The narrative arc of the final presidential debate did not work in John McCain’s favor. It was a line similar to the one traced by the Dow Jones Industrial Average in today’s trading session. McCain started quite well, getting off the most memorable line of the evening — that if Barack Obama had wanted to run against George Bush, he should have run four years ago. From there, I thought, things went downhill for him.
The big question leading up to tonight was whether McCain would swing for the fences, bringing up William Ayers and all the rest of the innuendo that his campaign has been spreading about Barack Obama, or whether he would forget all that and stick to the issues. The polls have been unambiguous in reporting that when McCain goes negative in these debates, he turns off independent voters. And on a day when the Dow spiraled down another 733 points, clearly people were in the mood to hear what these guys propose to do to rescue the economy.
But McCain is trailing, and he has been known to frequent establishments where gambling is permitted. He got into a rhythm of raising some doubt about Obama’s integrity in every response, and to do so he had to introduce themes and issues that I believe most voters considered distractions. The Ayers stuff — which, truth be told, Obama basically goaded him into bringing up — sounded like a personal attack based on events that happened when Obama was 8. McCain’s mention of ACORN was surely met with blank stares in living rooms across the land. And when he accused Obama of fomenting “class warfare,” I wondered if I had slipped through some kind of time warp…
Where I now live is actually closer to where I lived my childhood, or at least part of it. My father was in Management in a large woolen Mill for much of my childhood. While he was from a below blue-collar family himself, he’d moved up a big notch. But, since he was determined to teach me the joys of hard work and earning my own way, I spent my summers working with the rural people who drove into the small town around this Mill to get shift work. Were it today, the cars would’ve had confederate flags and stickers that said "nobama" or "go Sarah." I loved those summers actually. The pressure was off. I worked on hot rods and learned to smoke and drink. It wasn’t what I was put there to learn, but it must’ve had an effect, because in my retirement I moved to a place where a lot of those same people live.
All that red is the spaces between the cities. The exception is in the Southwest where some of the blue/purple represents overwhelmingly Hispanic and Native American voters and parts of the Southeast that are predominantly African-American [combined minority distribution shown on the right]. But in most of the country, Democrats are urban and Republicans are rural. At least, that’s the way it is right now. I guess I’m not supposed to be living where I live [except I like it here]. If you’re following the polls, that map on the left isn’t going to look that way this time. Nor, for that matter, are the other two [an example].
[…] still see it as a battle for States, the divisions are more diffuse – actually split mostly between Urban and Rural parts of the country [though that split encompasses race, culture, social status, and a variety of […]