Hell Freezing Over

I don't normally blog about politics as this is a family blog and our extended family are, I suspect, all over the political spectrum, but I'll post soon about my reactions to Obama's election. Meanwhile I want to note, following on my immediately previous post citing the Joplin Globe, about an unusual blizzard in the nether regions.

Joplin, Missouri, my home town, is a conservative, Bible Belt place. Congressman Roy Blunt, who just stepped down as House Republican Whip, is from there, and the local Congressional district I think elected one democrat in the whole 20th century, for a single term. It's John Ashcroft's home district. Southwest Missouri's best known Congressman before Blunt was Dewey Short, a fierce opponent of FDR and the New Deal.

The Joplin Globe, reflecting the basic conservative Republican views of the area, last endorsed a Democrat in 1908, when they went for William Jennings Bryan. They opposed Roosevelt all four times, and in 1948 they opposed Harry Truman, the only Missourian to run for President, who was born the next county to the north.

On October 28, the Joplin Globe endorsed Barack Obama. That was the moment (though I didn't learn of it right away) when I realized something unexpected was going on out there. I know, Missouri's seventh district went solidly for McCain anyway, and McCain carried the state by a hair. But for the first time since free silver, the Globe supported a Democrat, and a black one at that. (Joplin's black population is under three percent; there was one black guy in my high school class. They've named a street after Langston Hughes, who was born in Joplin, but they don't usually mention his family left when he was five due to a race riot. It's not a bigoted place, it's just that blacks aren't a big part of the landscape.) I'll post more on the theme later. I love Joplin as my home town, but I was startled when the Globe endorsed Obama.

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