The New Yorker examines Obama's 'Appalachian problem' through Southwest Virginians' eyes

The latest reportorial take on Barack Obama's prospects in the potentially pivotal state of Virginia, which may pivot on the votes of whites in the rural southwest corner of the state, comes from one of the best, Peter J. Boyer of The New Yorker. His 4,600-word story is titled "The Appalachian Problem," so it's also about West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, which collectively could decide the presidency. As Boyer perceptively notes, Southwest Virginia has "small hill towns that are nearer, in mileage and in spirit, to the old factory town of Ironton, Ohio, than to the glass office towers of northern Virginia."

At Lebanon High School in the coalfield on Sept. 9, Obama delivered "a performance that was as populist in theme and as personal in style as a Harvard lawyer could credibly deliver," Boyer reports. But it also included the "lipstick on a pig" line that John McCain's campaign said was a slap at Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. "Obama’s Virginia début as a rousing populist was hardly noticed nationally, having been overwhelmed by the kind of controversy that has come to characterize this campaign," Boyer writes. The speech included this passage on guns, which Boyer renders verbatim:

“I just want to be absolutely clear, all right? So I don’t want any misunderstanding, so that when we all go home and you’re talking to your buddies, and they say, ‘Aw, he wants to take my gun away,’ you heard it here. . . . I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away from you. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away.” Obama said he was for “common-sense gun-safety laws,” and repeated again, “I am not gonna take your guns away. So, if you wanna find an excuse not to vote for me, don’t use that one, because that just ain’t true. It just ain’t true!”

Obama's speech won "cascading cheers," Boyer reports. "But it was for a largely partisan crowd, which had come to the event already convinced, and it was hard to guess how it would play outside that gym." To help him figure that out, he paid the obligatory visits to David "Mudcat" Saunders, "who has made a profession of selling Democrats to rural Virginians," and U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (in illustration by John Cuneo), who has written a book and many articles about his Scots-Irish heritage, which largely defines the region. The story is as much about these two Democrats as Obama; they say his prospects there are less about race than most observers think, and more about culture.

Saunders "worries that Obama seems too professorial, too detached, to make headway with rural voters," Boyer reports."Obama’s 'Change' message, Saunders argues, is too abstract, too vague, for the region." Mudcat, typically, is profane: “Those people you were with today were screwed by the English in Scotland and Ireland way before they came over here and started getting screwed. They’ve been screwed since the dawn of time. And you know what? You ain’t gonna do anything with them, talkin’ about change. You know why? We’re all changed out. That’s all you ever hear, every election. Somebody’s gonna change some shit. Nothin’ ever changes." (Read more)

Meanwhile, Bluegrass music legend Ralph Stanley, long an active Democrat, is on the air with a radio ad for the Obama campaign, aimed at his home Southwest Virginia, The Associated Press reports. In a touch of irony (intended?), as Stanley speaks, a recording of his and his brother Carter's classic "Rank Stranger" plays in the background.

Obama's rural problem is an Appalachia problem

Much has been written about Barack Obama's problem with rural voters, but we haven't seen anything better than the piece this week by Jonathan Tilove, left, who has covered race for Newhouse News Service since 1991. Tilove focuses, appropriately we think, on Appalachia and its traditional culture, and uses a nicely varied set of sources to make his case.

"There are enormous regional differences in how whites vote, differences with deep historical roots," Tilove writes, noting how well Obama did in Vermont, the most rural state and the second-whitest. But Vermont was not settled by Scots-Irish, who with their neighbors from the northern English borderlands largely settled Appalachia. Their descendants' main problem with Obama may not be his race, but his approach.

"With his Harvard pedigree, mellifluous voice and high-minded talk of moving beyond the politics of confrontation, he is totally out of place in Appalachia," Tilove writes, quoting what Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, former rural adviser to John Edwards, told Politico the day before West Virginia's primary: "We've heard all this 'hope' and 'change' stuff since the English kicked the Scotch-Irish out in the 1700s. We're 'hoped' out. Nothing ever changes out here."

Tilove writes, "For those keeping score, seven of the 10 whitest states have held primaries or caucuses. The Illinois senator has won five and the New York senator two — New Hampshire by an inch and now West Virginia by a country mile. Stretch it to the 20 whitest states and the tally is 12 for Obama and five for Clinton, with three to go. If you limit it to primary and not caucus states, of the 20 whitest states, Obama has won four — Vermont, Wisconsin, Utah and Missouri — and Clinton has won five — New Hampshire, West Virginia, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio."

Citing Josh Marshall on Talking Points Memo, Tilove writes, "The map of Appalachia lines up pretty well with a map of counties where Clinton has won more than 60 percent of the vote. Tilove also cites Dana Houle, who has written about the Appalachia vote on Daily Kos: "Houle does not believe that Obama's difficulty in Appalachia does not necessarily translate into a broader or more permanent problem with white voters." Houle pits it this way: "Obama doesn't have a racial problem. It appears that Appalachia has an Obama problem."

Tilove also cites one of the most important books about ethnicity in America, Albion's Seed, by Brandeis University historian David Hackett Fischer. It teaches us that there are significantly different ethnicities among whites, such as the four main groups that came from Great Britain. "Obama appeals more to whites like those in New England ... who inhabit the lands first settled by the more intellectual and moralistic Puritans, and the places from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest where those New Englanders migrated," Tilove explains. "Voters in Appalachia are Andrew Jackson Democrats, for whom John McCain, with his Scots-Irish heritage and temperament, may appear to be the real McCoy."

