Support For President Obama In Rural America....

[Douglas Carpenter]

4. I grew up in a little town called Corry, PA on the edge of Erie County

Erie County itself went for Obama in both 2008 and 2012. That is because the population of Erie itself is fairly consistently Democratic like most cities around the U.S. are. But in this little town of Corry, PA which I actually moved away from some 40 years ago - but have recently reconnected via Facebook - it seems that the politics are all about Guns and Jesus. And otherwise sensible people will believe the craziest things - like seriously believe that Obama is a Communist and a Muslim who is going to take away their guns, force abortion and gay marriage down their throats while imposing Sharia law. Of course there are a handful of Democrats even some unabashedly liberal Democrats in such places - but most of the rest of the population seems to believe really crazy stuff - and give the impression that they have never heard of another point of view. When I have gotten into it with them on internet discussions - I start explaining why I am not completely happy with Obama too - and this just throws them off. It's like they have heard that Obama is so extreme in his radically left-wing policies - they cannot imagine someone pointing out that on most economic issue Obama and most leading Democrats of today are well to the right of what moderate Republicans were a few decades ago. This of course tends to make them go quite - because they just didn't know it was possible to be more extreme than Obama and when they hear that old style Republicans were at least on economic matters well to the left of Obama - they cannot argue with the facts - but they just don't know what to say.