No matter what else going on in the world, the economy is still the major issue that could swing votes this election, and nowhere is that more apparent than in
military towns.
In our second report from
Patchwork Nation's Dante Chinni, he reports from
Hopkinsville, Kentucky,
a military community in
Southwestern Kentucky near
Fort Campbell.
Consider Hopkinsville, where I am right now, gas
prices are THE issue. And not just because it costs more to go to work, but
because everything that is shipped costs more. And while that may be an
annoyance in some places (a lifestyle issue that means tickets to Europe are simply too much) in lower-income communities
it is a real life issue.
Here in Hopkinsville
-- a place that should be BIG McCain turf -- the hard times, strongly driven by
gas prices, have many here thinking the election will be closer in 2008 than it
was in 2004. If the price of a barrel of crude dips way down or climbs back up
it's easy to imagine tens of thousands of votes swinging.
"It's about gas prices. It's about food
prices. It's about the economy," says one person close to the town and the
military community. "People here don't like [Democratic Sen. Barack] Obama, but
they don't like the economic situation either. More and more I hear people say
they just aren't going to vote."
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