At a Christmas party for work earlier this evening, I had the opportunity to engage in an extended conversation with just such a guy. Early on there was little that was surprising, or heartening, about the convo. He said something about how maybe Ahnold would clean up the mess in California, and when I declared my scepticism, he said "hey, look at Reagan--he did a good job". (And this is a guy who looks and acts the part: he's got the blue collar hair, clothing, and moustache, not to mention the country accent; he likes to hunt, all that stuff.)
But it turned out his views about contemporary events were quite different. He stated that he was totally opposed to the war in Iraq and that Saddam was just a penny-ante dictator who was no threat to us. Sure, he said, he killed thousands; but what about the millions killed in "that one country in Africa"? (I wasn't really sure where he meant...maybe Rwanda, or the Congo?) I'll admit, I didn't put up too strong of an argument about Saddam, because frankly I didn't want to interfere too much with the anti-Bush mojo. And we could definitely agree when he railed against Cheney's connection with Halliburton and asked "did you see where they overcharged the taxpayers? I'm sure it's just a coinkydink that they still pay Cheney a million bucks a year!"
It got even more surprising when the subject of the Democratic candidates came up. He said "that guy Dean seemed all right, but then when he said 'I'm going to make health insurance more available' I didn't like that at all. I don't want to hear about health insurance, I want to hear about health care. Those insurance companies have got a big racket going." Then he said, "you know, that one guy--whatsisname? kinda funny looking--" "Kucinich?" "Yeah, that's him. He was really giving it to old Ted Koppel the other night, and he was making a lot of sense!" I think I had to pick my jaw up off the floor!
He also asked me, "you know, how did that work, with Gore getting 50,000 more votes and still losing? That makes no sense!" I told him it was actually a half a million and explained the electoral college to him. He thought that sounded totally wrong and unfair.
Okay, I thought, maybe the guy's a freak, politically. But he seems to have an easy way of relating with other "red county" rural men. He's a friendly, outgoing guy and all that--good at schmoozing in the way it's done in these parts. So I asked him, "do you know very many people who feel this way about the president, about health care, all that?" He said "oh yeah, definitely--almost everyone I know! Except for two people, who just don't seem to care as long as they got theirs." I responded, "oh, so these two are like really into Rush Limbaugh and stuff?" "Yeah, that's it--actually, I take it back; there are three guys I know like that. They just don't understand that not everyone is able to make it on their own." (The guy I was talking to had, btw, mentioned that the cable company had recently sent someone over to collect the bill; he just got mad and said "cut it off".)
He definitely didn't feel that Bush understood what it was like to struggle, with his rich background (good to know this is getting through!). I told him the old line about how Bush was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. He laughed long and hard about that one (so hard, people were looking over, like "whoa"). I don't think he'd ever heard it before, but I do think he's going to spread it amongst his friends and family.
So I came out of this thinking that there is a lot more potential for a populist to make inroads among this population than I had dared hope, despite the case for working rural voters with populism having been argued before; I just didn't totally buy it until now. I think Edwards would be the best guy to do it, but it seems very unlikely that he'll be the nominee. However, Edwards seems to have the inside track to the VP spot, and maybe he can work this angle from that platform.