{"id":15965,"date":"2008-06-23T11:00:59","date_gmt":"2008-06-23T15:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15965.html"},"modified":"2008-06-23T11:00:59","modified_gmt":"2008-06-23T15:00:59","slug":"obama-mudcat-and-the-elusive-bubba-voter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/obama-mudcat-and-the-elusive-bubba-voter\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama, Mudcat, and the elusive ‘Bubba Voter’"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve never been especially convinced by Dave “Mudcat” Saunders’ worldview when it comes to Democrats and rural voters, but I generally find his perspective interesting enough to at least consider, whether I end up agreeing with it or not.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, I found the Weekly Standard’s Matt Labash’s new cover story<\/a> on Mudcat, and his thoughts on Barack Obama’s chances in Appalachia, worth reading. I came away, though, less persuaded than going in.<\/p>\n

When I contacted Mudcat, he was in a state of blood-spitting agitation at all the Poindexter reporters trafficking in stereotypes, depicting mountain people as racist mouth-breathers, while explaining Obama’s “Appalachian problem” as if they were anthropologists dropping in on the lip-plated savages of America’s last exotic tribe. […]<\/p>\n

[A]s he once told a woman who stood up after a speech he gave to a Democratic audience to say he made compelling points, but they’d be more effective without the swearing, “Lady, there’s nothing I can do about it. Because if you’d seen what I’ve seen from elitist Democrats, you’d swear too.”<\/p>\n

He’s speaking of the breed of mostly Northeastern elitist liberal that he encounters even on his own campaigns: condescending, green around the gills from consuming too much arugula, with overdeveloped thumbs from clacking nonstop on their Blackberries, all of whom jealously guard their titles such as “deputy campaign manager of the coffee pot.” He calls them “the Harvards” (a term pinched from LBJ), though in fairness he stipulates that “there’s a lot of jerks that went to other places too.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I see. So Mudcat thinks the problem with the Democratic establishment is that DC-types look at “Bubba” with an anthropologist’s eye. Mudcat looks at the Democratic establishment as over-educated, arugula-eating elitists obsessed with their Blackberries. He went on to argue that Dems should invest less energy in pursuing the “liberal pinko commie” vote.<\/p>\n

Remind me, who’s engaging in cheap stereotypes? Who disdains some Americans’ culture? Who’s the anthropologist?
\n<\/p>\n

Just to illustrate the sort of cultural shorthand by which Dems hand Republicans the truncheon to club them with, he pursues the issue of guns. While nobody’s going to take anyone’s gun away in a country of 90 million gun owners, he says,<\/p>\n

“Why make our members vote for bulls– bills that’ll get ’em beat in November? It’s all perception–nothing’s going to pass. Yet the deal is, Democrats are perceived as anti-gun. And so with a slogan like ‘Close the gun show loophole,’ what are the first four words of that? ‘Close the gun show.’ Bubba doesn’t mind an instant check, but closing the gun show is all he can hear. He doesn’t need to hear “loophole,” after he’s heard the first four words.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Really? This<\/i> is Mudcat’s argument? Candidates should respect Bubba’s intelligence, but they should intentionally dumb down their rhetoric because he’ll only listen to the first four words of a five-word phrase?<\/p>\n

As Isaac Chotiner noted<\/a>, “Now just imagine for a moment that Howard Dean had said this. The clear implication is that ‘Bubba’ is, er, not smart enough to understand more than the first four words. Or that ‘Bubba’ does not have the capability to focus on more than four words. Either Saunders is being condescending, or he is revealing something about his beloved ‘Bubba Voter’ that proves the argument he believes elitist Democrats are making.”<\/p>\n

If anyone holds that a black guy can’t win in these parts, says Mudcat, then they ought to notify former Virginia governor Doug Wilder, a black guy who won 20 years ago. Wilder, of course, knew how to speak the language and get through to even the most resistant parts of the culture.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, maybe. Virginia also has a few populous counties along its northern border that are pretty liberal, and Richmond that has a sizable African-American population. Neither can be said about West Virginia, which is where Mudcat thinks Obama should invest his energy.<\/p>\n

Mudcat doesn’t deny that Obama’s race could be a factor. Since Obama doesn’t come around Appalachia much, having taken a powder in places like West Virginia and Kentucky, “nobody knows about Obama out here. All we know is that he’s black. That’s all we know. That’s all anyone wants to tell us.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe it’s because there’s ample evidence, at least in advance of the Democratic primary, that race was a deal-breaker?<\/p>\n

If the article is any indication, I still feel like Mudcat’s pitch needs some work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve never been especially convinced by Dave “Mudcat” Saunders’ worldview when it comes to Democrats and rural voters, but I generally find his perspective interesting enough to at least consider, whether I end up agreeing with it or not. With that in mind, I found the Weekly Standard’s Matt Labash’s new cover story on Mudcat, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}