A few weeks ago, an article in the New York Times explored the political leanings of voters in blue-collar Latrobe, Pennsylvania as the presidential primary slowly approaches. Many of Latrobe’s citizens were only too eager to explain why they would not be voting for Barack Obama:
“The Second Amendment is too important to me.”
“How can I vote for a president who won’t wear a flag pin?”
“I don’t say this because he’s black, but the guy just seems arrogant to me, the way he expects things to go his way.”
That last comment, made by a truck driver, stirred such amused rage in me that I showed the article to Mr. P over dinner and went off. And let me tell you, I called these people worse things than “bitter,” because these are the same voters who picked George W. Bush because Al Gore was too boring and John Kerry looked like a Frenchman. These people understand absolutely nothing about how the world outside their tiny pinprick towns works, so they judge candidates using childlike logic and primitive instincts.
“Where’s Obama’s flag pin? I look for the flag pin every time he’s on television. How can I vote for a man who won’t wear a flag pin?”
Hmm. Is she truly offended because Obama won’t wear a flag pin, or is she just a simpleton who can’t grasp issues of real political significance and can’t wrap her brain around anything more meaningful than a flag pin? Flag pin. FLAG PIN.
And Mr. “I don’t say this because he’s black” is a perfect example of the small-town bitterness Obama described. This man would obviously prefer a presidential candidate who doesn’t expect things to go his way, someone who exudes the same pessimism that I can only imagine a truck driver from Latrobe carries around. This man is as bitter as the citrusy, adulterated aftertaste of a Rolling Rock Extra Pale.
