Race to Washington

Blue dog democrat

The sunset brings a chill to Marshall’s Main street. We’re in the foothills of Smoky Mountains here, just a gentle hour from North Carolina’s border with Tennessee. The night comes quick, but not quick enough that hordes of exotically dressed youngsters and their parents can’t make the rounds of shops and business offering Halloween treats along the sidewalk.

At the tail end of town is the Marshall Depot, the older generation’s Friday night hideaway. Here just about everybody with a guitar gets a chance to perform on stage in front of a greying but discerning home-town audience. There is dancing as well, the old Mountain shuffling which bears more than a passing resemblance to Irish step-dancing.

A 60-something-year-old woman with a powder blue pantsuit and a bouffant hairdo, perfected and primped over decades, dances elegantly beside as a slightly younger man with a camouflaged cap and t-shirt who does a more extravagant, chicken-style shuffle.

There are perhaps 80 or 90 similarly dressed older people in the hall and a couple of old Marshall characters out in the lobby.

Adolphus Threadway tells me the Depot used to be the town train station. His great- great-granddaddy sold the first ticket back in 1868 and his father sold the last in 1968.

Adolphus and his friends are warm and forthcoming on almost all topics, but seem more formal talking about politics.

Adolphus voted early early. He is a Democrat, a Blue-Dog Democrat, like most people in the surrounding Madison county. He is conservative, pro-gun and pro-family and pro-America. A Mountain Democrat. But still a Democrat.

Adolphus voted for John McCain.

So did Emmet Norton. Another Democrat.

And so did Bonnie Keech.

Against the sound of the regional anthem, ‘Rocky Top’,  all these fine, decent mountaion people told me in a variety of ways that Barack Obama did not share their ‘values’.

Values. That word can represent a multitude of emotions and perhaps cover up another multitude.

These people told me Obama’s skin-colour was not a factor in their decision. Instead, what I heard was a resentment of his foreign-ness, his un-Americanism, his difference.

Bonnie Keech told me Iraq was a real factor in Madison County. And it was playing in favour of John McCain, not Barack Obama, because the war underlined McCain’s patriotism.

Still, even Republicans at the Marshall Depot believe that Obama has a chance of winning North Carolina. Frank Massey is one. Sitting on a bench by the ticket desk, with his hands resting on his walking stick, he rails against the Democrats, who he says are responsible for his state’s historic lack of developmentt`:‘We didn’t even get electricity in this county ‘til 1948’.

When I ask him about the election, he leans forward and says of Obama and Sarah Palin: ‘I think the negro’s going to win, but we’ll have a woman president four years later.’

For more on the US Election go to RTÉ.ie/uselection

Posted at 03:23PM Nov 02, 2008