Since I live in Pittsburgh, I do not have the experience to discuss the W VA citizens voting tendencies but,I am painfully familiar with the Pittsburgh suburbs and the voting habits of those who fled the city for affordable housing and to flee the city's black population. Racism is rampant in some pockets even those areas where large swaths of voters are employed in great paying union jobs. During political discussions with neighbors and those fortunate industrial job holders, the obvious race issues arise and some are very proud to be a racist. Even when I remind the union guys that the GOP would topple unions out of existance if they had enough votes, the union guys are non plussed. Conclusions I've made are blatant ignorance and the inability to question or reason are inherent.

Another liberal problem is the 92 per cent of political talk shows which are run, hosted and manned by GOP loving radical right winged nuts, whose hate and vicious lies win over the sad, ignorant uninformed registered Democrats who last voted for the Democrat, John F. Kennedy. While writing this, I am listening to WPTT 1360 with Lynn Cullen hosting. Lynn is the only Pittsburgh liberal host and about 5 calls from Dems who will vote for McCain if Obama is the Dems candidate.

90% of blacks voted for Obama, many of who are uneducated, and live in inner cities. This is a symptom of biased bigotry resulting in voting for someone only because of their race. Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black (no pun intended).

This is because most blacks feel that they have suffered in some sense through being black (whether this is true or not) and that if Obama is in the White House, there will be a president who understands how it feels to be black in America.

No mystery about that.

Don't we all want a president who we hope will understand our point of view?

"The problem with socialists is they conflate education with intelligence."

I'm seeing that there are votes worth winning and some people, like the above, you're never going to convince. When I used to do grassroots campaigning they called these people "potential givers" and "non givers". If there are voters in this state who only watch Fox News but who will change their mind after visiting a website, that's worth looking into.

As I've said before, these people themselves are not the problem-Obama's got the skills to reach out to every voter he stands a chance of convincing (and to gain the respect of many who will ultimately still vote against him). The Clinton Campaign and its die-hard "Democrat" supporters are. They missed a golden opportunity to campaign for the Democratic Party platform against McCain (knowing they would win handily whatever they did) but instead they fanned those anti-Obama prejudices into a bonfire just to post some symbolic landslides. Like Nebraska leaving its starters in and running the total up in the third and fourth quarter even when Northwestern was already vanquished.

People in the Appalachians are, wait for it... RACISTS. They have been for quite some time, you know, and they have had no reason to change. Until and unless people start considering racism unacceptable in those parts (it's quite acceptable, and is still the norm), that's not likely to change.

Dee Davis' piece begs the question: Why, if Democrats don't pay much attention to this area, do its inhabitants almost automatically default to the Republicans, who also pay little attention to it, and whose policies are indeed harmful to it? A large number of Appalachians have no health care coverage, and yet Republicans oppose universal health care coverage. They wish to privatize Social Security, which would be disastrous to the majority of Appalachians. They support mountaintop removal mining. They consistently wage war against the working people and their only real representatives, the trade unions. They disproportionately send their citizens to war. Indeed, the Republican Party is the party of the elites, by any definition of the word! So why is it that Democrats have to work for the Appalachian vote and Republicans don't? That's the real issue, and Davis is bending over backwards to avoid it.

If the rural/Appalchian folks are so self-reliant and distrustful of government, why do a significant number of them rely on government assistance? Sorry, but something doesn't compute here. I've seen and read interview after interview where folks in poor, rural areas talk about how government doesn't do enough for them, then they turn around and vote for someone like Bush who wants even smaller government. It's insane.

Thanks to Dee Davis for standing up a little for rural and mountain folks. But can we please eliminate the epithet "hillbilly" from polite discourse? I realize Davis is using the term ironically, but still.

Jocular epithets for African-Americans ("coon", "shine", "jig", "darky", etc.) have all been thrown into the dustbin of history, along with those for other ethnic groups.

Salon would never run a headline about "camel jockeys" in the Middle East, let alone "Hymies", "slant-eyes", or "beaners". The only Americans whom it is still acceptable to belittle with such terms are the Euro-Americans of the South and the Mountains--"hillbillies", "red necks", etc.

It's time to give these proud people some respect.

The "hillbillies" don't like Obama because they know a con-man when they see one.

-- dthornton9

Well, if they voted for Bush twice, then obviously they DON'T know a con man when they see one, GOP troll op boy. But who cares about your paid-for opinion here anyway?

I disagree with those who think Obama should blow off the rural vote. I think the Dems have done themselves a disservice by not engaging the GOP there to get the message out that hey, these nice GOPers are screwing you financially to the point where even your grandkids have no hope. But then the Dems have done them an even bigger disservice by forgetting who they were as a party and selling out to big business, letting unions go by the wayside and forcing these folks to "cling" to their God and guns, because the Dems haven't given them anything else for them to grab.

I don't doubt for a second that Obama faces some problems here, but by visiting, talking the talk (that goes beyond shooting pool or bowling -- badly) and selling them on the policies that drive the vision behind his campaign, enough will come around to make the difference. He has the programs that go beyond mere pandering and the argument that the GOP has sold them a big ol' stinking batch o' dog piss; now he has to sell them. So far, that's been one of his campaign strengths.

I'm optimistic, but the proof will be in the puddin'.