Reply #41: It has nothing to do with race. I'm from West Virginia too, born and raised

[Lyric]

in a West Virginia "gated community" (a.k.a. trailer park). I'm still poor, and I still live in a trailer park, although I'm currently in college to try and climb out of the poverty that I was raised in. Folks around here (at least in my experience with my neighbors, friends, and family members) aren't racist, but they believe that he's too far left. It's not ABOUT race. It's about the fact that Obama has the passionate and LOUD devotion of the far left. Obama could be purple for all that West Virginia cares; the point is that a lot of folks around here think he's just the liberal version of Bush, thanks to the insane amount of media coverage given to the far-lefties who support him the loudest. Average people here think he's further left than Ted Kennedy, and probably a "secret Muslim" to boot, which is unbelievable considering how much time Obama spent trying to get rid of that particular falsehood.

West Virginians are pretty centrist; unfortunately, lots of them see Obama as a tool of the far left, and they consider that to be just as bad as Bush, who ran as a "compassionate conservative" but turned out to be a tool of the far right. They want peace and a political cease-fire for a while, and they're afraid that electing someone who's obviously a darling of the Big-L Liberals like us will translate to four-to-eight more years of vengeful vitriol and political mud-flinging. The most liberal, progressive, intelligent candidate in the WORLD cannot do us a damned bit of good if the centrists think that he or she is too far left. They'll vote for "maverick" McCain because they respect his service and they like the fact that he has the reputation of a rebel against his own party. That translates to "moderate" in their ears, regardless of whether or not it's actually true.

This is also why Obama isn't going to win the general election without some drastic damage-control action, but nobody around here wants to hear it. Centrists (or at least perceived centrists) are the ones who win national elections. Obama IS a centrist, but his supporters make it look otherwise in the eyes of ordinary folks. As soon as we nominate Obama, the Repuke leaders nationwide will be jumping for freaking joy, because they know damned well that their "maverick" has just been handed the election on a silver platter--by us. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see a flood of Freepers here the day after Obama gets the nomination officially, gloating over our own idiocy, and probably claiming that the Lim-bots had been planning this all along--pretending they wanted Hillary to win when they really wanted Obama to win, because they knew he'd be easier to paint as some far-left nut. Hard to paint Hillary as far-left when our own party has spent the past year railing her for not being leftie *enough*.

If we're gonna lose because Obama is seen as being too far-left, we might as well have nominated poor Dennis. At least he really IS a Liberal Progressive. *sigh* I swear, right now I pray on a daily basis that someone uncovers something nasty about McCain right before the election, like that he used to eat babies for breakfast or something, because that is truly the only way Obama has a chance of winning unless we figure out a way to make America see that he is NOT some far-left fanatic.

Dammit all to hell, I'm so frustrated I could spit. You ever feel that way? That what seems like the most obvious, common-sense thing in the universe just gets brushed aside because it isn't what the crowd wants to hear? I'd rather be acknowledging this reality and then trying to figure out a way to fix it, but we can't DO anything about it until people freaking admit that the problem EXISTS. Argh.