Your Issues

Big Issue reporter Adam Forrest is traveling through the American South to gauge the mood of the red state heartland in the run-up to November's election...

Winchester, Virginia - October 22, 2008

“I really don’t know how bad it’s gonna get.”

As the US government pours billions into the money markets following the billions spent on stakes in the country’s biggest banks, it is Obama who remains accused at McCain and Palin rallies of being a “socialist.”

These are strange days, and people are left clutching at whatever slim slices of myth and history might explain all the un-American economic ideas in the air.

I’m spending time up in the hills of western Virginia, where some are calling on memories of the Great Depression for guidance. At The Troubadour, a country and western joint miles from the nearest town of Winchester, owner Joltin’ Jim McCoy watches the sun go down over the mountain with a bottle of Jim Beam. At 79, he remembers the last time period the government was forced to prop up the banking system. “I remember food rationing; gas rationing. I remember people being scared.”  

McCoy sees the signs that dark days are returning. “I really don’t know how bad it’s gonna get, but people are scared again,” says McCoy. “Know what I heard this morning? The big seller at the moment is safes. People are preparing to stash their money again.”

And yet for McCoy, four more years of the Republicans is less frightening than the “radical” change Obama appears to offer. “I’m probably gonna have to go for McCain. I’m not sure about Obama’s taxes because he’s gonna give to the poor. That’s socialism and we don’t like that here.”

Virginia is a state so solidly Republican that neither of those great Southern charmers - Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton - could take it. And yet Virginians are preparing to pluck for a Democrat for the first time in 44 years. Obama has had a comfortable poll lead in the state for over a month.

How did it swing into play? An influx of college students and long distance commuters from Washington D.C. have played a part in making the mix more liberal. But many further south – the “real Virginia” according to a senior McCain advisor - are also preparing to switch long-held allegiances to vote for the candidate exuding the most competence on the economy.

Back in downtown Winchester, at the counter of The Twilight Zone diner, owner Gary Leon tells me he voted for Bush twice, but wised up when prosperity for the working stiff never arrived. He’s now praying Obama wins. “I’m now getting veterans telling me they’ll vote for Obama. And this is a place you used to whisper you were a Democrat.”

Like a lot of Americans with just enough to have a 401k pension plan of stocks and bonds, the 44-year-old is wondering when to pull the money out. “I’ll probably wait until January or February until I push the panic button. Obama is not going to be able to change the world. But I still have some hope things might not get too much worse if he wins.”

If the Republicans somehow claim another four years, Leon may have to buy one of those safes or head up to the hills. Ol’ Joltin’ Jim McCoy should have a glass of Jim Beam waiting.

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Montgomery, Alabama - October 20, 2008

'I have a hunch...'

As tax-averse Joe the Plummer becomes the latest election sensation, the Republicans continue to carry the baggage of a less palatable overnight media star. In Gayle Quinnell, the Minnesota woman who told McCain at a town hall event that Obama was an "Arab," the GOP's far-right undertow of ignorance and bigotry was given centre stage.
 
McCain may be quite right to dismiss Quinnell's voice as part of a "fringe element," but here in Montgomery, where Rosa Parks defied segregation on the buses and Martin Luther King built the civil rights movement in the late fifties, apprehension over race continues.
 
Here I met Joe Levin, lawyer at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where cases against remaining Klu Klux Klan outfits and other race hate groups are still prepared. He says he has "no clue" how big a factor Obama's race or background will be on November 4.
 
"A lot of people believe if he were white, he would have even bigger leads by now," he says. "Whatever happens, whether he wins or not, it will be important to do the research afterwards to see how his race influenced how people voted."
 
I had the great privlidge of spending Sunday morning in Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King became pastor in 1960. Obama has spent time in the Church to receive the blessing of Dr King's heir, Pastor Raphael G. Warnock.
 
The pastor's impressive sermon focused on the rewards of the hereafter only in the context of the woes of the here and now, urging his flock to "worship God in the midst of severance taxes and baked beans...Where else are you going to hide? The Leman Brothers? Let God be your hiding place."
 
After the service, Warnock tried to explain how it was that the Republicans had claimed a certain kind of Christian faith as their own. "Unfortunately in America, the loudest voices, focusing on abortion and gay rights, are often heard most as the so-called value issue. As if how we treat the sick and the poor weren't part of our deepest values. Unfortunately too much of the Church has been silent on our most pressing problems."
 
Though his spiritual forerunner had a dream, the current Ebenezer Pastor has more modest hope for the upcoming election. "We have seen it with black candidates before, that people who say they will vote for them, just can't bring themselves to pull the lever. But I have a hunch, and it's just a hunch, that with the confluence of some many economic problems, some people who can't even admit it to their friends will vote for Obama."
 
Right now, getting through the week without accumulating yet more debt is the only thing that matters to the vast majority of Americans. But should Obama somehow lose, expect to hear a lot about racial divisions, and the wounds still taking too long to heal.
 

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 Atlanta, Georgia  - October 16, 2008

"They're interested in their wallet, first and foremost.."

With the final debate now over, and Obama riding high on double-digit poll leads heading into the final stretch, it's strange to see typically effective Republican tactics fall foul.

McCain's grouchy digs at Obama for his former ties with radical Bill Ayres appear increasingly petty as the economy continues to crumble. Attack pitbull Sarah Palin has been reduced to doing interviews with rabidly right-wing radio show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, fiddling with old smears while Rome burns. Suddenly, the Republicans seem completely out-of-step with the mainstream.

Traveling through the South, where once-lingering poverty appears to have spread like Spanish moss, money woes are the only issues that matter. It is incredible to find so many struggling in the country we have been conditioned into considering the richest in the world.

Huge medical bills and massive debt from hospital care are among the most common complaints. Many do without doctors altogether. In both small towns and metropolitan centres you see an astonishing amount of people on crutches, nursing poorly-patched up limbs or riding beat-up wheelchairs. Foreclosures have reached record highs. People aren't buying cars. Unemployment stands at over 700,000. The national debt has passed $10trillion.

After watching the Presidential debate in downtown Atlanta, Chris Weiner, a recent college graduate in accounting, tells me he is not inclined to vote with Obama simply because their skin colours match. "People are not really interested in the historical event of a black man becoming President. They're interested in their wallet, first and foremost."

Though he's inclined toward classic fiscal conservatism, Weiner finds himself leaning toward the candidate exuding at least some degree of competence. "Obama does seem to have a more detailed plans and ideas about how to get the economy moving. I'm not convinced Palin is at all ready to be in the White House, or that McCain knows what he's doing if he picked someone like her."

Georgia, like the vast majority of the South, has been staunchly Republican for several decades. Neither Al Gore or John Kerry painted a single patch of the region blue in 2000 or 2004. But Obama now finds himself well ahead in polls in Virginia, and narrowly in front in North Carolina.

In every conversation with Southerners, the fate of the Almighty Dollar trumps "value" issues like gun rights and abortion that have loomed so large in recent years. Even those still making a buck or two are worried.

At the Magic Pawn downtown, pawnbroker Roland Jeffers is amazed at the number of i-pods, X-boxes, televisions, rings and chains he's taking in. "We're real busy because people need cash right now. But things are getting so bad, I might even struggle, because people won't be able to afford to buy anything here."

Jeffers has never voted Democrat before, but strange times call for strange measures. "I want the best for my business. I also want the best for my country. I think Obama might actually be the one to turn it around."

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