Redneck Delusion

My redneck friends are bewildered. They believe the country voted for Obama because a minority of liberals bamboozled the majority of normal, decent people in the wake of an economic crisis. To them, Obama is clearly out-of-touch and far to the left.

I sense a real problem here. My redneck friends don't even KNOW anyone who voted for Obama. They can't figure out how the egg-heads, minorities, bleeding-hearts, and big-city liberals were able to take this election away from--again--normal, decent people like themselves. Many of my friends live in Indiana (as I do) and are left shaking their heads, wondering how a northern, black, liberal Senator could win in Indiana.

A big part of the problem is perception. America is no longer what my redneck friends think it is. White people--those of European descent--are a slim majority and will be outnumbered by all non-European groups combined in the next 40 years or so.

Those big city folks are no longer the exception. The majority of Americans have lived in cities than in rural areas and small towns for decades, but some of that was in smaller cities. Today, urbanites and surburbanites in major metropolitan areas are the norm.

The old Republican southern strategy is dead. Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and Indiana (the northernmost southern state) all voted for Obama. Georgia didn't miss by much.

Finally, Hank Williams Jr isn't going to win the Republicans any elections, no matter how many times John McCain or Sarah Palin put him on stage. The idea that he speaks for the "real Americans" or the "little guy" won't fly anymore. He speaks for white, working-class men who have rural and small-town values no matter where they may live.

I've got no problem with white, working class men with rural and small town values. They are some of my best friends, they make up part of the backbone of this country, and they are entitled to their opinions, God Bless 'em. But if they continue to think of themselves as some "silent majority" getting the rug pulled out from under them by a haphazard coalition of elitists, intellectuals, and minorities, they are destined to be continually disappointed.

America doesn't look like they think it does. It never will again.