OUR SAD DEMOCRACY
Bedeviled by ignorance, we're doomed: "I don't care too much for Obama," Maria Norgren, the daughter and granddaughter of steelworkers, said in the parking lot of the Giant Eagle shopping center here, near the Obama rally.
"I don't even think he's American," added her husband, Edward, who lost his job when the steel mills closed and now mans the counter at the Puff Discount Tobacco and Lottery shop next to the Giant Eagle.
"His father's from Nigeria, right?" asked Maria, wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers T-shirt.
Kenya, actually. But the point is the same: The Norgrens, who backed Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, will vote for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. And if Obama wins the nomination, these Democrats say they'll vote for Republican John McCain, even though they want an end to the war in Iraq, where their soldier-son is about to start his third tour.
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The antipathy toward Obama isn't necessarily logical. Outside the Giant Eagle -- pronounced "jyn-igl" in the local accent -- Edward Norgren listed his reasons: Clinton's ad accusing Obama of taking oil-company money; Michelle Obama's suggestion that she hadn't been "proud" of her country; Obama's provocative former preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And, of course, there was the "bitter" remark. "My dad taught me to hunt and I taught my son," he said.
"It's a racial component, too," Maria Norgren added. "A lot of black people are voting for him." And her older, white neighbors "won't vote for a woman or a black man." And on it goes.
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