Get Up Off'n Yer Sister And Hitch Up The Mule, We's A'Goin' To Th' Polls!

Monica Davey, "For Indiana Voters, Talk Of Change May Fall Flat"  Times, April 24

Adam Nagourney, "For Democrats, Questions Over Race and Electability," Times, April 24

KOKOMO, Ind. — With all the talk among the Democratic presidential hopefuls about change, they may wish to consider this as they wander Indiana: People here practically revolted a few years ago when their governor, Mitch Daniels, pushed to change to daylight saving time like most of the country.

OKAY, it shore nuff sounds kinda backward, Miz Davey, m'am, when you put it like that, but there's a simple explanation for that: Fuck You.

Indiana's practically on the Mississippi, yet we're on EDST time now (asterisk!). In my lifetime we've been on Central Time, Eastern Time, back to Central, back to Eastern, off Daylight Savings Time, and back on it, and if I wanted to be perverse about it I could have moved around the state and added a different time zone every month. In other words, it's something of a local issue, and while it may play well and provide a snappy lede for you to ape Mitch Daniels in declaring yourself far too intelligent to be saddled with such a prize collection of Gomers, you ain't, and neither's he, and the issue is not and never was fear of an unknown and unsuspected Cosmic retribution for Actually Changin' Somethin'.

Instead, you might consider what a tiny amount of reportage would have revealed, that, thanks to its forward-looking Governor and his fearless dedication to scientific principles 21st century realities the political pressure applied by Indianapolis television stations, which want to be on New Yawk Time, a Hoosier lucky enough to have a job, albeit one which requires he rise at 6AM every morning, now drives to work in the dark every day of the year, hoping he doesn't run over any children waiting for the school bus in the process, while anyone who'd like to see the sun set even later than it does in Indiana in midsummer has to fly to Norway. This may provoke a chuckle around the table at whatever Argentinean/Mongol fusion restaurant is popular with Timesmen this week, but a short walk in our clodhoppers might convince you that it's a matter of some importance to people actually living under the regime, regardless of their natcherl suspicion of city folk and their fancy ways.

Oh, and not to mention the fact that Daniels reneged on a campaign promise when he ramrodded the change, or that he seems to have violated federal law into the bargain and trampled the will of local governments for good measure. 'Cuz we's jes' scuggins here, and we shore don't want to stand in the way of a good story. 'Specially when the Times thinks enough of us to actually send an actual reporter lady to Kokomo so she can collect the same quote three times.

I'm sorry, but didn't the Times promise a couple years back that it was going to suck the dick of Red State America, con brio, as penance for its evil elitist past?

Somehow "Northern Indiana is one big suburb of Chicago, Central Indiana is Indianapolis writ small, and everything South is Kentucky" doesn't quite measure up. Especially when any Hoosier, except maybe the Chicagoians, can tell you anything south of US 40 is actually Alabama. Kentucky is progressive by our standards.

And unlike some other states, including Pennsylvania, Indiana has mostly been ignored in general elections, too. It has long been written off by both parties as so reliably Republican in presidential races as to not be worth much note. After 1936, a Democratic presidential candidate has won the general election here only once, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.

Well, let's examine our Tote Board of Shame, shall we? Again, it's undeniable, but how many Democrats won the Presidency in that seventy-two year period? FDR twice, Truman once, Kennedy once, Carter once, Clinton twice. Voting against any of them is not exactly a sign of rampant radical Republicanism, with the possible exception of FDR, but in 1940 he ran against favorite son Wendell Wilke, and in 1944...okay, I can't really explain voting for Dewey just as the war was won, but Ohio, Wisconsin, and the Plains states joined us, for some reason. Afterwards, you're talking about a state that went for Dewey over Truman (which has a nice ring to it, anyway), Nixon over Kennedy, Ford over Carter, and Bush/Dole over Clinton. I'm not particularly wild about it myself, but it hardly differentiates us from the remainder of the country that hasn't et in ho-tels.

We might add, out of what little pride we actually feel for Indiana politics, that Indiana's two Senators in the 1960s, Birch Bayh and Vance Hartke (both, according to the Times map of the world, from Kentucky), were champions of civil liberties and opponents of the madness in Indochina, and that while we're responsible for letting Dan Quayle out in public, neither Rudy Giuliani nor Alphonse "Al" D'Amato has ever held elective office in our jerkwater little state.

SO,  to quote Louisa May Alcott, while you're shoving that as far up your rectum as it'll go, let's turn to Adam Nagourney, and note that, once again, you know an anti-Democrat meme has reached rigor mortis when you find him fellating the corpse on the Times front page:

But just when it seemed that the Democratic Party was close to anointing Mr. Obama as its nominee, he lost yet again in a big general election state, dragged down by his weakness among blue-collar voters, older voters and white voters. The composition of Mrs. Clinton’s support — or, looked at another way, the makeup of voters who have proved reluctant to embrace Mr. Obama — has Democrats wondering, if not worrying, about what role race may be playing.

And, once again, if we may take a moment to respond, we'd like to do so with a farm implement.

Suppose we put it the other way 'round? Obama leads in delegates because young people in Red State America have been mazed by a decade's constant exposure to cell phone radiation, excessive iPod volume, and American Idol, exacerbating their natural tendency to confuse ass and chipmunk holes, plus all dem black folks iz votin' for one of their own? That sort of analysis would get you fired from the Times, unless it got you an Op-Ed column.

I'm through being insulted by this sort of shit, just as I'm over being dismayed as it was parroted in Left Blogtopia--whenever, that is, when Senator Obama has not done as well as expected. (At other points I seem to recall the insistence that he ought to be the nominee since "Hillary's supporters will all vote for him anyway.") I think it's beyond time to put up or shut up. From where I stand (cornfield), unless you want to count what some hyperventlilating Obamabloggers decided to make out of Bill Clinton comments, the issue of race has come primarily from the Press--which is not exactly friendly to Democrats, on balance--and secondarily from Obama surrogates, who seem to have missed the previous point.

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama played down the racial aspects of the coalition Mrs. Clinton used to defeat him in Pennsylvania.
“Our problem has less to do with white working-class voters,” Mr. Obama told reporters Wednesday in Indiana. “In fact the problem is that — to the extent that there is a problem — is that older voters are very loyal to Senator Clinton.”
But the real test may come in the general election, should he win the Democratic nomination. Pennsylvania and Ohio will be two critical states this fall, and it will be difficult for any Democrat to win those states without the support from the Democrats that Mr. Obama is struggling to bring onto his bandwagon.

So just who was it decided to throw those older voters off the cliff fifteen months ago, the better to run as Mr. New Postpartisanship? Is your skin color now supposed to protect you from that decision? In point of fact, outside the confabulations of those same huffing hyperventilators, the only people I've heard saying we wouldn't have all the problems we have now except for the darkies were Republican members of the U.S. Senate, but I've since heard both sides of the aisle blaming the Dirty Hippies of Yore.   It's something short of convincing. What about Obama exempts him from responsibility for how his campaign has been run? Y'know, I don't have to believe in Wrightgate, or Bittergate, or Lapelgate to wonder why the man still talks the about a Social Security "crisis". I don't have to concern myself with "electability"--a concept being pushed by people who have been 100% wrong about everything in the campaign so far, and who seem to perpetually imagine the election will be held next week--to find his national security positions too centrist or his health care program inferior to his opponent's. I don't need skin color to decide for me that I won't support him in the primaries, or that I will in an election contested by John McCain. I didn't want to fight; Obama and the Obamatots did, and it's time they quit whining and start figuring out how to win elections as readily as they win arguments with imaginary racist geriatric farmers.