[txzman]

Well, you can definitely tell who this reporter voted for. He must've talked to every Democrat in Waco and Nebraska who voted for Kerry. Have him come to MY part of Texas, or let me take him to San Angelo, Amarillo and the Panhandle.

[Batrachian]

I still want to know why the commies get to be blue and the decent Americans are red. Actually, that's why. The news media who decides these things didn't want to reinforce the true perception that their people are communists.

[NYpeanut]

You forgot the "dripping with condescension" alert

[SandRat]

Bush is from Texas. And a Texan who seeks the votes of Middle Americans has a lot of symbolic ground already plowed for him, plowed by the likes of Sam Houston and John Wayne, Davy Crockett and Gary Cooper.

Kerry is a Liberal Massachusetts boy. We may have enjoyed watching M.A.S.H. and laughing at the pompous and imperious Major Charles M. Winchester III M.D. but we sure weren't going to vote for his brother.

[Bar-Face]

This reminds me of something I have read about:
Back in the 19th century the British gentry used to go on trips to India to observe the Indians and how quaint they lived. In the United States, the gentry did the same thing only they went to the west to see the "Red Indians" and the cowboys. In this case, he went out to observe the habits of those strange people that inhabite "Flyoverland".

[Viking2002]

I couldn't get past the third page without wanting to rip the writer's head off and crap in the hole. It's a left-leaning piece of birdcage liner if there ever was one.

[Texas_Jarhead]

interesting piece although I could have done without some of the author's liberal impressions

[Cicero]

I suppose this guy really thinks he tried, but he sounds pretty much like some Victorian snob who set out on Safari into the heart of deepest Africa in the early Victorian period. In other words, he sees these people, but he certainly doesn't understand them or consider them as belonging to the same human race he belongs to.

There's a certain irony in the ending. "In that light, I looked again, and the world seemed to float off in every direction toward new beginnings and fresh possibilities."

For the first time he had a glimpse of what it might be like to LIVE out in the country among the eternal verities, catching glimpses of the eternal, instead of in a big city with one of those--what do you call them?--curbs. But you can bet your bippy he didn't stay there out in the boonies to see what it's really like. He and his buddy hopped back in the car, turned it in at the nearest rental agency, got on the plane, and flew back to DC in time for cocktail hour and his press deadline.

[gitmo]

This map is marked with the boundaries of the 3,141 counties or county equivalents in the 50 United States.

I can't find the original articles on this. Can anyone tell me how many counties voted for Kerry?

[McGavin999]

They haven't got a clue. They are never going to figure us out.

[Mo1]

Turns out a good way to get folks moving in Waco, Neb., is to introduce yourself as a reporter from Washington, D.C.

*snicker*

This writer hasn't got a clue

Plus those Red Counties that went for Bush .. they weren't just in the mid west

[HateBill]

This was a beautifully written piece and I'm a sucker for good writing so I read it through.

The point the writer was making was that if Kerry had bothered to campaign in the red states, had spent the massive amounts of money instead of having all those funds left over after the election, all those Bush voters (who were ambivalent about Bush and basically only voted for him because they were not exposed to the far more compelling Kerry vision) in the "red states" were "persuadable" and would have participated in a putative Kerry landslide.

I suppose this is a fascinating new thesis: Kerry lost because he didn't make a priority of spending money in the red states.