One Week To Go

Well, bitterness or whatever elitist ideas might come up in the next 7 days, we have a week left until The Pennsylvania Primary. It's kind of like the common cold. If you ignore it, it will be over in a week. If you watch it, it will be gone in 7 days.

We have gone so long since the last primaries that sooner or later the last week was bound to happen. Barack had been doing so well keeping his foot out of his mouth- or more to the point- not falling prey to the dreaded Disease Democrat. They have such a great way of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It may be because they are less scripted than the Republicans or it may be that they are attempting to figure out too many different sub-groupings. But they usually end up saying or doing something that throws everything into chaos.

In part that's what Barack did last week with his comments on "bitter" citizens of small towns. Now, in all honesty, I grew up in a Pennsylvania small town which is smaller today than it was then. It has been a depressed area in many ways for many decades as lumber and then the railroads left the area. It is a place of amazing beauty, but it is not a place with a lot of future potential. It is a place where one can become bitter, I am sure.

It has always been a highly Republican area. My family was in the minority by being life-long Democrats. I am sure that is true of many, many people in the area. Like most of the United States away from the coasts and pockets like Madison or Minneapolis, it doesn't like change. That is often because change often takes more away from those places than it gives.

Do they cling to guns and religion? Not in the way many are talking about it. They stick to what has been their life- religion and hunting and fishing and the local tavern. It was an area of heavy-duty moonshining during Prohibition. (Google Prince Farrington, for example.) It is a life that tries to find stability and groundedness in a seemingly ungrounded world.

It is a way of life that I am sure none of the three Presidential candidates know. None of them lived in that environment. None of them can ever truly understand it. I have not lived in it for 40 years myself and there is much about it that I have left behind. Not entirely out of choice, but out of location. I don't live in it. But when I go back I see it and feel it. I hear my family members talk about it.

The one who wins next week will be the one who can, in essence, promise the Democratic voters of those small towns that they are not lost in the shuffle. The winner will be able to at least give them a feeling that they are not being ignored. The winner may even be the one who offers the least amount of change. That's a tough act for two people who, by their very presence are change.

In the end, McCain will win most of those areas in the fall. It will be as it often has been- the eastern and western metropolitan areas vs. the rest of the state. Is that bad? No, that's democracy when the people can at least give voice to who they are, where they have been and where they would like to somehow or another be. I guess I still think that may be the most important part of who we all are as Americans.

Sidenote: As Brian Williams pointed out on the NBC Nightly News last night, have you noticed that we have three U.S. Senators accusing each other of being "elitist?" By the very definition of being a U. S. Senator, they will be among The Elite. Most politicians- no, I would venture to say any serious politician running for president is, by definition, education, and financial status- elite.

So let's get over that and get back to issues.