One of those others, Dee Davis recently wrote about this topic from a true insider's perspective, she is the president of the Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg, KY. One of Ms. Davis' points is how little Obama visited states like West Virginia and Kentucky and how all of those visits were in the larger, urban areas of the state.
I think this links back a bit to my earlier post this week, Family Ties. What we are not comfortable with or what we are ashamed of we tend to try and avoid. Now I know that Obama's mother struggled financially at times, but I don't think he is avoiding these rural voters because he identifies with him from his own past that he is ashamed of. Rather I think that as Davis indicates in her article, he just isn't that comfortable in these parts of the countries.
That is something he has got to get over. Again, Davis makes the point that these voters are ripe for the plucking—they have suffered a lot from the recent economic issues and according to polls are not happy with the direction we are heading as a nation. Obama's best bet is to get out there, show his face and talk to these people, give them a reason to believe in him, because if he doesn't, they likely won't come to him on their own.
1 comment:
first, love the play on the sound of music : )
second, i see both sides of the appalachia thing (being a native and all). i have wv family members who would never, in a million years vote for obama simply because he's black. granted it's my grandpa and he's over 80. but i think there are still pockets (sometimes large) of people in wv who feel the same. then there is my grandpa (who now lives here) who is as democratic as the hubs is republican and she'd vote for obama because he is black. of course she also still swears oj is innocent.
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