As Obama looks for rural votes in swing states, Southwest Virginia is a key area, and a tough one

(Map from NationalAtlas.gov) As Democrats begin their convention, they wonder if Barack Obama can make any inroads among rural voters -- particularly in Appalachian areas of the big swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Almost all of Appalachian Virginia lies in the 9th Congressional District, and with Gov. Tim Kaine not on the ticket, the state's 13 electoral votes could be decided by John McCain's margin there, Laurence Hammack writes in The Roanoke Times.

"Democrat Rick Boucher, the district's longtime representative in Congress, believes Obama must capture at least 45 percent of his district's vote if he is to become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Virginia since 1964," Hammack writes. Obama has four campaign offices in the district, but that could be a tall order; Obama lost the 9th to Hillary Clinton by 32 percentage points. (It was the only district she won; Boucher supported Obama.)

Hammack's 2,740-word story starts with the typical examples of people in the district blaming race for Obama's poor showing and poor prospects, and those who say they believe he is a Muslim. But he asks a good question: "When residents of such a predominantly white area say they can't vote for a Muslim, could that be another way, perhaps a more acceptable way, of saying they can't vote for a black?"

"As much as I wish that I could not say this, the realistic part of me agrees that yes, [Muslim] is to some degree a code word" for race, said Stephen Mooney of the Appalachian Studies Program at Virginia Tech. He grew up in Dickenson County, on the Kentucky border, which gave only 12 perecent of its votes to Obama. But he said it's more about culture than race. In Appalachia, he said, "There is a very ironic fear of the 'other,' the different, which is ironic because mountain people have long been perceived nationally as one of the great American 'others.' So you would think that mountain people would be very careful not to 'other' other people [including Obama, he said]. But at a very deep-set level, there is culturally a fear ... to venture into the unknown."

When Doug Wilder was elected Virginia's first black governor in 1989, he won 48 percent of the vote in the 9th District, but he was able to spend much more time campaigning there than Obama can. They key, Democrats say, is bridging the cultural divide with economic empathy. "Appalachia, ideologically, is at war with itself," Mooney told Hammack. "You have a deep-set conservatism and a deep-set liberalism. Co-existing simultaneously you have a region that has rebelled against American political and economic ideologies and a region that has probably the most deeply felt sense of patriotism than any other place in the nation." (Read more)