I'm going to just come out and say it: Appalachians are just not going to vote for a black man, period.
In Southwest Virginia, coal mining country, Hillary took 90% of the vote during the Rat primary. That's overwhelming. My dad, who's a retired coal miner and a life-long New Deal Democrat can't even mention Obama by name---he just refers to him as "THAT," as in I'm not going to vote for "THAT!"
And just because Westy Virginia has traditionally voted Democrat and is the home of "Sheets" Byrd (not coincidental, BTW), does NOT mean that the state will line up behind Obama.
Just my .02 worth of ranting this mroning...
“O.K. me and my family come from the deepest, darkest depths of Appalachia. I know the people and I know the culture since they are mine. So I think that I can speak with some authority on the subject.”
Well then, given your criteria, I can say that, in my neck of the woods, the color of the man’s skin has nothing to do with it.
What *does* have to do with it, is that he couldn’t be bothered to set foot in the state, as much as called us *all* racists (contrary to popular belief, there are black people living in WV ;) and insulted our deeply held mores and values (contrary to another popular belief, “education” is highly valued ;). And then he expects people to vote for him? “Not hardly!” ;)
And while we’re talking about it, there *are* Republicans in WV too. :)
My Mother-In-Law, a life long dem, is voting Republican for the first time in her life, at 89 years old. oBami comes on the news she changes stations and complains about how the news fawns over him. She is a sharp cookie and, at her age, can see threw the media. She thinks oBami is a wet suit. Thought I would never see the day she would vote R. It’s great. OH yah her elderly friends feel the same.
That, notwithstanding, I deeply resent the insinuation that these people are racist. Many of them ran underground railroad stations and fought for the Union in the Civil War. West Virginia, the center of Appalachia, was so pro-union that it split off from Virginia.
Eastern (Appalachian) Tennessee was solidly Republican from the Reconstruction Era while the rest of the state was part of the solid south for Democrats.
Appalachian North Carolina was so pro-Union that the Confederates wrote it off early in the war as not worth either defending or exploiting. The famed abolitionist Levi Coffin and other Quaker groups operated openly.
Even the famed Shenandoah Valley of Virgina only got fully on board with the South during the later years of the war in reaction to ill treatment by the invading Union armies.
Our own western Pennsylvania, of course, was a prime recruiting ground for some of the best and bravest of the Union Army, including General Thomas Kane whose service in the cause was so faithful that he was later given a town site which still bears his name.
What the Appalachian people deeply resent is outsiders who tell them that somehow certain folks are better than others. Does anyone prominent in American politics fit that group of elitists any better than Obama and his supporters?
That's your yellow dog Democrat for you. They don't care that their beloved dems place abortion and gay "marriage" above everything else (they'll vote for anyone and anything with a "D" by its name), but let someone come along who's a little too dark and they can't take it.
I hope FDR is proud of such people.
“I’m going to just come out and say it: Appalachians are just not going to vote for a black man, period.”
....I live in the mountains of NC and they won’t vote black here either...matter of fact, many of them fought for the Union during the CW because they didn’t see any sense in fighting on behalf of the plantation class and “their damned ni**ers”...mountain people are savagely independent and PCness means nothing to them.