The Appalachian Strategy: Jim Webb, The Scots-Irish, and the Road to the White House

Last night, when interviewed by Keith Olbermann, the presumptive Obama press secretary and currently resident at the Obama Channel, Virginia senator, Jim Webb, took the opportunity to shamelessly campaign for the Democrats' second slot. When Olbermann flirted with him about the VP, Webb turned nearly as red as a school girl, and said coquettishly some sweet nothings about Obama before launching into a discussion about how Obama needed to shore up his support of the dobro-playing, Hatfield-and- McCoy-feuding Scots-Irish of Appalachia, heretofore known, I guess, as the white working class.

Webb went on to point out the obvious and state that these are exactly the voters the Democratic nominee will need to work so assiduously to garner and, by the way, Keith, I just happened to write a Wall Street Journal article and a book about these very folks and their desires in 2004. (The article, Secret GOP Weapon: The Scots-Irish Vote, is available at http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id+=110005798. His book is entitled Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America)

I haven’t read the book, but the article couldn’t be more tailored to appealing to Obama if it had been written since Obama’s whuppings in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. In the article, Webb basically argues that the Scots-Irish in states from Tennessee to Ohio and Pennsylvania have been key constituencies for the GOP, as Reagan Democrats, and as overwhelming supporters of the “Current Occupant,” as Garrison Keiller likes to call G.W. Bush. They are the GOP’s “secret weapon,” Webb writes, and as such, Democrats need to figure out what it is they want so they can get their Scots-Irish arse votes to vote for a Democrat, or something like that. And guess, of course, who is the expert on how these people think?

I am sure the book is worth a read even if the National Review called it one of the best political books of 2004.

Webb would be a very good VP choice but, for its worth, and for the reasons I outlined yesterday, HC would be better yet. The two together would be certain to expand turnouts, and HC is showing some real clout with exactly the constituency Webb writes about. The big question, I guess, is whether these voters were voting for her or against Obama, but certainly her perception as a fighter and her near-metamorphosis into a populist, Methodist daughter of the working class, appears to have struck a chord. Webb just can’t match her star power or gravitas (or the spectacle of Bill Clinton running around on the scene).

Bill Clinton notwithstanding, to people like the Boston Herald’s, Mike Barnicle, who also held forth on the Obama Channel last night saying that HC, as VP, would be the wrong choice for Obama because she would undermine his whole shtick (my word) of transformation and change, I can only say this argument doesn’t make a lot of sense, Mike. Hillary Clinton’s gender alone represents big time change for women and men, alike, if you haven’t noticed. If you had said you were concerned that it might be too much for the poor voting public to contemplate both a black and a woman on the same ticket, at least that would have made some sense (in addition to being racist and misogynistic, according to some sensitive types).

It will be interesting to see just what Barnicle (and presumably others who think that HC just isn’t hip enough for Obama) will consider as an acceptable VP candidate, though my guess is that this will look suspiciously like Webb, a white male with a military background, from a southern or swing state, and a timely book about the Scots-Irish.