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., says in his 2004 book Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, that his forebears formed the "core culture around which Red State America has gathered and thrived." But he thinks their descendants have common ground with the core Democratic constituency. He wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2004, "The greatest realignment in modern politics would take place rather quickly if the right national leader found a way to bring the Scots-Irish and African Americans to the same table." Tilove quotes that and notes, "It's an intriguing statement from a man who two years later was elected to the Senate and now is mentioned as a potential running mate for Obama." (Read more)

For an analysis that is much to the contrary, click here.

UPDATE, May 21: In the wake of Kentucky's May 20 primary, which produced results similar to West Virginia's, CNN analyst Bill Schneider picked up on the theories of Tilove, Saunders and Webb, an Appalachian who wrote a book about the Scots-Irish called Born Fighting. He said of Clinton, "She comes across as a fighter. Obama is running as a conciliator and a consensus-builder," and that is not working "with blue-collar and Appalachian whites who want a more combative style of politics … Obama’s betting that voters are fed up with the fight and want to try something different – for a change."

UPDATE, May 22: On Huffington Post, Jeff Biggers accuses the national media of superficial, simplistic reporting on the Appalachian vote. Appalachian Media Institute youth producer Ada Smith expresses concern on National Public Radio that stereotyping of Appalachian voters will make talking about racism and dealing with it more difficult. "I think we may be scared to admit that more Americans than just Appalachians have a race problem," she says. "Instead of questioning how we're going to deal with racism as a country, it's easier to make Appalachia the scapegoat, carrying the load." To listen, click here.

As Clinton focuses on getting rural support, some of Edwards's rural lieutenants come out for Obama

Now that he is out of the presidential race, former U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina isn't saying whether he favors New York Sen. Hillary Clinton or Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, but his most prominent rural spokesmen are already campaigning for Obama.

"Being a Southerner, being a rural American who's been completely devastated by the trade policies of the Clintons, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that he does not endorse Hillary Clinton," Edwards' chief rural strategist, David "Mudcat" Saunders of Virginia, left, told Norah O'Donnell MSNBC, as first blogged and transcribed in The Politico by Ben Smith.

Kevin Merida of The Washington Post picked up on that today, quoting Saunders as saying, "Hillary Clinton has about as much chance of beating John McCain as this Scots-Irish hillbilly has of becoming pope." Merida also got hold of former U.S. Rep. Ben Jones of Georgia, who played Cooter on "The Dukes of Hazzard" and campaigned with Edwards. Jones told Merida, "I've already enlisted in the Barack Obama campaign. The fight goes on. It's about the past and the future, and I'm with the future. I think the Clintons are the past." (Read more)

Beyond such prominent folks, though, Edwards's supporters are likely to scatter, Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, told Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times. "The Edwards base will feel 'cross-pressured,' Kohut said, with men more likely to support Obama and other lower-income voters probably moving to Clinton." Wallsten notes that despite Edwards' anti-poverty message, he "drew votes from an economically diverse bloc, mostly white men, who were just as likely to be rich as they were to be poor." (Read more)

In a non-bylined "Notes" column, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Clinton met privately with state House Minority Leader DuBose Porter, "who only last Sunday was hosting his candidate of choice, John Edwards. Now Edwards is gone. And Porter had a personal, face-to-face appointment with Hillary Clinton after her speech this evening. . . . But he said he would give any decision at least a few days, out of respect for Edwards."

Porter is publisher of The Herald Courier in Dublin, which editorialized this week about Edwards' weekend visit to Laurens County: "Many Sunday may stand on the opposite side from Edwards on the issues, but they wanted to become informed citizens first and foremost. . . . This country would be so much stronger and wiser if all citizens had the opportunity to meet political candidates up close as Laurens County did Sunday. But, that is a pipe dream. However, there is still no reason, in this age of technology, that the citizenry cannot be enlightened about a candidate." (Read more) But it's important to remember that many weekly newspaper readers don't read a newspaper daily, and that most of the television coverage about the race is superficial. So all news media need to pay attention and inform the voters.

Sen. Jim Webb: Trying to remake American politics through populism

Jim Webb, left, the Democrat elected U.S. senator from Virginia in a big upset last year, is "trying to remake the American electoral landscape from the ground up," beginning in Appalachia, Rolling Stone says in its June 14 edition, introduciing a good profile of Webb by Jeff Sharlet, who sets the scene with Webb's visit with coal miners and families in Lebanon, Va., after touring the Laurel Mountain Mine (photo from Webb's Web site).

"After 9/11, the old labels don't apply," Webb told Sharlet. "The country is just a different place. And now we can remake the party system in the United States if we can get Reagan Democrats -- or whatever you want to call 'em." Politics tends to be defined by presidents; Tom Wolfe, a friend and fellow author, "insists Webb will be president one day" and sees him "as a revolutionary -- a conservative who could succeed where the left failed," Sharlet reports.

Webb, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran who was Navy secretary under Ronald Reagan, "loves war so much he can't stand to see one bungled as badly as Bush has the one in Iraq," Sharlet writes. "There's only the cause driving this stupidity into the sand, not the needs of a nation. It's the work of the elites Webb has always hated." He quotes Webb: "America's top tier . . . are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools. Fewer still send their loved ones to war."

The elites of his ire were once liberals; now they are conservatives and businesses that profit from war. Webb was once a Republican; now he is a Democrat who models himself after Andrew Jackson, "another man of war who went to Washington on a populist crusade." (Read more) Webb wrote about Jackson in Born Fighting, a history of the Scots-Irish in America, which begins with Webb's roots in southwest Virginia.