazed neo-conservative ideologues (to whose star John McCain has finally hitched his wagon) this man has returned to the party that should rightly be the proper home of all working-class Americans, regardless of race or ethnic background.

  The 'bitter' incident brings to the forefront the rather obvious fact that (through no fault of his own) Barack Obama has very little personal connection with the rural/small-town working-class voters whose support is utterly necessary for Democratic victory in any ntional election. The selection of Senator Jim Webb as Obama's VP running-mate is now imperative.

  —dbp1954 Read dbp1954's other letters
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