In an earlier post over on The Moderate Voice blog on Sarah Palin and the Presidency, I casually mentioned that Palin is the consummate "reverse elitist" candidate. Commenters quickly jumped on that terminology and expanded upon it.

To date, I haven't heard anybody really expound upon the notion of "reverse elitism," or even offer a rigorous definition of it. A quick search on the Web shows a handful of references, from a Democratic Underground warning against class envy to a Linux community debate. As of now, however, I haven't really seen this term make its way into the popular political and cultural lexicon.

But I think it should, because it explains so much about our politics.

Like most people here I was deeply disappointed in the recent county commission elections in Blount County in which three excellent Democratic commissioners were voted out of office. Since I moved to Blount County in 2007 I've seen this pattern play out twice before already. In August 2008 Democratic judge Mike Meares was defeated by Republican David Duggan by over 60-40. And in November the county voted for John McCain over Barack Obama roughly 70-30 - despite the fact that the rest of the nation voted 53-46 for Obama. This is a deeply Republican county.

But just how long has this county been so Republican? We always hear "since the Civil War." To look at the numbers from the 19th century not only confirms this theory, but also reveals some interesting comparisons. Reading through Durwood Dunn's excellent "Cades Cove: The Life and Death of a Southern Appalachian Community, 1818-1837" I noticed a chart with election returns for Blount County and for Cades Cove. As a general rule, Cades Cove was more Democratic than the county as a whole. In some ways this still holds up - Happy Valley, which is geographically the most like old Cades Cove is actually one of the most Democratic precincts in the county. So how did the county as a whole vote in the late 19th century?

In the first election after the Civil War Ulysses Grant got 92% of the vote in Blount County. Obviously the disfranchisement and harassment of ex-Confederates led to this lopsided margin. But the number of voters - 1,361 - was significant enough to demonstrate massive community support for the GOP standard-bearer.

By the 1890s the pattern held true. In the realigning 1896 election between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan, McKinley won Blount County 73.4% to 26.6%. Yes, Barack Obama got a greater share of the vote in Blount County than did William Jennings Bryan! More remarkable was the fact that McKinley was detested in most of the rural South as a symbol of the Northeastern banking and industrial elite while Bryan and his famous "Cross of Gold" perfectly encapsulated the evangelical and populist spirit of the white South at the time. But not in Blount County.

Nearly every election after that has produced a similar result: Republicans get between 65 and 75 percent of the vote.

What this means for party politics in this county is hard to say. Of course we need a vigorous Democratic opposition to the dominant GOP. But we also need to poke and provoke the myriad factions WITHIN the GOP if we're ever going to have a voice. Fortunately, there ARE major divisions within the Blount County GOP. I roughly categorize them as: Lincoln/Rockefeller Republicans (would be Democrats elsewhere), developer/big business Republicans, paranoid libertarian Republicans, Christian conservative Republicans, apolitical Republicans who vote that way (if at all) because that's what their families have always done. Take any significant issue facing the county and you will see major divisions within the GOP. As progressives it's important that we learn and perfect the art of "divide and conquer."

Scanning down this ranking of states by rate of adult obesity one pattern stands out: the fattest states in America voted for McCain and the thinnest voted for Obama.

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Here are the top 10 fattest states:

Growing up in the North I always pronounced the great Eastern mountain chain - the Appalachian Mountains - with a long a in the middle. Something like "appalayshin" mountains. I also referred to the region surrounding the mountains as "appalaysha".

Since moving to East Tennessee I've altered my pronunciation to the Southern way and I now call it "appa-latch-a" and the "appa-latchin" mountains.

This change is partly a result of joining the scholarly Appalachian Studies communities, within which the Southern pronunciation reigns supreme. In fact, hearing the Northern take on "Appalachian" sounds almost as outlandish now as "Mary-VILLE" (as opposed to "Mare-a-vul" or "Murvul".

I was pleased to hear Stephen Colbert, South Carolina native, refer to the great trail on which Governor Mark Sanford was NOT hiking as the appa-LATCH-in trail, and I thought about how unusual it is to hear anybody of national profile pronounce it that way. Many Southern-accented national media personalities use the Northern method.

How do you pronounce it? And what quirky inconsistencies have you noticed with the pronunciation of Appalachia or Appalachian?

A very loud BOOM just shook the house here in Maryville, followed by about three or four follow-up booms. We heard the same thing the other morning. I thought it was a sonic boom, but nobody outside our immediate neighborhood heard it. Then we thought it could have been Vulcan Materials doing blasting - but they wouldn't do it this time at night. Now we're thinking it was an earthquake. The ENTIRE neigborhood is out in the street at 11pm wondering what the hell that was. People are driving around from other neighborhoods too. The police and fire trucks are out as well.

Did anybody else hear it? Anybody know what the hell that was?

So I was reading through a collection of essays on antebellum history and came across this quote from a Richmond newspaper in 1855 (some of it paraphrased by historian James McPherson). Sounds eerily like the modern day TNGOP, huh?

