Talking America

Take me home, country roads

• Jon Kelly
• 10 Oct 08, 05:04 AM GMT

CHARLESTON, WV: I picked the right time to come to West Virginia. With autumn well underway, the leafy hillsides were exploding with reds, browns and yellows. It reminded me so much of Scotland - my parents' native Perthshire in particular - that I felt a sudden, oddly reassuring, lurch of homesickness.

The Mountain State might have looked beautiful, but I'd heard what a tough place it could be in which to live. Poverty here has long been well above the national average, and median incomes well below. The scarred landscape bore testament to the legacy of coal mining which has provided hard and dangerous employment to generations.

You'd think blue-collar terrain like this would be happy hunting ground for a Democratic candidate in November, but you'd be wrong. West Virginia voted for George W Bush at the last two presidential elections, and Barack Obama was utterly crushed by Hillary Clinton in the primary here.

But this state was once reliably blue. Some commentators have even suggested that Senator Obama has an Appalachian problem on his hands - a worrying inability to connect with white, working-class, rural voters.

These were exactly the people with whom I wanted to spend some time. So I hooked up with Bob and Debbie Schultz - a couple who seemed to encapsulate the political dilemmas faced by West Virginians.

On the one hand, both were on the left when it came to the pocketbook issues. Bob, 55, had been a miner and loyal member of the United Mine Workers of America until he retired with black lung disease earlier this year.

Debbie, 52, spoke proudly of West Virginia's mine wars, when workers battled with employers and the authorities for the right to organise. Like her husband, she was deeply unhappy with the Bush administration's handling of the economy.

But on the other hand, they were firmly conservative when it came to social matters. Bob had served as a pastor until his retirement, while Debbie was an accomplished gospel singer who performed in churches across the country. Both described themselves as pro-life and patriotic.

Neither of the main parties quite represented them. Despite the similarity of their views, Bob was registered as a Democrat, Debbie as a Republican. They'd both voted for George Bush in 2004, but were unhappy with the choices before them this time.

I asked Bob which way he intended to cast his ballot. For Obama, he replied, but reluctantly so. He was quite clear, though, that West Virginia's scepticism about the Illinois senator had nothing to do with racial prejudice, despite what some commentators had written.

"In a mine, we're all black after the first hour," he insisted. "People are preoccupied with colour. But it seems to be working for Obama, and not against him."

However, he had been deeply unsettled by the "God Damn America" speech by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former church minister.

"He went to that church all those years, but he says he didn't know the pastor was saying those things?" Bob shook his head.

Debbie was equally disillusioned with her party. She would have voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries, she told me, had she not been a registered Republican; instead she went for Mike Huckabee.

She wasn't sure how she would vote in November. Distrustful of Obama for the same reason as her husband, Debbie identified with Sarah Palin. But she had also grown cynical about Republican rhetoric.

"At every election, they talk about abortion. But nothing ever changes," she complained. "It's just a way to win votes."

It looked to me as though the GOP were losing their grip on people like Bob and Debbie. Whether the Democrats will win back what was once the bedrock of their support was a lot less clear, however.

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First past the post

• Jon Kelly
• 10 Oct 08, 04:05 AM GMT

The bus stopped for a spot of nosebag at Keeneland race course in Kentucky. Jennifer took the opportunity to sound out some punters:

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