What are they thinking?

The conventional wisdom about the presidential race these days is that the McCain/Palin attacks are working and that if Obama wants to have a shot at winning this thing, its time he came out with some punches of his own.

Personally, I think arguments can be made on either side of this question. But today I read something that intrigued me as a deeper look at the appeal of Palin and the possible rejection of Obama. It comes from voters that I don’t often hear from given that I live in an urban setting and get my news from the blogoshpere.

The article is in Salon, is written by Dan Hoyle, and is titled What small-town America is saying about Obama. Here’s the set-up.

For three months during this summer and early fall, I’ve been traveling across America, exploring the nation’s small towns and rural areas and meeting the people there. From Michigan to New Mexico to North Carolina, I’ve conducted dozens of interviews with white working-class voters across 18 states, gauging, among other things, their thoughts and feelings about the first black man to have a serious shot at winning the White House.

Hoyle intersperses quotes from various people he interviewed with his own observations and commentary. I thought it might be interesting to first pull the quotes and look at them alone.

He’s just not someone I can personally relate to. Obama just doesn’t feel like someone who knows me.

Obama’s like Jesse Jackson — what does he know except a bunch of cities with lots of blacks?

There’s a difference between racist and prejudiced. A lot of people around here just haven’t spent much time with black people. When they get to know a black person, it’s OK. But they will bring their prejudice in at first.

Obama, he’s not our kind of people. He don’t believe in the hereafter, and the Lord, the way I look at it … he’s Muslim.

I know it sounds stupid, but Barack Hussein Obama? And if he gets in, somebody’ll take him out real quick.

People around here see Obama as being privileged. We know Obama’s plenty book-smart … but I liked Harry Truman, the last president to have a simple high school education.

And now for some of Hoyle’s conclusions.

Beyond Obama’s race, what I found was a more complicated set of concerns — whether accurately informed or not — about his religious faith, values and cultural and educational background. That is, many of these white rural voters expressed a discomfort that may have more to do with unfamiliarity about the type of person Barack Obama is, rather than with direct concerns about his race…

It may be that hesitancy about Obama stems from his being a type of black person that rural Americans are unfamiliar with. White rural Americans tend to identify two types of black Americans. They know local, churchgoing black people who like to hunt and fish, whose lives are similar to their own. On the other hand, they tend to think of urban blacks as a stereotype seen widely in pop culture (bling-wearing gangstas) or as the kind of black people they see on local TV news (often criminal suspects or convicts). Obama fits neither of these tropes, as a highly educated, upper-middle-class, self-made urban black man. (One with lighter skin and of mixed race, to boot.) He’s not foreign because he’s black, he’s foreign because he’s unknown — especially as someone seeking a job held exclusively by white men for more than two centuries.

I find Hoyle’s conclusion that most of this is not about racism to be a denial of the obvious. But with that said, his conclusions are powerful nonetheless. There seems to be too many people in this country who would rather see themselves reflected in their President than to do the hard work of looking at what it takes to do the job. After these 8 long years of complete incompetence leading our country to the brink of the abyss, that old question “Who would you like to have a beer with?” seems to be uppermost on too many people’s mind. And an Obama, no matter how talented he is, is just too different to be trusted.

So if Hoyle’s conclusions are accurate, Obama is not losing ground because he’s not fighting back. He’s losing ground because he’s “different” and Palin is “our kind of gal.” I’m not sure if he can overcome that. I just hope he’s got something up his sleeve.