The Handgun Lies Next to the Bible

He lives in the Midwest on a remote farm or in a boring, boxy little town, on the verge of the Appalachian Mountains or in the desolate outskirts of an ever-encroaching industrialized metropolitan area. He works as a farmer, miner, steelworker, gas station attendant or retail employee. Joe, as people like to call him, enjoys the complete attention of pollsters and political strategists – and that of the candidates John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The white male employee and the white male blue-collar worker are the key figures in US elections, the much sought-after group whose voice may determine first the Democratic candidate and then the next US president. Why?

Joe is angry, and this anger could be decisive in the election. He’s worried about his job and mad about the many new immigrants. He groans under the weight of the mortgage on his little house and doesn’t know how he can pay for his next fill up at the pump. Frustration drives him into the arms of the Democrats with their social policies. For the Democrats, that’s a huge windfall they definitely don’t want to fritter away. In previous decades, they have been unable to tap the full voter potential of common people.

They shoot at crows and tin cans

Originally the Joes came from Ohio and Kentucky, from Pennsylvania and Kansas. They were predominantly steadfast voters for union-supporting Democrats because it was the Democrats and their presidents who brought them the higher wages, the social safety nets, and the better lives they enjoyed. But in the 1960s, they turned away from them in disappointment. The left-liberalism of the Democrats had gone too far for their tastes: the commitment to gender and racial equality, the support of pacifism and reproductive freedom, the support of gun control laws and gay rights. Affirmative action, preferences for minorities, above all by African-Americans, drove many who saw their own opportunities dwindling out to the barricades. The Democrats could no longer hold their political base together.

Cultural liberalism was anathema to the white Joes because it contradicted all the values they had treasured since the pioneer days. They were values that represented everything good and great about America for some, but everything restrictive and small-minded for others. The author Truman Capote described Joe as a patriotic, God-fearing, hard working honorable family man who attended church every Sunday and said his prayers at every meal and before going to sleep, and, when the weather was nice, went out shooting at crows and tin cans. A man who knew little of the world but welcomed everyone – as long as they looked and thought like he did. Blacks were different from him and were tolerated, as long as they didn’t disturb white America.

A lot has changed since then, above all among the young. Were it not so, Barack Obama would not have the successes he has had. But you don’t meet the typical Joes only in movies or in novels and short stories by John Updike, Truman Capote, Russell Banks or Breece Pancake. You meet them everywhere, such as the outskirts of Cleveland, in the hinterlands of Ohio, in the form of Catholic steelworker Ed McMillan or in Greenville, South Carolina where Joe is named Jeff Kruger.

Ed was lucky because the Indian who bought the factory that employed him decided to keep him on, albeit at lower wages. Now he works overtime and earns extra income in his church. That allows him to support his sick wife and two small children and keep his mortgaged house from foreclosure. Sundays at nine on the dot, the Millers go to mass. On Wednesdays they go to confession.

In South Carolina, Jeff Kruger works long hours repairing agricultural machinery while his wife, Samantha, holds down three jobs in order to provide a decent education for their five children. Time permitting, the pious Krugers attend their Protestant church three times a week. Jeff’s hobby is hunting and he owns a large cabinet full of rifles and handguns. When times were better, Jeff used to put his shotgun into the gun rack of his pickup and take off for the nearby North Carolina mountains. Ed McMillan prefers to spend his dwindling spare time in an Irish pub. He owns a handgun, too, “for self-defense.” In recent times, there have been a lot of burglaries in his neighborhood. His pistol lies right next to the Bible on the nightstand next to him.

Jeff and Ed are union members and see themselves down deep, like many other white men, as Democrats. But in presidential elections, they nearly always vote Republican. Only Ed, from Ohio, made a single exception to vote for Bill Clinton. “He was from Arkansas,” Ed said. “His father was a drunk and he had to work hard to get ahead. He knew how it was for the small guy.” Bill Clinton’s background is also helping his wife Hillary. Ed believes her when she relates, teary-eyed, how she went obediently to church and learned to shoot from her grandfather in the Pennsylvania hills.

What’s special about the 2008 election is that American conservatives can no longer count on cultural and moral issues to drive voters with limited income into their camp. The anger directed toward cold-hearted Republicans as the party of the wealthy this time could well displace the wrath they feel for the immoral and godless Democrats. Because the Joes feel abandoned by the conservatives – President George W. Bush brought them a threatening economic crisis – and many of the soldiers killed in Iraq are the sons and daughters of little people in Iowa, Kentucky and Kansas.

The Government and the Big Shots Aren’t Worth Much, But America Is Still Magnificent

But suddenly, candidate Barack Obama has threatened the resurgent love affair with the Democrats. First he hesitated to wear an American flag pin in his lapel, something that greatly angered Jeff Kruger from South Carolina, a veteran who had put his life on the line for his country in the first Gulf War. Then it was discovered that Obama’s former pastor had been criticizing America for years. And finally, Obama made the mistake of saying that the common people, frustrated by a poor economy, clung to their guns and their churches and were prejudiced against immigrants. Nothing could offend Ohio’s Ed McMillan more than hearing “such an elite Harvard graduate run us down.”

Isn’t Obama really a great conciliator, but rather someone who wants to continue the cultural wars of prior decades? Not a real patriot? Joe and those like him want to complain about government and industry big shots, but never about “their America,” the America they and their ancestors created and of which they remain proud. To them, the blame for the crises lies with the politicians in far-away Washington, D.C. The nation, on the other hand, is perfect. They demand “Fix Washington,” while Obama preaches “Let’s fix America together!” The country itself isn’t blameless and needs to be led back onto the path of its virtues. With this message, many white men are asking whether the black senator from Illinois really shares their boundless love for America.

America’s white workforce is shrinking, reduced by almost fifty per cent since 1940. That’s due to the changing world economy, growing education levels, and millions of people who have immigrated from Mexico, Central- and South America and who today do the jobs that white people no longer want. The Midwest has been changed radically, above all in the South and on the perimeter of the Rocky Mountains.

Despite all this, Joe and his fellow sufferers can determine the outcome of a close race. As swing voters, they can enjoy the momentary attention and demonstrations of respect for their ideals. The debate about values, from the right to an abortion to the right to bear arms and the right of the state to employ capital punishment, these are prickly tightropes for all three presidential candidates to walk. But Barack Obama is in an especially tight spot despite his several wins in the Midwest. Several polls indicate that many ordinary white people would have a problem voting for a black presidential candidate, and even more doubt that an African American can win against a Republican in November. The Joes, the Ed McMillans and the Jeff Krugers express their anxiety thus: the black senator from Illinois seems to them somehow very, very alien.