Barack Obama’s unscripted comments about small town Americans clinging to God, guns, and anti-immigrant sentiment didn’t do him any favors in Pennsylvania’s primary, so he’s heaping praise on small town values in advance of Indiana’s Tuesday primary.
Here’s The Truth newspaper said about Obama’s appearance yesterday in a South Bend barn:
“It is my belief that rural America represents what’s best about America — hard work, responsibility, individual initiative, a sense of community, a sense of family,” Obama told an invitation-only group of 60 people sitting on picnic benches near bails of straw and an old tractor at the St. Joseph County 4-H Fairgrounds.
“And the fact that rural America is having such a difficult time indicates that we’ve lost focus on our values,” the Illinois senator and front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination said.
….During his hourlong appearance, Obama, with white shirt sleeves rolled back to his elbows, reminded the gathering of his family’s roots in small-town Kansas.
“What I’m really saying is that I want this Heartland to maintain itself as a source of strength and a source of values,” he said.
Hillary Clinton’s been dishing out this kind of values-laden rhetoric for months now, while Obama’s values messaging has focused more on his own faith commitment in a more testimonial way. Is he shifting the values talk off himself and onto voters?
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posted May 2, 2008 at 10:56 am
One thing to keep in mind – there are a whiole lot more voters in the cities than in the rural areas. We may wax nostaglic about “country values” – sort of like when I put on my cowboy boots and hat and stroll around town. But the realities of city life are more complex and require experience like Obama’s as a community organizer in Chicago. The Country Western demographic is shrinking and the sounds of the city are climbing in our culture. It is nice he made that appeal, but now it is time to go where the people actually are – not where their whistful thoughts may linger.
posted May 2, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Actually the bulk of the voters are suburbanites who have little use either for city dwellers or small town folk. Hillary has one advantage in that in that she came from a suburb of Chicago, knows the absolute contempt suburban voters have for cities and their community organizers and that is why she tends to do well in them.
posted May 2, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Jestrfyl,
You’re right that there are more voters in cities, and Charles is right that the great bulk of voters live in suburbs. But when you’re losing as badly as Obama is among rural voters, it magnifies the importance of that demographic.
Take Pennsylvania. Half of voters were suburbanites, and Clinton won them handily, 59-percent to 41-percent. Roughly 30-percent of the voters were urbanites, and Obama had a 20-point lead among them. But where Obama really got killed was among rural voters, who, although just 20-percent of the vote, backed Clinton 63-percent to 37-percent. That gave her a huge cushion and largely explains her roughly 10-point lead among Pennsylvania voters overall.