ONTD Political

• "Obama isn't even really black -- Bill Clinton is more black than Obama," said Mike Wallace, 44, of Dearborn, Mich. Wallace is a United Auto Workers pipe fitter who plans to vote for McCain, although he believes the vast majority of his co-workers at the local Chrysler plant will vote for Obama, as recommended by a UAW handout.

• "I'm not a fan of the blacks," explained Dennis Rodriguez, 48, a restaurant manager from Manistique, Mich., "but I just think Obama is the right man for the job."

• Bob Morin, 53, a custodian and swing voter from Cubero, N.M. (a state Bush won by just 5,000 votes in 2004), told me, "I've got a few friends who say, 'There's no way I'm voting for a black guy,' but I think most people have gotten over it."

• "He's just not someone I can personally relate to," explained Cathy Massingale, 33, of Cullowhee, N.C., a Democrat who first supported John Edwards this election, and then Hillary Clinton. "Obama just doesn't feel like someone who knows me." Massingale's husband is in the military, and she wants to see a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But she said she remains undecided about Obama or McCain.



• "Obama's like Jesse Jackson -- what does he know except a bunch of cities with lots of blacks?" asked 60-year-old construction worker Louie, in White Branch, Mich., a lifelong Democrat who said he probably won't vote for either candidate this year.

• Gary Ball, a former coal miner and editor of the firebrand Mountain Citizen newspaper that is published in Inez, points to an authenticity gap for Obama. "People around here see Obama as being privileged," he said. Never mind McCain -- with his seven houses -- or recent blue blood candidates George W. Bush, John Kerry and Al Gore. "We know Obama's plenty book-smart ... but I liked Harry Truman, the last president to have a simple high school education."

• In the quaint and tidy town of Yellville, Ark., Cassie Gilley, 48, a soft-spoken school administrator, explained her view of white, rural America's evolving relationship to race. "There's a difference between racist and prejudiced," she said over sandwiches at Subway, after a service at Yellville's First Baptist Church. "A lot of people around here just haven't spent much time with black people. When they get to know a black person, it's OK. But they will bring their prejudice in at first."

• Just outside of Cranks, Ky., in Harlan County, Mack Middleton is a retired coal miner and a die-hard union man -- a United Mine Workers bumper sticker adorns his Dodge van -- but he is also a swing voter who voted both for Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. This year, Middleton, 62, and his wife, Janice, 57, aren't sure if they are going to vote at all. "Obama, he's not our kind of people," said Middleton in a gruff, bitten-off speaking style, taking a break from canning green beans at the couple's double-wide mobile home. "He don't believe in the hereafter, and the Lord, the way I look at it ... he's Muslim."

• In Logan, W.Va., abandoned brick storefronts haunt downtown while the Fountain Plaza mall, anchored by a Wal-Mart Supercenter, gleams on the hill above town. Logan County was one of a few counties that voted for John Kerry in 2004 (George W. Bush won West Virginia overall), and, given a struggling economy, would seem primed to swing Democratic again. But Scott, 26, a former trucker currently unemployed, isn't going to vote for Obama. "I know it sounds stupid," he says taking a long drag from his Maverick cigarette, "but Barack Hussein Obama? And if he gets in, somebody'll take him out real quick," he said, referring to potential assassination, which was a surprisingly common theme along rural back roads.

• Beyond the necessity of connecting with rural America, the Obama campaign is hoping to gain ground by winning over suburban independents in battleground states. In Columbus, Ohio, I encountered several white, upper-middle-class swing voters who said they would support Obama. But Terry Daniels, 53, a black man who runs a clothing store in downtown Columbus catering to the city's suburbanites, was skeptical that would happen. "Everyone likes to think they're progressive," Daniels said, "but when it comes down to it, they're not going to vote that way."

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