Analyzing the recent massacre

There is no doubt about it: When 91 % of your peers think one way, and you, for whatever reason, think another way, to say that you are in a distinct minority, well, that is a classic British understatement. The Brits, you know, never really let on as to just how dire a situation is in their descriptions of it. World War Two, for instance, might have been called a “bit of a dust-up”. In the same vein, when no more than seven voters see things your way in your precinct, you might be tempted to panic and call that a “bit of a sticky wicket, eh wot?”

If it hasn’t become apparent by now, I am talking about those Eastern Kentuckians who bucked the trend to vote for Barack Obama. Yes, I believe I was onto something when I foresaw the trend here. I knew that not too many voters would be behind the freshman Senator from Illinois. What I didn’t know was just how few of us would be pushing the lever by, or twirling the knob to get the cursor to his name to register a vote for him.

When the vote totals were announced the next morning, for a minute or two, I felt as though I was living in one of the old republics from the Soviet Union. There it wasn’t that big of a deal when the winning candidate got well over 90% of the vote total. And they were big on the secret ballot, too. Perhaps I had best explain what I mean.

Ivan Ivanov Ivanovich, good Soviet citizen and Communist Party member, went to cast his ballot during an election held in the halcyon days of the USSR, and when he got there, and once he had established his identity (you had to do that, even there), he was given a sealed envelope and instructed to place that envelope into the ballot box. On his way to the ballot box, he began to open the sealed envelope, but came to screeching halt when he was commanded to do so by the party functionary in charge of the voting.

“What do you think you are doing, Comrade Ivanovich?!?” “I just wanted to see who I was voting for.” Ivanovich timidly replied. “Don’t be stupid!” the party boss said, as he took the envelope from him and placed it in the ballot box. “It’s a secret ballot!”

Of course, the results from Kentucky mirrored those from West Virginia. In the Mountain State, Hillary Clinton won that primary by 67%-26% over Obama. Clinton’s highest vote totals seem to have come from the southern part of West Virginia, where she garnered, in some of these counties, some 80+ % of the vote. In Kentucky, it was the New York Senator with almost as wide a margin, except in the Bluegrass State, Hillary got only 65% of the vote. (Obama got 30% of the vote, what with help from Lexington and Louisville.) In those counties that she won by the widest margin, however, here she got over 90% of the vote, or dern close to it. Coincidently, many of these counties are from our region.

And wouldn’t you know it? The national media, or in one instance, a parody of the national media, had to portray the results of these elections, where the white, blue-collar workers of our region voted so overwhelmingly for Hillary, as having racial overtones. Take the Daily Show, with John Stewart. They showed some really goofy statements made by West Virginia voters following that primary. (The Daily Show’s editors must have had to work really hard to find them, not unlike those determined individuals who rooted out a few statements by Jeremiah Wright over his 35 years as a pastor.) One elderly woman volunteered that she had voted for Hillary because she had had “enough of that Hussein!”

Having heard her seemingly confuse Barack Hussein Obama and Saddam Hussein, Stewart brought out a large bottle of what had once been Jack Daniels. The JD was gone, in its place was tea or cola, or something. Stewart showed surprise at this statement by faking a spit take. That is, he took a swallow of what was supposed to be JD, and swallowed it, then did a dry spit take. (This shows his good taste as he refused to “waste” Tennessee sipping whiskey.)

Well, that was comedy, even if much of his audience took it to be a reproach against the “backwoodsy types” shown in the interviews. And before anyone begins to take this personally or seriously, everyone needs to realize that this wasn’t the only instance of a certain demographic group voting en masse for one party or one candidate. It is just a couple of incidents where white voters have been cited for doing so. The African-American population has, many times, voted in the same percentile, and ironically enough, for white Democratic candidates, and no one except the GOP got upset. Al Gore, for instance, overall, won over 90% of the votes from this group in 2000, which may be why he won the popular vote that year.

More than being indicative of racial feelings directing the voting patterns in Kentucky and West Virginia, the primary results here may reflect just how little time Obama spent trying to get any votes. In today’s Appalachian, for instance, there is an article that explains how his staff has been trying to save money. Had he spent some time, and maybe a little of that money, he might have been able to get a few more votes. And perhaps, instead of a blowout, the results might have been closer to two other states where blue collar workers chose Clinton over Obama; Ohio and Pennsylvania. In each of these states, where Obama or somebody, loosened the purse strings a bit, Clinton’s winning margin was more like 10%, instead of 35-40%.

Well, fortunately, all mistakes aren’t always fatal. Should Obama ultimately be able to claim the nomination, he can look back on what was a “bit of a dust-up”, and take a valuable lesson from it. That is, never take any one group or any one thing for granted in an election. It was Obama who has said that we are not “red states” or “blue states”, or Republicans or Democrats, but Americans. Go for the gusto, then, even in those states you are supposed to lose, or with those groups that are supposed to vote against you. In the end, you could only be pleasantly surprised.