Dear Hillary Clinton:
Since you like to bombard me with e-mail and recorded phone calls, I know you must be interested in me. After all, I’m a lower-middle-class (family income around $50K) white guy living in West Virginia… working a part-time teaching job (I got laid off a couple of years ago as a well-paid computer consultant to the IRS and folks in their sixties aren’t readily re-hired in that field).
I live in Shepherdstown, where you visited on Tuesday. I didn’t get close enough to see you (parking was a real drag and driving around looking for a spot on $3.71 per gallon gas was a real bummer), but I know you were really there talking to me.
I’ve been listening to your USA Today interview quote on TV yesterday and today… you know… where you distinguished between hard working white guys who you appealed to and Obama didn’t. Frankly, I thought we had gotten beyond thinking about ourselves as black or white this year. I went to an Obama support meeting here in Jefferson County last month and there were members of several racial groups there… and many of us were white (I think we were all hard working, too, but I’m not sure about Asians or Hispanics or the African-Americans who were there… you’ll have to let me know.)
We get to do early voting in the WV Primary and I’m afraid to tell you that I already voted last weekend. And I voted for Obama. Of course that was before you let me know how hard working white folks were supposed to vote.
So I guess what I want to say is “Sorry”. And could you have your folks stop calling me and e-mailing me? I feel bad enough as it is.
– Blue Collar Bill