The "we need a Southerner" meme: Geography alone isn't enough

I started writing this as a comment in one of the "we need a Southerner" diaries, but it started getting longer and longer until I said "fuck it" and started my own diary.

Much like the media's focus on the Swift Boaters' lies obscured the real reason their ads resonated (genuine national ambivalence about the legacy of the 60s and the lessons of Vietnam), focusing on the geographical origins of our candidates obscures the real reason this is an issue in the first place: many rural (especially Southern, especially evangelical) voters were never convinced that John Kerry gave a flying fuck about their concerns.  

Yes, Kerry's Northeastern origins played a role in this, but that's not the whole story.  More after the jump.

Rural voters have a filter.  When they evaluate a candidate, the first thing they ask themselves is, "Does this candidate understand what makes me tick?  Does he/she respect my values?  Does he/she, deep down, get it -- what it's like to be me, what it is that makes me happy, what it is that keeps me up at night?" If the answer is no, the voter tunes out.  Any candidate who wants to win rural votes has to get through this filter before his/her policy proposals will get a fair hearing.  (The corollary, however, is that once this filter is successfully broken through, we have a great shot at winning, since our policy proposals generally benefit rural voters more than those of the Republicans.)

Of course, we all have our own filters.  But it's particularly significant with rural people and evangelicals, since there is a very deeply held feeling that Northeasterners and urbanites look down on them with contempt, and we have to convince them otherwise before we can get a hearing for our ideas.

Any politician who wants to win rural votes has to convince rural voters that they get it.  Bill Clinton was able to do this, as was Jimmy Carter.  Al Gore got it, but he was never able to convince voters of that fact.  Kerry was never able to convince rural voters that he understood what made them tick -- that's why the windsurfing ads and circulated e-mails about his five houses were so damaging. When Kerry tried to counteract this (with the goose-hunting trip), he went over the top and just looked phony.

Where geography comes into this is that if you're a Southerner, or come from a rural background, you at least start from a neutral position.  If you're urban or Northeastern, you start at a deficit -- rural voters will approach you with the presumption that you don't understand their lives, and it's that much more work to overcome that presumption.  But being an urbanite or Northeasterner doesn't mean you can't do it, and, more importantly, being a Southerner alone doesn't mean you can.  I wasn't all that impressed with John Edwards' ability to connect with rural voters, for example.

So, the issue is not that we need a Southerner on the ticket.  We need a candidate who can connect with Southern/evangelical/rural voters, who can convince them, on a visceral level, that he doesn't look down on them, that he gets it -- their culture, their faith, their values, their concerns.  What this means, practically, is that we need a candidate who can speak the language of faith and values.  The candidate need not be a Southerner -- it's about a whole lot more than an accent.  As noted above, Edwards was lousy at this duringthe campaign.  And from what I've seen, Obama is brilliant at this,  despite being a Harvard-educated urbanite.

A final note: This is true whether or not "moral values" really decided this election.  For better or for worse, rural voters decided early on that Kerry really didn't respect them, their culture, or their values.  That perception, once formed, was impossible for him to overcome, and I'm not sure there was anything he could have done to overcome it.  Impression trumps substance every day of the week and twice on Sunday.  I honestly think gay marriage wasn't the main reason rural voters were so solidly pro-Bush (although it was a convenient wedge) -- the majority were convinced that when he wasn't in public, Kerry looked down on them with contempt.