Obama keeps seeking and getting rural votes, confounding Clinton and old notions of rural racism

His sponsors at RuralVotes having raised enough money to keep him on the job for a few more weeks, Al Giordano is busily churning out posts for his rural-oriented presidential campaign blog, The Field. He's a Democrat who has trended toward Barack Obama and away from Hillary Clinton, but his observations are usually worth considering, especially two today.

Under the headline "Rural America: To Campaign or Not to Campaign There," he writes, "The contrast between the two Democratic presidential candidates’ approaches to campaigning – “50-state strategy” vs. “50 percent plus one” – has become crystal clear. While Clinton skipped over rural states like Kansas, Nebraska, Idaho, and now gives even a larger state with a sizeable rural population, Wisconsin, short shrift, Obama’s itinerary tomorrow in three of that state’s rural counties offers an indication of the very different approaches each would take to general election campaigning." (The link is to a story in the Fond du Lac Reporter.)

Giordano contrasts Obama's schedule with a remark Clinton made last night: “We’re never going to carry Alaska, North Dakota, Idaho. It’s just not going to happen.” He notes that North Dakota has two Democratic senators and argues, "To write off so much of the country is to abandon Democrats running for Congress, and will only result in having a less governable situation if one does become president."

Then Giordano went after Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell for telling the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “You’ve got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate.” Giordano writes that was "a very clear demonstration of how certain northern liberal Democrats think, both about rural voters, and about someone running for president that happens to be African-American." (For the Post-Gazette column by Tony Norman, click here.) "Rendell’s statement was a bigger insult to rural white Pennsylvanians even than to African-Americans," Giordano writes. "He’s saying, “You hicks are the bigots, and I’m not, but I’m happy to exploit your ignorance.” And on April 22, rural Pennsylvanians will give the governor a lesson in civics."

Well, perhaps, if such a lesson can be discerned from election results 11 weeks later. Not all of Pennsylvania's "conservative whites" live in rural areas, but those areas are known for their conservative voting habits. Rendell estimated that if his last Republican opponent, former football star and TV personality Lynn Swann, had been white, his margin over Swann would have been 17 percent instead of 22. Our experience at covering politics tells us that's not a bad estimate, especially from an old pro like Rendell, and national polls still find that 5 percent or so of voters say they won't vote for a black candidate. The actual percentage is probably higher, because most Americans also tell pollsters that many if not most white voters who say they would have no problem voting for a black candidate for presidential candidate actually do have reservations about casting such a vote.

But at the same time, we suspect that many Americans of a certain age, who have regretted for years how they first behaved or felt during the civil-rights movement, would welcome a chance to cast a cathartic vote for an African American like Obama, who inspires partly because he offers the chance for final healing of such old wounds. And while Clinton seems to do better among rural voters at large, Obama is doing better among them than some old pros like Ed Rendell probably expected. We think that and other phenomena show that rural racists are gradually becoming marginalized, and are no longer emblematic of rural America.