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Dispatches from Flyover Country
If you can’t get through an article about Indiana without mentioning a certain twenty-year-old sports movie, you aren’t qualified to write it.
One thing about Indiana is that it has a long history of competing ideas and interests. It’s not only the home of the KKK, but also of Eugene Debs, one of the founders of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World. Indiana housed some of the first two utopian societies in the United States, had several integral stops on the Underground Railroad, and additionally boasts one of the internationally known centers for Quaker society. Reynolds, Indiana, a twenty minute drive north of my house, was chosen as the first BioTown in the United States thanks to it’s proximity to major biofuel sources. Indiana is heavily based in manufacturing, moreso than in agriculture, and as such is heavily unionized. Where Indiana was once largely a white state, the African-American and Latino populations are growing exponentially, and hell, within the last decade the university in my backyard hosted the largest number of foreign students in all of the United States. But somehow, whenever you see an outsider write about Indiana, what you read about is corn, religion, grand dragons, and basketball.
Which brings me to this Salon article.
See, Edward McClelland thought he’d take a trip to the zoo — excuse me “Da Region”, except The Region is only called “Da Region” if you’re a skit actor for SNL* — and paint the entire state as a bunch of politically starry-eyed yokels who cain’t buhlieve the “canary coif[ed]” Clinton and “business-like” Obama would bother to stop by and say howdy.**
NEW RULE: If you don’t live in flyover country, you don’t get to write about “flyover country.” ***
Now.
The other thing about Indiana that the article has right, sort of, is that Hoosiers are a practical bunch. The author falls short of the usual tactic complaining that midwestern folks vote Republican because they don’t know what’s good for them, but what he misses is a major point. Hoosiers don’t “always vote Republican.” A minor bit of research would have informed the author that the state’s most-beloved long-term politicians are Democrats, namely Senator Evan Bayh, formerly state governor, who was briefly a nod for the Democratic presidential race, and most notably his father Birch Bayh, who served as a U.S. Senator for almost twenty years. The much-beloved Julia Carson, who passed away this December, led an astounding number of achievements in the House in her work as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Oh, Frank O’Bannon, anyone? Joe Kernan?
But outside of state and local politics, Democrats don’t pay a lot of attention to Indiana. You want a dying manufacturing city for a photo op, you hit Detroit, and if you want a lead on the ag economy, you hit Iowa. I can recall President Bush visiting Indiana several times in the last eight or nine years for His Man Mitch, but until last month no presidential Dem really bothered to pay our dying industry, our sad economy, any attention. Not in my living memory. The talking elites had a heyday examining the truisms of Obama’s “bitterness” remarks, and I personally I think there’s a grain of truth in that for all middle Americans, but not for the reasons he mentioned. I think we’re equally bitter about being left behind as we are bitter at being ignored unless it’s politically convenient. For that, the Democrats ought to take note of what kind of response they get from active campaigning in the states they usually abandon.
Because anymore, when liberal commentators exclaim that Indiana doesn’t matter, whether because of the delegate counts or the state’s perceived conservatism or because it’s only a primary, I think Indiana doesn’t care about Democratic politics because national Democratic politics doesn’t care much about Indiana either.
__________
* Dear Mr. McClelland, I’ve never heard the term “Region Rats” before I read your article, but for what it’s worth The Region populates everything from Lake County, Gary and East Chicago, all the way to Chesterton, La Porte, and Michigan City. It’s really hard to stereotype a population of this size so mythically, but bravo. You really outdid yourself.
** McClelland should have culled his thesis down to two simple sentences: “Fuck that bitch. Vote Obama.”
*** Hat tip for the rule to she of the rules.
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Offsprung Columns
I understand your ire. I'm from Oklahoma. People think it's cute to tell me that I'm an Okie from Muskogee. And their great-great third cousin was a Cherokee princess.
I have sworn to NEVER again read the Huffington Post because of a terrible article Jessica Wakeman wrote, but neglected to proof-read. The article painted all Oklahomans as backwards, woman-hating rednecks, but Ms. Wakeman also spelled Oklahoma as "Olklahoma" - not once, but at least five times. Democrats have never so much as blinked at my home state, except when half of it is blown away in tornadoes or when a wing-nut blows up an office building. Dems seem to have forgotten that most of Oklahoma's governors have been Democrat, and plenty of folks used to be Populists. Oklahoma may not have many electoral votes, but in a tight race, the few they have matter. Why the hell should they feel compelled to give them to a party who ignores them or mischaracterizes them?
I may be a little bitter myself.