I'm a life-long liberal, raised by liberals in the West, back when the West was progressive. I grew up with dual "citizenship" in small-town Wyoming and big-city Colorado Springs. Through circumstances -- love leads you funny places -- I've spent the last 10 years in a very small town in rural Louisiana. In the last few months, I've seen and heard some things around my little town that indicate John McCain's Palin gambit is not going to be as effective as some people think it will be. If he's counting on pulling the wool over the eyes of "small town America," it's going to be harder than he thinks.
My town has about 800 people within the city limits, maybe 300 more outside of town proper. We've got a Piggly Wiggly, two gas stations and a shrimp processing plant. Everyone here (except for me and my unrepentant pagan ways) is devout Baptist, AME or Catholic. People hunt, fish, and most of them work menial jobs, own small businesses or commute to other towns to work -- my husband commutes to New Orleans, where he's from. There's a good medium-sized university, Southeastern Lousiana University, one town over, which is where most kids who actually make it out of high school and can afford to pay tuition attend.
You'd think this would be prime McCain/Palin country, but you'd be at least partially wrong. The tide is turning.
Anecdote #1: A local guy just painted our house. Nice guy, owns his own handyman business, with him and his 19-year-old son as employees, his wife and younger son pitching in with big jobs. He's only 40, life-long Republican, married his high school sweetheart when he was 19. When it takes three days to paint a house, you get to talking. One afternoon he says, out of the blue, "What do you think about this Obama guy?" Not being the shy type I give a little speech about why Obama would be great for the country, what his policies are, etcetera. He says, "Yeah. I'm a little worried about the black thing, but you know what? I can't vote for McCain. He's just George Bush all over again. I just can't."
Then he leans a little closer and speaks more quietly. "You know what I think? The day after McCain gets in, they're going to come for my boys. No way around it. There's gonna be a draft and there's no way we can stop it."
And it's not just him. At least two or three times a week I hear people talking about the draft. At the grocery store, at the gas station, at the library. It's not an "if" around here, it's a "when" and it scares people to death. If you think people aren't tuned into the wars, you haven't spent enough time in rural small town America, where everyone personally knows someone who has been killed or maimed.
Anecdote #2: Took my son to get his driver's license the other day and there are a few people in the line next to us. 40-something guy in shrimp boots, faded jeans and a Hawaiian shirt sits down at the desk and says, "While I'm getting my license, can I change my voter registration? I can't be a Republican anymore." The lady behind him chimes in: "Yeah, can we do that today?"
Anecdote #3: Shopping in the Wal-Mart in the next town over, there's a woman with a package of hamburger in her hand, and she's just looking at it. Even at the Wal-Mart, a 2.25 lb package of hamburger is almost $7. She glances over at me briefly and bites her lip, then puts the hamburger back. "I can't afford that," she says simply, and walks away.
Anecdote #4: I stopped by the little convenience store/gas station yesterday to pick something up. There was a new clerk behind the counter, in his mid-fifties with the word "TRAINEE" on his name tag. He owns a local machine repair business out of his home. Guy in front of me says, "What are you doing here?" The clerk says, "I can't afford to keep my business if I don't get another job." He points to his name tag, "It's either this or starve."
My turn up at the counter, I ask him what he thinks about the election. He snorts. "Republicans are all a bunch of liars. They don't care, they think we're stupid. I'm not voting for 'em."
Now, there's no assurance that these people are voting for Obama when they get in that booth, but maybe they'll stay home. And maybe even a few of them will pull the lever for the good guys. But one thing is for sure, things are changing, slowly but surely.
It's fine to be an idealogue when things are good, when you can feed your kids and pay your mortgage and go to the doctor and fill your car. But abortion and guns and gays tend to fade a little bit into the background when you lose your business, when you can't afford to drive to the next town to look for work, when you know in your heart it's only a matter of time till John McCain comes and drags your kid to war, when you can't even buy a fucking pound of hamburger becasue you don't have enough money in your wallet.
The people in these little towns may not be well-educated, but they're not stupid. They're starting to realize they've been played and are going to be played again and again until they stand up and say "Enough." Some of them are saying it right now.
On a personal note: I'm a nice pagan/liberal girl who somehow ended up married to a knee-jerk Republican/devout Catholic boy. We don't talk politics and religion much, because we'd kill each other if we did. But last night after Sarah Palin's "speech" my lovely, misguided husband said to me, "All right, you win, I'm voting Obama."