"We're votin' for the n***er" appears to be an increasingly common cri de coeur in West Virginia and elsewhere in Appalachia these days.
As I http://www.dailykos.com/..., wrote here yesterday, an Obama supporter who's leading the effort to get his buddies at a sawmill here in rural West Virginia (bordering Virginia) explained to me (I've been supplying him with Obama bumper stickers, "See, back last summer the guys didn't want to be seen as linin' up with a n***er. Now a lot of'em are sayin' they're gonna vote for the n***er."
Add to that my old buddy Mike Tomasky's recent Guardian blog, where he reported this by way of Sean Quinn of fivethirtyeight.com:
So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"
Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."
At least they're honest, I guess, and saying it seems to provide a needed redneck irony, a Larry the Cable Guy racial catharsis making an otherwise taboo political act permissible.
Anyway, the presidential race is tightening in West Virginia, which almost certainly bodes well for western PA and southern OH, and Andrea Mitchell reported yesterday she's been told by high officials that the Obama campaign is prepared to dump $5 million into the state now.
Mike Tomasky's recent Guardian blog