I zipped up the Shenandoah Valley to Washington, D.C., last week and got to rapping electoral numbers with this political expert dude. Knowing I was a country person—a Bubba—he tried to explain why President Obama’s numbers in rural America were dropping so quickly. Like most inside-the-Beltway types who quietly think we’re a bunch of ignorant rednecks, he seemed to suggest that racism was the cause of the erosion, but I reminded him that Obama (the black guy) far out-performed John Kerry (the white guy) in rural America. And while I readily admit there are racists in rural America—as there are everywhere else in this country for that matter—this is the perfect illustration of how mathematically challenged my Democratic Party friends can be at times. Racists were never in Obama’s column. They didn’t vote for him in the first place.
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