Is Jim Webb the Answer...

...to Barack Obama's "Appalachia Problem"?

According to Newhouse News Service commentator Jonathan Tilove, Obama doesn't have a problem with white people, generally (see Iowa, Vermont, most of America...).  The constituency he does have trouble reaching is the "Scots-Irish" folk that live in them thar hills. 

Now look at who Tilove cites in making his case:

But Clinton's West Virginia landslide does mean that Obama, for reasons that go beyond race, has a problem with Appalachia's whites and the Scots-Irish who settled there and forever branded its culture.

As Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., argues in his 2004 book, ``Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America,'' the Scots-Irish are a particularly pugnacious people, self-reliant and hyper-individualistic, who place honor above profit.

So if, as Senator Clinton keeps insisting, a Democrat can't win the White House without also winning West Virginia (is that really true, historically?), then what better way to sew up that crucial state and region than by nominating one of their own for the second slot on the ticket?

The article makes a case for John McCain's appeal to the Scots-Irish by virtue of his own heritage, but lands on the increasingly foregone conclusion for Barack Obama:

``In fact,'' Webb wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2004, ``the greatest realignment in modern politics would take place rather quickly if the right national leader found a way to bring the Scots-Irish and African-Americans to the same table, and so to redefine a formula that has consciously set them apart for the past two centuries.''

It's an intriguing statement from a man who two years later was elected to the Senate and is now frequently mentioned as a potential running-mate for Obama.

This gets to be more of a no-brainer every day.

Comments

[Jackson Landers]

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http://rule-303.blogspot.com/2008/05/jim-webb-gentleman-enforcer-for-barack.html