Our political flirtation with Virginia's Junior Senator Jim Webb ended abruptly yesterday after he withdrew his name from presumptive nominee Barack Obama's Veepstakes shortlist. It hurts, dear readers; rejection is never an easy thing to accept; the news truly broke our jaded, geekish heart. Senator Jim Webb would have been a PERFECT running mate for Obama, who had trouble among white working class men, particularly in the Appalachian region. Imagine the photo ops of Obama and webb, as Autumn breaks, drinking beer in a Pennsyltucky pub.
Webb could have introduced Obama to the Scots-Irish and gave him an edgier public persona, steeling him against the inevitable onslaught of the Chicago, effete egghead caricatures from the Republican party and 527s. If Senator Obama has one weakness it is that he is the cool, intellectual type, a la Hubert Humphrey. The white working class voter cherishes a fighter, a barn burner that can handle their liquor (For further reference see Obama's trouncing in Massachusetts despite the support of the entire Establishment and the Kennedy machine). Fighters are more likely to protect the working man's interests against those bloodless corporations. The cold, intellectual archetype which Senator Clinton exposed in the latter part of the 2008 Democratic primary holds little attraction to the working man in the Blue Ridge mountains. And now, alas, Senator Webb -- the Ambassador of the Scots-Irish -- is out of the mix.
Farewell Jim Webb, we hardly knew ye ..
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