America is going to move on without you wether you like it or not.

No, it isn't.

That's the point.

We don't have to win the rural counties to win, we just have to not lose by so much that it offsets the advantages in the urban areas.

But how?

I think Obama must somehow connect with rural citizens as a solid, respectable person they can trust. (Which I happen to think he actually is.) As part of this connection he has to be perceived as someone who is listening to them.

I think this is doable, but only by stepping away from the youth-based super-rally strategy. Think Oprah. Get on that show as much as possible. Be relaxed and hang with the Oprah crowd. Empathize but don't pander too much. Don't try to be a Messiah, but instead be a Young Man with a Plan. A plan to get us out of the endless war, and right an economy skidding out of control after these oil price shocks.

The author of this piece doesn't seem to know much about rural politics outside of Appalachia. For at least 100 years, farmers have been a reliably Republican voting block. They have tended to view themselves as business owners -- and not part of the traditional Democratic coalition. My Michigan grandparents (and great-grandparents), who ran a modest dairy farm throughout the 20th century, were loyal Republicans, going so far as to hang a photo of Nixon in their dining room during Watergate. They were also, I'm sorry to say, openly racist. They were not at all unusual in either of these respects. With their passing around the year 2000, a new generation (my cousins and their children) show some signs of openness to a different message. But it won't be an easy sell. That's not Obama's fault, or Clinton's, or the Democratic Party's. The Democrats haven't lost an old constituency, as Dee Davis argues, since these folks were never in their camp to begin with. But the Democrats do have an opportunity among these traditional Republicans who are not prospering in today's economy.

Obviously, Appalachian coal miners and the rural working class -- who are traditional Democrats -- are a different issue than the larger rural population nationally. It's meaningless to lump them all together as the author does.

The majority of folks in coal country know that there aren't many jobs left in coal mining, due to decades of automation and the advent (and regulators' acceptance) of environmentally-catastrophic mountaintop-removal mining. So, buying and burning more coal does not end up as a trickle of cash that rains down on to their homes. But the pollution does. So, as can be learned from much in this thread, there's more in the hills than people we can look down upon. Obama's handlers should realize this and work to get his head of of his butt on coal. He may never win West Virginia in November, but he could help get something started by getting to know the nascent progressive movement that has popped because of ecological disasters wrought from our over-reliance on coal to heat and cool our homes. States don't become red or blue in a heartbeat. As opposed to the reactive and often inflammatory stuff we're hearing here, the Democrats should start working with people who will see their way of thinking, instead of bemoaning losses by writing whole sets of people off.

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?

-- Amerigo

So then if 90% or even 80% of the women in America voted for Clinton, they would have been rationally looking for a President who understands our point of view. Too bad women are not sexist enough for it to have worked out that way.

I don't think either of you have quite hit the nail on the head. I think it's more that black Americans are more loyal liberal democrats. They voted in similar numbers for Bill Clinton in both 92 and 96 and also vote overwhelming for other Democratic candidates. (Black women, in fact, gave Clinton 86% of their vote in 96 and Gore captured a whopping 96%, helping him win states he wouldn't have otherwise won.)

I mean, you don't see them voting en masse for Alan Keyes, do you? It's more about the candidates policy. I think Obama being black is like the cherry on top.

I have to laugh at all this talk about the kinds of trouble Obabma is going to have with this constituency or that one. With the numbers that Obama is going to rack up come this November, who needs the ignoramous vote? This is a sure landslide election coming up, mark my word. With the country in a deep recession, due to Republican policies; and a hugely unpopular war, due to Republican leadership, Daffy Duck could beat McCain in November. This election looks like Kennedy-Nixon to me, and I don't think anything is going to prevent Obama from being our next President.

I think the answer to your post is: Ohio. Wealthier people skew more strongly toward the Republicans in Ohio than they do elsewhere. Democrats have to make up that ground somewhere, hence the importance of appealing to voters in southern Ohio, and industrial workers in northern Ohio with roots in Appalachia.

"Hillbilly" is not some quaint term for Appalachians; it is considered pejorative and derogatory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly

While it doesn't have the force of the "N" word, would Salon run an article headlined "Why don't those coloreds like Hillary?"

I think not.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/05/19/homeless.mom/index.html

Follow this link before CNN removes it. Remember when we Democrats were real Democrats (not democrats) and would get indignant about this kind of BS while hedge fund managers have our tax code in their back pockets?

We would not need CNN to tell us about the working poor.

And Christians were concerned with economic inequality??

This article about Hillbillies sounds like it was written by a liberal Karl Rove niche marketer.

Let get back to being DEMOCRATS.