My oldest son and his fiancee came down for a visit, so we took them on a winery-crawl through what’s called the “Yadkin Valley Wine Region”, an area in the heart of North Carolina with a lot of up-and-coming wineries. We must have drove over 200 miles on various back roads finding our way to various wineries. On hundreds of lawns, we saw McCain/Palin lawn signs. Hundreds. Nowhere on any of these back roads did we see a single bit of Obama signage. Not a single Obama sign or bumper sticker to be seen. I made some crack about “southern crackers”, but my son said “No, we were driving from Philly to Harrisburg the other week and we took the scenic route, and that’s all we saw up there too.”
And this got me to wondering. We think North vs South; old vs young; white vs black; progressive vs traditional. Maybe it all boils to to something as simple as: urban vs rural. Maybe this is a battle of rural values vs urban values, a battle of the utter and inflexible resistance to change vs an environment where change is embraced because it is the rule, rather than the exception. Maybe it’s as simple as: rural people want things to stay exactly the way they were for their parents and grandparents, while urban people have seen so much change that they crave it compulsively.
Just a brief, caffeine-fueled Sunday morning reverie.
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i’ve noticed the same thing.
in ‘town’ there are obama signs …. only 2-3 in 10 are mccain
but on the way home, in the country, it quickly changes to the other way round. but when you go thru ‘black’ or ‘mexican’ areas you see “OBAMA” everywhere….my hope is that we have enough blacks & mexicans to upend this state, turn it blue! (because no-one comes here & spends $ or time….we’re a ‘safely red’ state-SC)
a rural county about 35 mins SE of Albany up against the Massachusetts border.
Many Obama signs in villages, towns. Many McCain signs on rural roads. In neighborhoods that are wealthier, more Obama. In areas that are poorer, more McCain. Many more Obama signs this time than Kerry or Gore signs in the past. Fewer Obama signs than Bush signs in the past. Many more Obama signs for second home owners (believe it or not).
This is solid Obama Country. I saw only one Nobama sign.
I have a lot of road frontage next to land I own. I drove past a McCain sign on my property last night. Removed it this morning. Are things so desperate here for the Republicans that McCain is putting up signs without asking the owner?