Why this article is hard to get to, I have no idea. It is perfect.
NYTimes.com
In Polarized Nation, Fearing the Other Candidate as Disastrous
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
That this is a nation of great political passion - and polarity - was laid bare on a street corner in Nebraska last week.
Thousands of voters queued up around a giant city block in Omaha to see Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, whose very presence in a slam-dunk red state said a lot about the topsy-turvy presidential contest.
Opposite the music hall where Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, was to give her speech, a group of protesters carried signs that read things like, “I wear Lipstick but I will never vote for you,” and “Shill baby, shill!” as they chanted in support of Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for president.
One man on the Palin side, who made his way past the protesters, sneered to a friend, “They act like the world’s going to end if Obama is not the president.”
While elections often turn on ideas, this one might also be swayed by a paralyzing fear of the other guy. In interview after interview in a 12-state tour from California to New York that ended this week, many backers of Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain seemed utterly convinced that an America under the tutelage of the other ticket would send the nation toward an unbearable precipice.
Nebraska apportions some of its five Electoral College votes by Congressional district, and in Omaha and the surrounding areas there is a fierce battle being waged by the Obama and McCain campaigns for just one of those votes.
There were, of course, pressing issues many voters wanted to discuss. Over the course of two weeks, a majority of those interviewed cited the economy as the crucial issue that would influence their vote next month. Grace notes were health care, national security and occasionally very place-specific concerns, like urban crime, factory job losses and underperforming schools.
But the backdrop to all of that was something far more personal, as voters reacted openly and viscerally to Mr. McCain, the 72-year-old Republican war hero, yoked to one of the least popular presidents in modern times, and Mr. Obama, the unflappable and somewhat inscrutable Democrat from Chicago who would be the country’s first black president.
Among the voters who had made up their minds, most expressed an almost frantic dislike for the other candidate - a dislike that was sometimes far greater than their zeal for their own man.
“With Barack Obama,” said Cheryl Oddo, a Republican in Strongsville, Ohio, who intends to vote for Mr. McCain: “I don’t even feel like his policies are even a different way of what’s right for America. I think his policies are the way of losing American the way we know it now.”
Ditto from the other side.
“I’m voting for Obama because hopefully he’ll make a change in the jobs market and with gas prices,” said Alicia Egas, one of the thousands of unemployed voters in Elkhart, Ind., a hard-hit industrial town. With Mr. McCain in office, she said, she feared “everything would go downhill from here.”
With Election Day less than three weeks away, the Americans encountered on this road trip held strong opinions but were far less defined by their region than they might have been the last time they voted in a presidential election. Some previously reliable Republican states like Nevada are in play, and there are generally more states not locked into the red-blue grid of the past.
Superficial semiotics offered by pundits rarely proved true. In short, there was an awful lot of latte and Chablis sipping in the red states, and a whole bunch of strict parenting and duck hunting in the blue states.
“Obviously we are conservative here,” said Cassi Warren, 36, a Republican in Omaha who stared at the protesters against Ms. Palin with a mix of contempt and amusement. “Fiscally, socially, in every way.”
But she added, “I don’t think there would have been Kerry supporters here four years ago,” a reference to Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004.
There was a young McCain supporter at the Palin rally with a bright red punk-rock haircut. The next day in nearby Bellevue, Neb., a conservatively dressed retired Air Force X-ray technician ripped into Mr. McCain over, among other things, her perception of his treatment of veterans.
In Omaha, awash in McCain signs and its local paper celebrating Ms. Palin with bold headlines, it was hard to sense any dissent. But at the airport, a rental car saleswoman, who looked as though she was probably young enough to be voting in her first election, had a tiny Obama pin affixed to her Hertz shirt, and a random cafe dweller wore a blue Obama logo shirt.
Ohio was a study in contrasts. In Toledo, the expansive Obama office was buzzing with volunteers, while the McCain office had a lone worker sitting on the same afternoon, staring into a computer.
A walk around Greeley, Colo., revealed several streets with McCain and Obama signs alternating on every other yard. Empty lots by and large featured giant McCain signs, most likely left over from a recent rally there.
