Cause and Effect World

Obama and his inner smoker

I love it. This is the best campaign advice I’ve seen - Tony Horwitz says Obama should take up smoking to win over the Clinton blue-collar voters, citing these stats:

Americans who make between $24,000 and $36,000 a year smoke at twice the rate of those earning $90,000 or more. The same applies to Americans with a high school education rather than a college degree. Rural Americans smoke more than city dwellers. As for race, there’s a close correlation between states with high rates of white smokers and those where Mr. Obama polled worst in the primaries. Leading the pack of smoking states are Kentucky and West Virginia; industrial states like Ohio aren’t far behind.

Horwitz goes on to say that this will help Obama shed the kind of ‘perfectly-groomed’ metro-sexual image he has, it will help with Michelle Obama’s image, who will suddenly become another woman coping with a slightly naughty husband, and it will give him something in common with a beleaguered lot - the American smoker. The vice is still legal, but barely.

It doesn’t surprise me that poor people smoke so much - as a former smoker, and former poor, white American with rural roots and of the first generation to go to college - it’s one of those little vices that you can afford.

I have long called cigarettes the poor man’s anti-depressant. When did I smoke? When I was tired, when I was stressed, when I was hungry, and when I was bored. I have many family members who still smoke, and combine cigarettes with soft drinks - a day-long speedball of nicotine, caffeine, and sugar. Most are over-weight. Most have significant life stresses - financial difficulties, challenging family situations, medical problems. Most would benefit tremendously from prescription anti-depressants and talk therapy, but don’t have the means to pay for it.
Obama is one of us - he grew up as a poor white with all of our stresses and vices. Granted, his mixed ethnicity and short stays in Hawaii and Indonesia gave him some different experiences. But he’s from Kansas and Illinois. His mother is Polish-American. And he’s an (ex)smoker.