Brilliant US heartland blogger (and JWN linkee) Marine’s Girl has a great report on her blog today, on a John Edwards rally she went to in Lima, Ohio on Sunday.
Ohio is of course a crucial swing state in next Tuesday’s election. (So is her present home state, Michigan.) Of course a Democratic Party rally doesn’t provide a representative cross-section of the American populace. But JWN readers–especially those of you outside the US– might really enjoy MG’s record of what she found there.
If you haven’t read her blog before you should know that her boyfriend, also a strong Bush critic, is a Marines sargeant who has been forced to extend his service in Iraq long after he thought he could quit the Marines.
Read this part, for example:
- I met a Korean War vet who cried when I brought up Iraq. He said that Bush never should have sent our boys over there… He said he was ashamed to say that he did support the war at first because he believed the reasons we were told. When he got the impression that maybe things were not what they seemed, he went over to the local library and learned to do research on the internet. It was the first time in his life that he had ever used a computer. His wife first thought he was crazy when he started coming home with reports on what he had found out from reading foreign media reports. He said she now goes with him twice a week to the library to find out what our media won’t tell us. They are getting a computer for each other for Christmas.
Or this:
- I met an out of uniform Army Sgt. that served in Iraq last year. He was there with some of his guys. They pretty much had the same story. Republicans before going to Iraq, now registered Democrats. They don’t trust Republicans to be honest with them anymore.
As she says, “There is hope for Ohio.”