Growing up with activist Goldwater Republican parents in a small religiously conservative town, I can tell you, Sarah Palin fits this crowd to a "T" with a sexy cherry on top.
Ten percent of the U.S. lives in what is considered rural America. They are suffering badly. They are easily angered. They feel ignored only because they have been---by the very people who claim to represent them, the Republicans.
This is my very first diary. Be kind.
Democrats ditched appealing to "these people" in the last two election cycles because they gave up trying to figure out what they think. They seem like crazy nut jobs. That's why we get the Republicans talking about the Volvo-driving, latte drinking crowd, a divisive dog-whistle saying the Democrats are elitist. Democrats aren't suffering. They don't feel your pain.
The "other people" I'm talking about here are lower and middle class religious folks. You can't figure out what they think because they don't "think". However, they are NOT stupid as I've heard so many on the left say. They, like 99% of everybody, 99% of the time, feel and let their "thinking" conform to their feelings.
Sarah Palin, stirs these folks - - big time. We are being told explicitly she is one of them. She gives simple answers to complex questions. She's delusional about God's role for her. The Republicans are using her to grab the narrative to explain to these folks why they feel so bad. Why, when they "play by the rules" and work harder and harder, they find themselves sinking deeper and deeper into debt and desperate poverty.
Democrats ignore, or worse, ridicule, at their peril.
Personally, I am fascinated, having lived a split screen life in two politically extremist cultural silos--half in rural America, half in Berkeley.
The Obama campaign's tactical antidote is to "get" their pain. Show that he's empathetic by repeating every day, over and over-- this time, working families get their turn. We saw some of that last night on Larry King, though I thought the surrogates were pretty weak sauce.