President Barack Obama’s underwhelming victory over a nonexistent candidate in Tuesday’s primary in Kentucky can be tied to a mix of factors — but mostly to widespread and emphatic opposition to many of his policies, according to state and national political observers. Voting for “uncommitted” over Obama in the primary doesn’t mean Democrats will vote for a Republican in the fall, “but it’s a pretty loud criticism of where they see this president and his policies,” said Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, who believes Obama has angered people in Kentucky coal counties with his support of alternative forms of energy. Obama won just 58 percent of the vote against “uncommitted,” which drew 42 percent of the vote. “Uncommitted” won in 67 of Kentucky’s 120 counties and tied Obama in another.Himself lost to MizzHillary in the 2008 primary and McCain took the state in the general, but still, ya'll.... Kentucky is a heavily unionized/closed-shop state, and predictably Obama won Louisville and Bowling Green, where the UAW plants are located, along with the universities, and General Electric (in Louisville). (Precinct-by-precinct results here.) But apart from the traditional urban Democrat-or-nothing enclaves, it is not good news for Himself.
He has openly declared war on the coal industry, and by golly the counties that house the coal industry are, well, pissed-off. The Department of Labor attempted to regulate family farms to the point that children couldn't do chores-and by golly, the rural county voters pushed back, at least those few who bothered to vote the Democrat primary. The Department of Agriculture and EPA have decided that dirt stirred up by the wind is a threat to the polar bears, and rural people are pushing back while they still can. It is no secret that Obama, Holder, MizzNancy and MassahHarry would confiscate every gun in every home, given the opportunity; or that they would leave the southern border wide open, given the opportunity.
They think people who live in small towns are stupid, that they are just dumb rednecks, unworthy of a thought. The small-town folks beg to differ.
Then there are the social issues...and the obvious decline of the county seats under the heel of a government that only knows how to increase welfare dependency and punish accomplishment. The schools that don't function, occupied by the NEA, still. The decline in living standards, the ballooning of debt, the underemployment, the kids having to move back in with their kids because all the jobs went away.
Then, there is the memory of the 1990's, when the federal government and the trial lawyers kicked the legs out from underneath the tobacco industry. The empty barns and idle farms stand as silent witnesses to that bit of Utopian intervention. People remember when those little tobacco plots made the difference in a family's way of life, and how they were taken away, and all that 'settlement money' from the tobacco industry was simply pissed away by the politicians. They remember these things.
They also remember that it's their kids who join the military, and do the fighting and dying, and suspect the Commander-in-Chief may be working off some other playbook than the one that outlines how to win wars.
So. Let's assume all those 'undecided' types, after they see that their primary votes are ignored, simply...stay...home this fall. No donations. No phone calls, no meetings attended. No yard signs. No showing up at the polls in November. That's the best-case scenario for Himself.
OS thinks some of those folks will even show up in November, given the opportunity to express their feelings about Obama, and vote GOP, up and down the ticket. OS checked the precinct totals at the union halls--even there, there were some 'undecideds' lurking about, and not many votes cast at all. Wonder how many of those folks, who are unhappy with Himself but not willing to confront their union bosses, just stayed home?
Of course, this won't receive much attention from the East Coast media. After all, those folks in Kentucky are just a bunch of hillbillies, not worthy of the attention of sophisticates like us...