Affixed in front of a sad little house on a tiny barren lot was a sign almost bigger than the porch: “HOPE.” In many cases, the candidates were more symbols than politicians to so many voters, and they saw no common ground with their neighbors leaning another way. The economy and race were the two great spoons that stirred that political pot.
“I think everyone knows someone who has been out of a job, and that has to change,” said Susie Velasquez, a voter in Greeley. “And I don’t think that’s going to change unless we get Barack Obama in the White House.”
Vernon Cecil, a Republican voter there, said Mr. Obama’s economic plan would do just the opposite.
But the economy also has eroded away partisanship, and disgust among even hard-core Republicans toward their party was evident in unlikely corners.
“The concept of nonregulation means don’t mess with business and business will take care of us,” said Mike Jones 63, a geologist in Elko, Nev., who is considering voting for a Democrat for the first time in his life. “But I was looking to retire, and now what do I retire on?”
Twenty miles away in Lamoille, Nev., Lisa Lafferty, a bartender, summed up her perception of her hometown’s view of Mr. Obama in racial, not partisan, terms. She was among the countless people over the two weeks who spoke easily about their distrust of a black candidate to a reporter with a notebook in her hand.
And it caused this reporter to wonder what it was about me. Was it the white color of my skin? My gender? My slight Midwestern accent, all the more pronounced as I moved east of the Missouri River - that gave people comfort in sharing their ugliest thoughts?
“A lot of people here don’t think he’s believable,” said Ms. Lafferty, 26. “Race background, that’s a huge factor out here. If he were another white guy, people probably wouldn’t feel that. Most people are saying he won’t say the Pledge of Allegiance.”
In Bellevue, Neb., Jessie Puglisi, 22, said, “Obama is the anti-Christ,” adding: “My husband feels the same way. He won’t even buy a magazine if Obama’s face is on it.”
No matter the place, whether swathed in red or blue, there were voters marooned on their own little political islands.
Dave and Anne Patton, Democrats, sat in the back of the bar in Lamoille, saying nothing as the bartenders and a few customers derided Mr. Obama.
“We don’t discuss it much,” Mrs. Patton said. “There’s no point.”
In Polarized Nation, Fearing the Other Candidate as Disastrous
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
That this is a nation of great political passion - and polarity - was laid bare on a street corner in Nebraska last week.
Thousands of voters queued up around a giant city block in Omaha to see Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, whose very presence in a slam-dunk red state said a lot about the topsy-turvy presidential contest.
Opposite the music hall where Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, was to give her speech, a group of protesters carried signs that read things like, “I wear Lipstick but I will never vote for you,” and “Shill baby, shill!” as they chanted in support of Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for president.
One man on the Palin side, who made his way past the protesters, sneered to a friend, “They act like the world’s going to end if Obama is not the president.”
While elections often turn on ideas, this one might also be swayed by a paralyzing fear of the other guy. In interview after interview in a 12-state tour from California to New York that ended this week, many backers of Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain seemed utterly convinced that an America under the tutelage of the other ticket would send the nation toward an unbearable precipice.
Nebraska apportions some of its five Electoral College votes by Congressional district, and in Omaha and the surrounding areas there is a fierce battle being waged by the Obama and McCain campaigns for just one of those votes.
There were, of course, pressing issues many voters wanted to discuss. Over the course of two weeks, a majority of those interviewed cited the economy as the crucial issue that would influence their vote next month. Grace notes were health care, national security and occasionally very place-specific concerns, like urban crime, factory job losses and underperforming schools.
But the backdrop to all of that was something far more personal, as voters reacted openly and viscerally to Mr. McCain, the 72-year-old Republican war hero, yoked to one of the least popular presidents in modern times, and Mr. Obama, the unflappable and somewhat inscrutable Democrat from Chicago who would be the country’s first black president.
Among the voters who had made up their minds, most expressed an almost frantic dislike for the other candidate - a dislike that was sometimes far greater than their zeal for their own man.
“With Barack Obama,” said Cheryl Oddo, a Republican in Strongsville, Ohio, who intends to vote for Mr. McCain: “I don’t even feel like his policies are even a different way of what’s right for America. I think his policies are the way of losing American the way we know it now.”