Young men should avoid education in the North and should instead get their schooling in the South "where their training would be moral, religious and conservative, and they would never learn, or read a word in school or out of school, inconsistent with orthodox Christianity, pure morality, the right of property, and the sacredness of marriage."

It's obvious the "right of property" refers to abolitionism as socialism was virtually non-existent as an intellectual force in the North then. The rest? Well, it sounds like Robin Smith would make a perfect propagandist for the Old South.

In 2002, Gallup polled voter party ID in all fifty states and discovered that the nation had a Republican tilt. In 2008, Gallup conducted the same poll and showed a dramatic shift to the Democrats.

Anybody following national politics is aware of this trend. We are a long way from 2002, when Democrats cowered in fear at the sight of George W. Bush.

But what about here in Tennessee? Haven't we heard that Tennessee has gone the opposite direction? In 2002 a Democrat, Phil Bredesen, won the Governorship in a close election. The Dems had a good year in TN in 2002. They did not have a good year in 2008.

But is that because the state's party identification shifted toward the Republican Party? Or is it because of something else (poor GOTV strategy, bad candidates, weak messaging, etc.).

Here are the numbers:

The Blount County Democratic Party is hosting an Inaugural Gala on January 20, 2009 at the Knoxville Airport Hilton to celebrate the inauguration of President Barack Obama. The party will last from 7pm to 11pm, and will include a live band and heavy hors d'oeuvres.
Evening attire.
Cash bar.

Tickets are limited and cost $35 per person.

If you are interested, email your order to the following address:
blountdemsinaug_gala@yahoo.com

In your order, be sure to include:
YOUR NAME
HOME PHONE
CELLPHONE
EMAIL ADDRESS
STREET ADDRESS
NUMBER OF TICKETS

Once you send in your order, someone will contact you to confirm your order and arrange a time and place for you to pay and pick up your tickets.

This event is hosted by the Blount County Democratic Party, but ANYBODY is welcome, regardless of where you live. I hope you all can make it.

There are more of us Obama supporters out there than people think...it'll be nice to celebrate history together!

I just wanted to alert folks to a piece I wrote today about TVUUC's rededication ceremony. I posted it at The Moderate Voice and as a diary on Daily Kos.

I just thought some folks around here might want to read it.

By now it's quite apparent that Hillary is setting up Ohio and Texas as a firewall against Obama's momentum. The Giuliani analogy aside, take a look at how precarious this strategy really is. Texas has a combined primary-caucus system that doubly screws the Clinton campaign. First, she's proven herself completely unable to organize for caucuses. And 1/3 of all delegates are chosen at caucuses, which can only be attended by those who voted in the primary earlier in the day. Yes, you vote twice!

But then there's the delegate apportionment system for the primary component (2/3 of delegates). The statewide primary is utterly meaningless. All that matters is how you do in State Senate districts. But the delegate apportionment in each district is determined by how high Democratic turnout was in 2004. Thanks to Tom DeLay, a few heavily black and liberal districts will get a much greater say in delegate apportionment than the more scattered Latino majority districts in the Rio Grande Valley.

Here is a great analysis of the Texas race, district by district. Short answer: if Hillary thinks the demographic advantages of Texas will give her a big delegate victory, she is sorely mistaken.

Texas analysis

I salute Fred Thompson for one thing and one thing only. He managed to waste millions of dollars from Tennessee Republican donors on an idiotic campaign. I don't know how many millions the TNGOP bigwigs wasted on Old Freddie but it sure wasn't money well spent. It isn't just that Fred Thompson lost. It's how he lost, putting virtually no effort into the contest.

So do the arch-conservative Fredheads get behind John McCain now? We all know Fred himself has a close relationship with McCain, but the same cannot be said for Fred's supporters. Do they gravitate to Romney as the establishment conservative and business choice? Do they go with the Huckster from across the river? Or do they suddenly forget all the mean and nasty things they said about John McCain over the years?

When I first moved to Maryville I heard all the horror stories of rebel flags and redneck idiocy surrounding the Maryville HS Rebels. And I vowed, in principle, to root against Maryville High School in football. But I went with a neighbor to the game last week against Powell and not only found no Confederate flags (they've been banned) but no likenesses of them on t-shirts or elsewhere. It occurred to me at that point that the Maryville Rebels were not so hopelessly associated in the general public with neo-Confederatism or its associated brands of political retardation. So I became a fan, reluctantly I suppose, but a fan nonetheless. It seemed safe to root for the Maryville Rebels football.

That brings us to this week, where the Marvville HS Rebels take their 50 game winning streak against Blount County rival and rising 5A state power William Blount HS. I've been listening to the game on local wingnut radio - aka "truth" radio at WBCR 1470. It's been a riveting game so far. Maryville is up 13-6 late in the 3rd quarter.

