The crowd likes the idea — a lot. They also buy Clinton’s pitch about a gas-tax holiday. You know all those people who say it’s bad economics? They’re the same bunch of elitists who snicker about Bill and the Wal-Mart greeters. “I knew the minute Hillary proposed this, a lot of people would heap scorn on her,” he says. “I didn’t think her opponent would do it, but he did, saying, ‘Oh this is a terrible thing to do, we’re just pandering to people.
’ Well, I have one observation. Nobody is saying this who has trouble filling up their gas tank. They’re all the people who can buy it whatever it is. A real president in touch with the values and needs of the American people would be trying to give you help now and in the long run.”
Clinton’s crowds are mostly white, just like they’ve been in Pennsylvania and Ohio and nearly everywhere else. In the south, they remind you of how many whites didn’t migrate to the Republican party, and of how popular Clinton remains here. (In his two national election victories, Clinton managed to win Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Florida — and lost North Carolina by about 0.7 percent in 1992.) “Been a Democrat all my life — born and bred,” an older man named Cecil tells me. “I know they say he’s done this, he’s done that, but he was no worse than all the rest,” adds his wife, Nettie.
“And they never did prove nothing on him,” says Cecil.
“I’ve been a Democrat since I was 18,” says Amanda. She’s voting for Hillary because “I don’t like someone who puts down their minister.” Without mentioning either Barack Obama or Rev. Jeremiah Wright, she adds, “You go to a church for 20 years, how come all of a sudden you don’t believe in his views?”
“Plus, Hillary’s for the poor people,” chimes in Amanda’s friend Susan.
All tell me they won’t vote for Obama if he is the Democratic nominee. But several others in the crowd say they will vote for Obama, if it comes to that. In all, the racial divide within the Democratic party seems nearly as alive here as it was in Pennsylvania and Ohio; I speak to one mixed-race couple bringing their child to the rally, and the black father tells me he’ll vote for Obama, while the white mother says she’s for Hillary, but would support Obama if he wins.
A short time later, I approach a man wearing a blue OPERATION CHAOS t-shirt. His name is James, and it turns out he’s a high-school teacher in nearby Nebo and a big Rush Limbaugh fan. He apologizes for the t-shirt, which looks fine but isn’t the kind one buys on Limbaugh’s website. “I did not have the opportunity to buy one in time, so I made myself one,” he explains. “I hope Mr. Limbaugh doesn’t mind.”
He probably won’t. And neither will Hillary Clinton. “I’m going to vote Democratic, I’m going to vote Hillary, to keep the carnage going until the national election in November,” James explains. Then, after a brief pause, he adds: “McCain all the way!”
James is the exception in the crowd, as far as I can tell. But then so is Gretchen Baer, an artist — “actually, I’m a waitress by trade” — from Bisbee, Ariz., who has driven to Morganton in the “Hill Car,” a 1989 Toyota Corolla she has turned into a rolling shrine to the former First Lady.
She’s driven it from Arizona to Texas to Pennsylvania and now to North Carolina. She’s also wearing the “Hill Suit,” on which she has stenciled iconic images of Sen. Clinton. “Hillary’s got years of experience,” Baer tells me. “I think with Obama you scratch beneath the surface and there’s not much there.”
Meanwhile, up on the front porch, Bill Clinton is still talking. “It’s been my great honor in this campaign to have a chance, ever since Iowa and New Hampshire, to be Hillary’s ambassador to small town and rural America,” he tells the crowd. Sidney Simmons, the Morganton man who bought and restored the 1906 house — “Actually, it restored me,” he says — is sitting nearby in a rocking chair, beaming. These stops are heavy on flags and bunting, and if you take away the PA system and the Mellencamp/Petty/Brooks & Dunn soundtrack, the scenes could be from a century ago, with the candidate speechifying from the porch to the crowd gathered below. Let the politicos look down their nose at him. In this Democratic race, at this time, Bill Clinton is right where he needs to be. < Back 1 2 