Ditto from the other side.
“I’m voting for Obama because hopefully he’ll make a change in the jobs market and with gas prices,” said Alicia Egas, one of the thousands of unemployed voters in Elkhart, Ind., a hard-hit industrial town. With Mr. McCain in office, she said, she feared “everything would go downhill from here.”
With Election Day less than three weeks away, the Americans encountered on this road trip held strong opinions but were far less defined by their region than they might have been the last time they voted in a presidential election. Some previously reliable Republican states like Nevada are in play, and there are generally more states not locked into the red-blue grid of the past.
Superficial semiotics offered by pundits rarely proved true. In short, there was an awful lot of latte and Chablis sipping in the red states, and a whole bunch of strict parenting and duck hunting in the blue states.
“Obviously we are conservative here,” said Cassi Warren, 36, a Republican in Omaha who stared at the protesters against Ms. Palin with a mix of contempt and amusement. “Fiscally, socially, in every way.”
But she added, “I don’t think there would have been Kerry supporters here four years ago,” a reference to Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004.
There was a young McCain supporter at the Palin rally with a bright red punk-rock haircut. The next day in nearby Bellevue, Neb., a conservatively dressed retired Air Force X-ray technician ripped into Mr. McCain over, among other things, her perception of his treatment of veterans.
In Omaha, awash in McCain signs and its local paper celebrating Ms. Palin with bold headlines, it was hard to sense any dissent. But at the airport, a rental car saleswoman, who looked as though she was probably young enough to be voting in her first election, had a tiny Obama pin affixed to her Hertz shirt, and a random cafe dweller wore a blue Obama logo shirt.
Ohio was a study in contrasts. In Toledo, the expansive Obama office was buzzing with volunteers, while the McCain office had a lone worker sitting on the same afternoon, staring into a computer.
A walk around Greeley, Colo., revealed several streets with McCain and Obama signs alternating on every other yard. Empty lots by and large featured giant McCain signs, most likely left over from a recent rally there.
Affixed in front of a sad little house on a tiny barren lot was a sign almost bigger than the porch: “HOPE.” In many cases, the candidates were more symbols than politicians to so many voters, and they saw no common ground with their neighbors leaning another way. The economy and race were the two great spoons that stirred that political pot.
“I think everyone knows someone who has been out of a job, and that has to change,” said Susie Velasquez, a voter in Greeley. “And I don’t think that’s going to change unless we get Barack Obama in the White House.”
Vernon Cecil, a Republican voter there, said Mr. Obama’s economic plan would do just the opposite.
But the economy also has eroded away partisanship, and disgust among even hard-core Republicans toward their party was evident in unlikely corners.
“The concept of nonregulation means don’t mess with business and business will take care of us,” said Mike Jones 63, a geologist in Elko, Nev., who is considering voting for a Democrat for the first time in his life. “But I was looking to retire, and now what do I retire on?”
Twenty miles away in Lamoille, Nev., Lisa Lafferty, a bartender, summed up her perception of her hometown’s view of Mr. Obama in racial, not partisan, terms. She was among the countless people over the two weeks who spoke easily about their distrust of a black candidate to a reporter with a notebook in her hand.
And it caused this reporter to wonder what it was about me. Was it the white color of my skin? My gender? My slight Midwestern accent, all the more pronounced as I moved east of the Missouri River - that gave people comfort in sharing their ugliest thoughts?
“A lot of people here don’t think he’s believable,” said Ms. Lafferty, 26. “Race background, that’s a huge factor out here. If he were another white guy, people probably wouldn’t feel that. Most people are saying he won’t say the Pledge of Allegiance.”
In Bellevue, Neb., Jessie Puglisi, 22, said, “Obama is the anti-Christ,” adding: “My husband feels the same way. He won’t even buy a magazine if Obama’s face is on it.”
No matter the place, whether swathed in red or blue, there were voters marooned on their own little political islands.
Dave and Anne Patton, Democrats, sat in the back of the bar in Lamoille, saying nothing as the bartenders and a few customers derided Mr. Obama.
“We don’t discuss it much,” Mrs. Patton said. “There’s no point.”