Hillary is coming to Oregon! And she's brining her message that rural America equals good America! Our people! Salt-of-the-Earth types. You know, Republicans!
There was a story on KLCC this morning (I can't find a link) about how some Hillary people from upper New York are campaigning in southern and eastern Oregon for Hillary. They are talking rural voter to rural voter. From what I heard, there has been way too much focus on the cities over the last few years and not enough focus on how people in rural America are suffering. Hillary will change all that.
For those of you who don't know your Oregon geography, southern and eastern Oregon is Republican country, save for the towns of Ashland, (sort of) Medford, and Bend. Hardcore Republican country. My dad, a 57 year-old mill worker in Klamath Falls, keeps his political opinions to himself around the plant because he would find himself very unwelcome around his compatriots should they become known.
From what I learned today, southern and eastern Oregon is Hillary country!
After talking with Hillary's people, who assured us that rural America is the real America, the reporter did the classic local cafe visit to see what the local Democrats had to say about Hillary. Of course, the reporter had to admit that she was unable to find a Democrat in a cafe in Jacksonville, but she was able to find a couple of independents and Republicans who were planning to vote for Obama.
Any, any lingering doubt I had about Obama went out the window. I cannot support a Democratic candidate who increasingly is saying that the Republicans are right about everything. It is one thing to try to paint your opponent as out-of-touch with the party. It is another entirely to buy into the notion that cities are the source of evil. There is way too much bullshit wrapped up in these arguments. Clinton knows exactly how bogus they are, but she's attempting to use them any way to win the nomination. "Whatever it takes!" is not the slogan I want my candidate to run under. That she and her people are pushing Michigan and Florida again is proof that "Whatever it takes" is their unofficial campaign slogan.
While I'm here, I'd also like to address the notion that it is really Obama that is running as "Republican-lite." What I see in Obama is talk about moving past difference, reaching across the aisle, there are no red states, no blue states, and, yes, it is possible to read this as an attempt to run down the middle, but I don't think that's it. I think he's trying, mostly successfully as far as I can tell, to redefine the terms of the debate. No longer will it be Republican values equal American values. Obama is trying to to say that Democratic values equal American values. He says things like this:
Security and opportunity, compassion and prosperity aren't liberal values. They are not conservative values. They are American values, and that is what we are fighting for in this election.And I think most people would say "yes, those are American values, I agree." And those are his values. And my values. How we get there? I think that Obama is much more likely to come up with ideas that are much closer to my political views than Hillary would, if Hillary would make that a priority. I cannot for the life of me shake the notion that Hillary would spend four years fighting with Rush Limbaugh and the vast right-wing conspiracy. That might not be her fault, but it's still not what I want for the next four years.
Hillary is running on the notion that a gas tax holiday is a good idea, that rural values are true American values, that good country folk are the true heart of the Democratic party. Obama is talking about changing America from the bottom up.
I agree with all of the text below and I desperately want a president will work in this spirit. Obama says he will, Hillary says she will do whatever it takes to get the nomination.
It's the idea that, while there are few guarantees in life, you should be able to count on a job that pays the bills, health care for when you need it, a pension when you retire, an education for your children that will allow them to fulfill their God-given potential, that's the America we believe in. That's the America that we know.
This is the country that gave my grandfather a chance to go to college on the G.I. Bill when he came home from World War II, a country that gave him and my grandmother the chance to buy their first home with a loan from the FHA.
This is the country that made it possible for my mother, a single parent who had to go on food stamps at one point, to send my sister and me to the best schools in the country on scholarships.
This is the country that allowed my father-in-law, a shift worker, a city worker at a water filtration plant in Chicago, to provide for his wife and two children on a single salary.
Now, this is a man who was diagnosed at the age of 30 with multiple sclerosis, who relied on a walker to get himself to work, and yet every day he went, and he labored, and he sent my wife and her brother to one of the best colleges in the nation.
And when he talked about his job, he expressed that it was important not just because it gave him a paycheck, but because it described his dignity, his self-worth, his self-respect. It was an America that didn't just reward wealth, but it rewarded work and the workers who created it.
That's the America I love. That's the America you love. That's the America that we are fighting for in this election.
2 comments:
hmmm... slowly but surely my undecidedness is turning into Obamaness.. good post..
i pretty much agree, and thank you for doing this round of bandwagon hauling. it is very yak-like of you, o avuncular beast of burden.
but notice that your essay hit it's crescendo with a section envisioning an America that believes in economic security and a wide, reinforced safety net. to me, that will always be more important than whether or not his ultraliberal, "we just need to re-rationalize this discourse" campaigning is "coherent." that's not the kind of "dissonance" that bothers me.
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