America hates Hillary Clinton and Co
>By Toby Harnden, telegraph.co.uk
25/11/2007
They call it flyover country. These are the parts of the United States that the pundits and prognosticators of American politics see just occasionally - and usually from several thousand feet. It is a land where people shop at Wal-Mart, eat at Dairy Queen, work two jobs to make ends meet and have a Bible at home. They can decide on their vote with the help of talk radio, cable television and the internet - or from a combination of rumour, scraps of hard information and gut feeling.
Iowa and New Hampshire are the early-voting states into which the east-coast campaign "bubble" bounces every four years. They provide the stage for the opening acts. But it is in flyover country where the 2008 presidential election will be won and lost.
"There's less hustle and bustle here than on the coasts and a different outlook on life," said Marla Russ, a secretary and part-time policewoman at a football game in Weatherford, Oklahoma. "There's pride in the land and trust for each other. Things are still done on a handshake."
So is Hillary Clinton the "polarising" figure we hear so much of in the media? Can only a Democrat win in 2008? Is America ready to elect its first female or black president? Have the Bush years left the average Joe Schmoe yearning for the Clintons?
With a year to go before the country votes for its 44th president, The Daily Telegraph embarked on its "Crossing America" project to find out. The answers that Julian Simmonds, photographer and videographer, and I got were often surprising. They provide little comfort for Mrs Clinton. Although few people have no opinion about the 2008 candidates, the election has yet to grip the American imagination. And for most, their final decision remains a long way away.
Hillary Clinton might be the frontrunner in the polls, but almost everywhere we went people questioned her candidacy.
We never brought up Bill Clinton's sexual dalliances, but many ordinary Americans did. "She couldn't keep her own home together, so how can we trust her to manage America?" asked Micki Martinson, a housewife in Somerset, Pennsylvania.
While we found many people who hated Mrs Clinton, those who loved her were few and far between. Certainly, many said they would vote for her, but the reason cited tended to be her status as the top Democrat.
And the frequently expressed nightmare for Democrats is that she will win their party's nomination but lose to a Republican next November when most Americans decide they don't much like her.
"I'm always amazed how we can screw things up," said Steve Ayers, a coffee-shop owner in Hannibal. "Maybe the way we screw it up this time is by nominating Hillary - across the Midwest that would be the only way of unifying Republicans."
Although Mr Clinton is no longer the villain he was for many in the late 1990s, there was precious little evidence of nostalgia for the Clinton years - another alarm bell for the Hillary campaign.
Support for the Iraq war was thin, though far from non-existent, but backing for American troops was strong and, on balance, most people thought Islamic extremism needed to be confronted. When national security dominates an election campaign, the advantage traditionally lies with Republicans.
But the anti-Hillary mood does not necessarily translate into happy days for her Democratic rival, Barack Obama, or the Republicans such as Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney queueing up to take her on. Beyond the coasts and outside the college towns, Obamamania was difficult to find. His lofty, professorial manner has made it difficult for him to connect with ordinary Americans and he could well go the way of earlier "outsider" Democrats running on a platform of change, including Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas and Bill Bradley. Obama's lack of experience was a staple of conversations about him.
Although few people cite Obama's race as a negative factor, there are clearly worries about whether he is too exotic a creature for Middle America.
A childhood in Indonesia and Hawaii and mixed-race parentage in some ways epitomise modern America. But voters are often most comfortable with the candidate they can best relate to - something Bush tapped into in 2000 when he played down his Yale education.
The great and the good of Washington decreed long ago that Mr Giuliani, who favours abortion and gay rights and has previously advocated gun controls, was too liberal to secure the Republican nomination. Not so in the flyover states, where in the post-9/11 world, defending America trumps everything else among conservatives.
"I have always admired Giuliani, especially after 9/11," said Grita Poehle, a German-born new citizen in San Diego. "If he can do for America what he did for New York, that would be good."
If there was a single message from Americans everywhere, however, it was that they cannot stand politicians. "They all lie all the time," stated the Hertz attendant at the airport in Wichita, Kansas. "The 2008 election? I wouldn't cross the road to vote for anyone," vowed our waitress at the Village Inn in Casper, Wyoming.
Apart from the war on terror, the issue we were confronted by again and again was illegal immigration - a preoccupation of Democratic as well as Republican voters. "We did everything legally and so should they," said Ljiljana Zezelj, 38, a new citizen from Croatia. "Nothing will work in this country until we secure our borders," said Laura Dietz, a retiree in Phoenix, Arizona.
Just before the Crossing America project, the Telegraph's Washington staff produced two top 100 lists of the most influential conservatives and liberals in the United States - an undertaking that drew huge attention through CNN, the Chicago Tribune and the Drudge Report.
But Crossing America reminded us that the most influential voices in the 2008 election - the most open contest since 1928 – are those in flyover country. Once the parties choose their candidates, these are the people - cynical and anxious, unimpressed and disillusioned - who still have to be persuaded. |
