Obama better brush up on Red State geography…
flockwoodBarack Obama better get out a map of the United States and study it closely between now and November. And he’d better drum up some better excuses for why he’s so wildly unpopular in Kentucky. This week, Ryan Alessi of the Lexington Herald-Leader asked the Illinois senator why he is trailing Hillary Clinton so badly in the polls in the Bluegrass State and here’s Obama’s geographically-challenged reply:
“What it says is that I’m not very well known in that part of the country,” Obama said. “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.”
The nearby state of Arkansas? Better get out a road map. “That part of the country” — Kentucky – borders Illinois! Arkansas, by the way, does not border Kentucky.
And Kentucky’s population centers are far closer to the Land of Lincoln than to the Land of Clinton. Louisville to Chicago? It’s only a 298-mile trip. Louisville to Little Rock? It’s 521 miles. Likewise, Lexington and the Cincinnati suburbs in Northern Kentucky are all a lot closer to Obama’s front door than to the Arkansas governor’s mansion that Hillary called home…
To read Alessi’s story, click here.
Bookmark this article!
May 17th, 2008 at 8:29 am
I will say this, there have been some pretty wild commenting e mails circulating around here along with some disturbing almost white supremacy comments that have hurt him. When out and about talking politics, the conversation comes back to the basis of those emails. Want to read some interesting and scary comments, log on to the state journal in Frankfort KY and read some of the forums. Its scary that people can think that way.
May 17th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
To be fair, Arkansas and Kentucky aren’t very far apart. At the closest point (near Piggot, Arkansas, to the Kentucky Bend) the distance is barely 30 miles.
Obviously there’s a lot more to “sameness” than geographic proximity. In terms of culture and political issues, Kentucky might be a lot closer to Arkansas than to urban Illinois. North and South and all that. No one would say that Watts and Beverly Hills are basically the same place just because they are a few miles apart.