Lost Jobs and Military Funerals Haunt Bush in the Heartland Attention, Wal-Mart Voters by Rick Perlstein December 3 - 9, 2003
Rock River Valley, Illinois - Piety is easy to find on the highways of Red America. Stop at a cemetery and you may find that the marker towering over all the rest reads, "In Memory of the Unborn Children." Down at the lower frequencies, the ones occupied in more urbane locales by the edgy college stations and NPR affiliates, your radio lectures at you: The music you'll hear during your visit is safe for the whole family. . . . Family friendly 91.5, WCIC, celebrating 20 years of music and ministry. Neighborliness is unavoidable, a saving grace: Pull into a motel and the lady asks for your cell phone number because there was a rash of folks forgetting their cameras this summer and she wants to be able to call you if you leave something behind yourself.
But just like in a novel by Sinclair Lewis, if piety is easy to find, then so is hypocrisy. Enter the sultry stink of a dingy roadhouse not far from where Abraham Lincoln once debated Stephen Douglas, and a terse young man winding himself up with coffee for a hard-partying Saturday night volunteers his version of the scene: a couple of towns down, the best gentleman's club; the next town over (you won't see a sign), a gambling den. A couple of hours later, when you tell the woman behind the counter at the convenience store where you've been, you elicit a grimace: "Oh, did you see two girls getting it on?" (They do so nightly, apparently, around 11 o'clock, on the pool table, for tips.)
Though even in this, Oglesby, Illinois's local den of iniquity, Republicans aren't hard to find, either. "I thought Bush would be a good man for the job at the time, and thought he'd be a good president," says the terse young man, whose nickname is Stony. "So I voted for him."
Stony is the kind of guy liberals love to worry about, the kind they fret they can't win over by next year's election. He works the midnight shift as a "picker" at a nearby grocery warehouse-the very job Tom Wolfe depicts as the soul of thankless blue-collar humiliation in his latest novel. Stony talks proudly about his union and, quietly, mentions his fears that his workplace "could have a shutdown any day. You never know."
Liberals: Worry less. Stony no longer supports George Bush: "Because of the war. Too many people dyin'." Neither does his drunken friend, who pipes up: "I hate him. Because there are kids getting killed every single day."
Worry less. But worry still.[...]