Frightening analysis of Kerry's problems in West Virginia

[tomfodw]

This is a very long article from the English-language Web edition of Le Monde Diplomatique in France. There are some parts where the writer is too uncritical of what he is told, but all in all, it is a frightening look at just how out of touch the red and blue states are with each other. The stuff about how West Virginians fear environmentalism and environmentalists really had me shaking.

What’s the matter with West Virginia?

The race between the presidential election candidates in the United States is close. George Bush’s policies in his first term mainly benefited the rich but surprisingly he is most popular in the poorest states, which were former union and Democrat strong holds.

By Serge Halimi

SOME of the most down-at-heel homes in the remotest villages of West Virginia sport posters for George Bush and Dick Cheney, although their occupants surely do not expect to gain from any further reductions in capital gains tax. We see a lot of "We support our troops" signs. We meet a brother and sister in the state capital, Charleston, who will vote Republican for "religious reasons"; yet the brother is a schoolteacher and he has no health insurance.

:::snip:::

In Charleston we talked to a former Democrat, now a keen Republican supporter. He was very excited to have attended a very similar meeting at another venue, and said: "Bush, when you see those photos of him on his ranch down in Texas, with jeans and a cowboy hat, that’s genuine. I was in Beckley when he was there a couple weeks ago, and that crowd, 4,000 people, they loved the man. They loved the man. Personally. You had to have been there to know what I mean, and you can’t manufacture that, you can’t fake it. They love him. They connect with him, they think he understands them, and I think he does, too."

:::snip:::

"Genuine"? I wonder how many of them have a clue that Bush bought his "ranch" in 1999 as a prop for his first presidential run!

As I said, frightening. Is there any way to reach these people? My dad worked for the Clothing Workers Union and knew plenty of people in the United Mine Workers. John L. Lewis was as staunch a Democrat as one could be. In my lifetime (I'm 49), West Virginia was as solid a "blue" state as there was. What happened? It's not just guns, abortion, and environmentalism. It's not just shaggy-haired hippies burning the flag in the 1960s. What happened? And how do we reverse it?