ON OHIO.

I've been struggling with how to write this post encouraging folks to read George Packer's deeply moving, deeply sad article on the personal struggles facing undecided Ohioan voters. The problem is that it's a bit hard to describe. Most articles about voters are actually about politics, politicians, and elections. The voters exist as a manifestation of the subject. Packer's article is rather the opposite: It's actually about the voters, and though the election is the ostensible topic, it's really a deep exploration of the struggle a certain number of people are having as they try to navigate the fear of change experienced by all folks who have already lost too much with the need for change felt by those who know the status quo isn't working for them. And Packer simply lets them talk. At length. These aren't folks who are generally heard at length. The result is very powerful -- an article that will be relevant long after the election is over.And then there's the racial angle. I found this vignette particularly affecting:

“Barack’s father was from where? Kenya?” a seventy-one-year-old woman named Karla Cominsky suddenly asked. “Would that be any part of the world that was part of slavery?”Gwinn explained that Obama had grown up mainly in Hawaii.“My great-great-grandfather and grandmother came here from Morgan County,” Cominsky continued. “And guess who they brought with them? A little slave girl named Dinah. She was buried in the family plot. They felt she was one of the family.”A campaign intern from Ohio University, in the nearby town of Athens, explained, “Most slaves came from western Africa, where the ships could just take them and go. Kenya’s from the eastern part.”There was an awkward silence: the point of the woman’s story had not been immediately clear. Afterward, it occurred to me that this was how people in towns like Glouster were accustoming themselves to the thought of a black President.

And this explanation of the challenge facing Obama is particularly well stated:

During the first Presidential debate, Obama spoke directly to “middle-class” economic anxieties several times, and he later attacked McCain for never even using the word. But Obama’s middle class has no face, no name, no story. Even as he becomes more specific on policy, partly in response to criticism, he still has trouble making a human connection. Bill Clinton could always employ the drawl and roguish charm of Bubba to let the working class know he was one of them, but Obama’s life story is based on upward mobility, on transcending his complex origins. There’s no readily apparent cultural identity he can fall back on—no folksy or streetwise manner he can assume—that won’t threaten more white voters than it attracts.

I'm going to stop quoting now. You should just read the whole thing.