Lets compare the 2 situations

1) Moral Conservative Republican post a statement stating "the uneducated people of South Bronx, South Central LA & New Orleans 9th Ward are holding America back, so why bother getting their vote? Why bother helping them when they're in trouble"

2) Compassionate Liberal Democrat post a statement stating "the uneducated people of West Virginia & Kentucky are holding America back, so why bother getting their vote? Why bother helping them when they're in trouble"

THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOSE 2 SITUATIONS!

The bigoted letters to Salon are starting remind me of those bigoted letters to right-wing FrontPage Mag

Barack Obama & John McCain needs to do a "Sista Souljah Moment" and tell the bigoted punks in their parties very sternly to grow up and start acting like adults!

"Having said that, if Obama gets the presidency he should and must work for them just as much as he works for any other American, because it's the right thing to do. It's just that simple and I believe he will do exactly that. Because he knows something about poverty, and way far more than Bush or McSame or the Theocons or the Neocons ever will."

He will. But no matter how much good his programs do in the region, those same folks (whipped up by their winger-pundit gods) will lambast his "socialism" every step of the way; scream about how much of their taxes are being wasted...and ignore all the good he'll do in favor of some "Vince Foster/Whitewater" bullshit. The way they treated Bill Clinton--trust me, those folks will treat Obama _way_ worse.

The pro-Obama media's constant mention of Hillary Clinton supporters as poor uneducated rednecks is a barrier to the unity that Obama supporters claim they wish to accomplish. Wouldn't it be refreshingly old fashioned for a "change" to hear Obama followers thank the good people of Kentucky for sweating and risking their lives for low wages and poor working conditions miles below the earth so pro-Obama people can have relatively cheap energy? They could say, "We're sorry your sons and daughters die in Iraq and Afghanistan in greater numbers than our sons and daughters. Thanks for choosing the military over college so we never had to enlist." You know. Stuff like that.I don't relate to Appalacian types myself, but I would never publicly and repeatedly disrepect them and then ask them to vote for me. Come on. They may not be "college educated", but they're sure not stupid.

If voting directly against your own self interest isn't stupid, it'll do until another definition comes along. Billary's been puttin' on her blue collar an' pretendin' to be jest one o' them there common folk. At 15 million a year, and a pampered life, that's transparently crap. But them hicks done bought it. Used to be, back when unions were strong and public schools taught civics and reading and all those old school things, that working people knew that Democrats were much more likely to act in their interest than were republikans. FDR was as patrician and "elitist" as you can get, but the working class knew he was on their side, and they were right. That's smart. Voting for the raygun revulsion and all the fascist crap since then: not smart. The dumbing down of America is not a theory. It's the fascist base, and hillary's hope. It's not our country's hope. In short, yes, hard working white people have voted like idiots.

Last I checked, it was up to a candidate to convince citizens to vote for him, not incumbent on citizens to explain why they didn't back a candidate.

In Kentucky, and to a lesser extant West Virginia, Obama didn;t even try. So much for being the candidate of all the people.

A better question might be, "Why do so many folks like Obama?"

Maybe poor white folks just can't afford what they see as the starry-eyed idealism of Obama backers.

You wondered in another post what person of color might run well in Appalachia. Answer -- Jesse Jackson did very well in WV and KY when he ran for president. Partly because he actually came here and talked to people about local issues in a folksy way. Someone else mentioned that Obama needs to get a little feistier. That would play very very well here. He needs to show some fire. I liked, for example, when he defended his wife against the Tennessee GOP. He needs to do more of that.

Obama doesn't need to come across as "one of our own." Kennedy didn't - couldn't have been more different, wrong accent etc. But he came and he acted like he cared. And he talked about actual problems not just vague platitudes.

Everybody's who's run here is an outsider, though Bill Clinton was the closest to not being, so I'd say an outsider can do well.

But why don't people here like Obama? They don't dislike him. They just DON'T KNOW HIM. He hasn't been around that long, really. I doubt if most people here knew he was on the planet until, say, six months ago. It needs more time.

In the New Deal era, Appalachian miners were part of the Roosevelt Popular Front which put black and white together under a common tent in search of economic justice for all. The tent was easier to inhabit, of course, because it was, after all, SEGREGATED back then, when blacks stayed at the back of the bus. When Johnson knowingly drove white Appalachian and Southern racists out of the New Deal tent for generations by signing his Civil Rights laws, the tent folded, with the whites moving into the all-white tent constructed by Nixon's Southern Strategy, on a frame erected by George C. Wallace, in an era in which the coal miner's children were manipulated at will by Republicans who knew then, as HIllary and McCain know now, that all you have to do to con these people into voting for you is remind them that your opponents is some demonic liberal who cares too much for blacks and too little for Hillary's favorite word, "YOU," meaning you good old "hard-working WHITE" person. YOU coal miner's daughter, you. Educated liberals--the elites--once loved to make common cause with "rednecks," because these poor whites were almost as oppressed and in need of social justice as blacks. It's not the fault of the white liberal elites that the Civil Rights Movement, which these elites could hardly not support, drove the wedge between them and rednecks, and did indeed create redneck resentments and hatreds which made rednecks realistically seem closer to the cruel haters of Deliverance than the oppressed victims they had seemed in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. It's a shame that the rednecks continue to be so easy to manipulate in ways that cause them, virtually every time, to vote for more conservative candidates whose economic policies will simply perpetuate the oppression liberals are committed to alleviating for all.