I had a very culturally fulfilling day today, in an East Tennessee sense, and I'll blog about more of it tomorrow. But I just wanted to mention that Music Row of Maryville is just about the coolest place I've ever been. Where else can you go and watch dozens of musicians of all ages - and I mean ALL ages, from 10 to 90 - improvise, play, perform and chat for free. Yes, you must appreciate East Tennessee music, which means bluegrass and traditional country music.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

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I just wanted to cross-post something I wrote on The Moderate Voice about the motivations of Sunnis who turned against Al Qaeda in Iraq. It deals with what I think is one of the least discussed and most important elements of future US strategy in Iraq.

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You think it's hot in East Tennessee? Check out how our friends on the other side of the state are doing. Pay special attention to the "low" numbers at night...

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According to a SUSA poll Hillary Clinton beats all three top GOP challengers in Virginia and Kentucky, and beats Romney in Alabama. She loses to Giuliani in Alabama by 6. But the real shocker is that the Southern, Alabama-born, good old boy Fred Thompson only beats her by 2 points.

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That she wins in Upper South states like KY and VA is noteworthy but not terribly surprising; Bill Clinton won KY twice, and Virginia is clearly trending blue with the massive growth of northern Virginia. But Alabama is as red as ever. In fact, one of Hillary Clinton's most infamous moments in the campaign season so far was her failed attempt at code switching at a black church in Selma - an event that drew ridicule throughout the South. Yet there she is, just 2 points below Fred Thompson.

If this poll is accurate then the backers of Fred Thompson have to be asking themselves if he's really the right guy. Bush won Alabama by 26 points in 2004. Any Republican should expect to win Alabama by 12 points at least; Bill Clinton came fairly close in 1996 with the help of Perot. But Hillary has none of the charisma of her husband. And Alabama is even more Republican now than in 1996. So how could she poll so well there? And more importantly, why does Fred Thompson do so poorly against her, vis-a-vis Giuliani?

I admit that this poll is a shocker. A recent poll from Arkansas showed her absolutely crushing each of the GOP nominees by double digits. As conservative as Arkansas is, I can see that happening because the state still leans Democratic (though conservative Democratic for sure) and people there still love the Clintons. Even Mike Huckabee praised the Clintons.

But Alabama is not Arkansas. Alabama has no history with her or Bill. Moreover, it's the state where Fred Thompson was born. What's going on here? Are fears of her negatives in the South overblown? Are her negatives played out? Can Hillary Clinton win multiple Southern states like her husband did? If KY and VA look so good for her, surely MO, OH and NC are in good shape too. And if it's Giuliani leading the ticket I'd say our great state of Tennessee is in play for Hillary Clinton too. Who'da thunk it?

I also blog on occasion at Joe Gandelman's site, "The Moderate Voice." I thought I'd repost an entry I did there on Knoxviews.

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I took a trip up to Cumberland Gap today and then explored TN-63 east to Sneedville and TN-66 to Rogersville. One thing I kept noticing were these brightly colored squares on barns. Apparently the KNS ran an article a few weeks ago about them and they certainly caught my attention.

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Sneedville, by the way, really is stuck in time. There were dozens of barns in the surrounding area of Hancock County that were probably built in the 1920s and have been decaying ever since. Sneedville itself reminded me of the semi-abandoned coal towns in Kentucky, with a billiard hall and a few old gas stations (old pumps) in business. It was a beautiful drive along 63 and 66 as you switchback over Clinch and Short Mountains. Also, the rocks cropping out of the soil were really amazing; I don't know how anybody could have farmed there. No wonder it's so poor. There is apparently a place called "Elrod Falls" in Hancock County, which, for namesake purposes, I should really check out! My favorite place name was Frog Level Road. Second favorite: Rebel Hollow Road.

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One thing I've found annoying in my two months of living in Maryville is the propensity of drivers to fail to follow through on left-hand turns when a light turns red. Everywhere else I've lived - rural Michigan, Chicago, northern Virginia - when you plan to make a left turn at a light, you go out into the intersection and when the traffic is clear you complete your turn (this is if you don't have a left-turn arrow). Sometimes oncoming cars are beating the yellow so you have to wait until they are through before you complete your turn, even if that means following through on a red. I've seen this done in front of police officers multiple times and I've never seen anyone get pulled over for it. From what I understand, you are legally allowed to complete the left turn if you've begun it under green or yellow, even if the light has just turned right. You just cannot ENTER the intersection after the light is red.

Well, I've seen cars just sit there at the light all over Maryville instead of completing the turn. Sometimes it's downright dangerous to sit there, like when cars on US321 South fail to complete the left turn onto Broadway and find themselves stuck in the middle of traffic (there's an upcoming hilltop but by the time the light turns red, it's obvious that no more cars are coming over the hill.) What gives here? Why don't people follow through in their left turns? Very few intersections have red-light cameras - none in Maryville. Is the law different in Tennessee? Or are drivers just excessively timid?