A reporter for Al Jazeera travelled to rural Kentucky and found voters are not ready to vote for a black candidate, in the primaries or in the fall. The downtrodden people of the region fear competition with a fellow economic underclass plus retribution for historical wrongs.
As one honest Kentuckyan in the video says:
The white people has put the negroes in the back of the bus for years, and if we’re not careful we’re gonna be in the back of the bus and they’re gonna be in the front.
It’s probably not possible to reach these voters with a candidate like Obama, but if there’s any message at all that may resonate it’s one of economic populism:
- improve job creation
- penalize the export of jobs
- emphasize the sanctity of Social Security
- advance tax policies that promote economic equality over increasing the incomes of those already at the top of the heap
- increase the minimum wage
- provide health care for all
- improve public education
- remove economic barriers to advanced education
- provide better funding for public infrastructure and transportation development
- support the right to unionize
- crack down on corporations that exploit undocumented immigrant labor in a race to the bottom of wages benefits and worker protections.
That would be for a start. Maybe a running mate like Jim Webb might not hurt either.
hat tip Lawyers Guns and Money
Also at dailykos and The V Effect.
As John Grisham put it during an interview recently with Bill Moyers, people in the south tend to vote rich and live poor. While KY and WV may be border states, it would seem that this evaluation has broad validity and probably also affects northern states, if to a lesser extent.
…although not an unexpected one…that it takes an Arabic/islamic network to tell the plain truth about America.
Lord!!!
Any of us who can pass for white working class could find out the same thing in any primarily white working class area of America, from the scuffling exurbs where the white servants have been banished…YOU know, alla’ them bus drivers and cops and firemen and all…to the country and western enclaves from Maine through the redneck Riviera (The Florida panhandle), from upper Michigan through lower Mississippi and from Washington State, Montana and Nebraska right on down into Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
ANY of us.
Only…almost none of us do so.
Instead we parrot the Olbermann jack-off line about how “silly” these people are.
Lissen up, folks…they may be silly (No sillier than the soft, moody middle class leftiness clones as far as I am concerned) but THEY VOTE AND THEY MOSTLY ALL HAVE GUNS.
How “silly” is THAT?
Go into Joe Bageant land; walk into a white working class bar; try some Keith Olbermann/Daily Show snark at about 10PM any night of the week and see what it’ll getcha.
It’ll getcha ASS kicked is what it’ll getcha.
Bet on it.
And I keep getting this elitist shit here when I suggest that Hillary Clinton’s mere presence on the ticket would immediately ameliorate some 10% or 15% or 20% of this level of opposition to Obama’s candidacy when 10%, 15%, 20% will be all you really need to absolutely, positively cement the deal. A deal that will allow us to survive as a nation and possibly as a species as well.
Y’all are too chickenshit to go out and simply a look at what is up here.
From sea to shining sea.
Wake the fuck up.
Or take the chance of losing.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
Ah, Joe Bageant – he’s wonderful. He lays the thinking all out. A true son of the earth with the ability to articulate the reality in all its absurdity, with empathy and truth.
Hillary not so much. I don’t believe her champion-of-the-white-working-man schtick for a second and wouldn’t trust her on the ticket. She’ll sell working class interests out in a heartbeat the moment they became an impediment to her own power interests or those of her corporate backers. Bet on that.
I am not talking about what she will or will not do if elected VP.
I am talking about winning the election for Obama.
First of all…I do not “trust” ANY elected politician. Except to do what is necessary to BE elected. And of course to stay elected. That is Job One for any of them.
I know this on the evidence of 40+ years of watching the game in person and on the up close and personal witness of relatives on both sides of my family who were fairly high up in that game as long as 120 years ago.
Secondly…what do you mean, you do not trust Hillary as VP. What do you think she’s gonna do, stage a fucking coup d’état!!!??? The VP does NOTHING that he or she is not permitted to do by the President.
Please.
Make some sense here. Or at least be honest.
You hate HRC because…well, don’t get into “because”. I am tired of hearing parroted mass media talking points.
Lame.
AG
P.S. Glad you like Joe.
Me too.
Now try to understand the people about whom he is talking.
They’re not going to vote for Obama.
They WILL…some of them, anyway…vote fer Mama. Enough of them to guarantee the election to the Dems, at any rate.
Simple as that.
Duh.
“Trust”?
Do you really trust Obama?
Please.
He’s a pro too.
Bet on it.
Trust is not the point per se. I believe at least some people go into politics in order to enact an agenda. Some even manage to hold onto the drive to enact that agenda once they’re elected. I think Obama has an agenda. I think HRC may once have had an agenda that had to do with something beyond herself and the taste for power she and her wing of the party have acquired over the past two decades but I don’t believe that that’s still the operative principle for her, if it ever was. All you have to look at is what they created and has been their power base: the DLC.
I don’t hate her, I just don’t want her and Bill (especially Bill!) with their grubby little hands anywhere the levers of power any more than necessary now. Their time has come and gone. They’ve done what they did and it was what it was, and now it’s time to move on to the next thing, which may or may not be better.
Just because certain demographics voted for her in the primary for prez doesn’t mean they’ll vote for her in the GE as VP. If they really don’t like Obama – enough to not vote for him – her being on the ticket will hardly help. And other potential VPs can attract that demographic as well if not better than HRC can, like Webb for instance.
Webb?
That’s bullshit.
By the time people outside of his immediate area figure out who he is, the election will already be over.
This is branding, A.A. Nothing more.
Bring a new cereal into the ring with Cocoa Puffs or whatever other junk the slurple sleeple are eating and it’s a year of heavy advertising before it even starts to move off the shelves.
Ditto politics in this media-dominated world.
Branding.
She is a recognizable brand and she will sell on that alone.
And “clank” goes the lever on the Dem side.
A million times.
Which is all you need to win.
Watch.
AG
And Auntie Nancy says no.
When did Olbermann–or any predominate pundit or blogger–classify these types of voters as “silly”?
I also don’t understand why you treat this news as a new-found revelation by the media. In my own lifetime, it was pretty well established that George Wallace built his political career on these types of voters.
Nor do I understand why you celebrate those voters who are racist or want to pander to them by including Hillary on the ticket. If I heard some of their comments correctly, no way could they ever vote for Obama anyway.
Not to mention the political reality that Hillary’s high negatives among other classes of voters would probably offset any gains among these racist voters.
BTW: Your broad sweep of chickenshit is pretty offensive. I’ve spent a lot of time in rural states, living, working, and on elections, including a fair amount of time in WV itself.
That just makes me sad.
Arthur my dear, it’s entirely possible that you are wrong.
Where do you live, now – New York City?!!!
We’uns watch TV and we know a lot about New York City. Sometimes we wonder why y’all elected Hillary for your senator.