Joe,
Maybe some, maybe even most, liberals have a hard time reaching out to the poor, white country folks in this country because their experience is so different and they believe themselves a distinct separate species and look down their noses at ordinary people, etc.
But I suspect a fairly large sub-group of us grew up in that milieu and were damn glad to get out of it. Reaching out (or reaching back) to our less fortunate cousins involves the dredging up of so much submerged trauma, resentment, and a huge reservoir of repressed rage that we were only able to deal with by packing our bags and moving to the city.
Maybe it would be a better idea if the middle-class, effete, wine-sipping liberals reach out to the left-behind country poor. They have less baggage.
Elizabeth
P.S. Not all city folks know what a "leek" is either. I once passed a cafe chalkboard here in this most liberal of West Coast cities advertising that their soup du jour was "Cream of Leak." Needless to say, I didn't have any.
