The gun-toting, right-to-life populism (government is the problem, not the solution) that will be espoused by the McCain-Palin ticket will, I think, prove to be very well-received in rural areas of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nevada, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, southern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia.
Am I worried? You bet. We Democrats tend to be very urban-centric in our strategies, focusing on metro areas (cities and suburbs) that absolutely contain the most registered voters in the majority of these states.
However, and ironically because of the power of the change message this time around, I believe rural areas, especially in swing states, will play a disproportionately large role in determining the outcome of this election.
For the past 28 years, my wife and I have had a house in Oconto County, a rural area about an hour and 15 minutes north of Green Bay, home to a lot of blue-collar workers and farmers, most of whom hunt and fish avidly and would consider themselves populists. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing McCain-Palin will be extraordinarily popular in Oconto and counties just like it across Wisconsin and other states.
Yeah, I’m thinking that Obama and Biden aren’t going to get much traction in blue-collar, red-state America if they don’t manage to turn off the flamethrowers their supporters have turned on Palin and those disposed to like her. Just last night I tuned into a left-wing radio show here in St. Louis to hear a tirade calling Palin “white trash” and her supporters “trailer trash.” The rest of the commentary was similarly conciliatory and well-mannered.
Not that the vitriol is limited to the domestic port side…here’s what the taxpayers of Canada are subsidizing via the CBC in the person of Heather Mallick:
[blockquote]She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn’t already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America’s name inside and outside its borders… Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are… the stolidly Republican ladies branch of Citizens for a Tackier America… rural, loud, proudly unlettered (like Bush himself)… Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade’s woman… Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the “pramface”…[/blockquote]