Voting Blue in a Red State

Watching this election unfold not only in a Republican "red state" but in the most Republican section of that red sea could lead to chronic heart-burn.  The anecdotal information we have from Watauga County Baptist Churches is that they've drunk the Kool-Aid of QueerFear and are preaching what Karl Rove wants them to preach.  And we watch the coalescing of Republican candidates for governor around the young Patrick Ballantine with great apprehension, since we have nothing to look forward to from our own Mike Easley but the kind of campaign-by-TV he conducted in 2000.  And we behold our senate candidate Erskine Bowles with mounting disquiet too, since he seems still spooked to be running as a d-e-m-o-c-r-a-t and can barely admit it, even in a room of partisans.

What gives us hope are all our local candidates, from Jim Harrell for U.S. Congress, to Cullie Tarleton for N.C. State House, to Jim Cain for N.C. State Senate, to our team of Watauga County Commission candidates, Jim Deal, Winston Kinsey, and Billy Ralph Winkler ... all good men with superior credentials, offering a hopeful platform against the depressing team on the other side who don't believe in government in the first place and who want to make sure that government is as crippled as possible in favor of business interests.

Will QueerFear swamp good men under a wave of straight Republican voting in this reddest corner of a Southern red state?  That scenario is certainly possible but gives no credit whatever to voters to make distinctions.

What was it that Bubba said last night in his amazing speech at the convention?

"They think the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their political, economic, and social views, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves on matters like health care and retirement security. Since most Americans are not that far to the right, they have to portray us Democrats as unacceptable, lacking in strength and values. In other words, they need a divided America. But Americans long to be united."  (Full transcript of Clinton's speech here.)

We spent the weekend at a family reunion up in another blatant red state, Virginia, and I spent some quality time talking with one of my wife's cousins who's a political writer for a Virginia newspaper and whose personal decency and quiet political wisdom could almost break your heart.  He's not discouraged about the future, thinks Kerry will win, and is not distracted by the marginal roles of North Carolina and Virginia in the grander scheme of things.  He said I was about the "wariest Democrat" he'd encountered this whole year, as though I'd been dog-bit and might be rabid.  I confess to being wary and to riding the roller coaster of red-state expectations, but I'm available to good news, fair prospects, the off chance that North Carolina mountain voters won't always and forever vote against their own economic interests.  Let the local Baptists take note: I pray fervently for that.