Kayso, this old fart, me, Kangaroo, was one of about 96 Clintonistas chasing about 15 slots for delegates and alternates from Kansas to the Democratic National Convention this year, and, needless to say, old dude didn’t make the cut, so…
We considered trying to attend as observers. In 2008 then-candidate Barack Obama notably opened up the Acceptance Speech to a stadium crowd (The Rethugs made fun of the two brazen pillars framing the stage) and plans were to do that again in 2012. Our then-State Party Executive Director assured me he could get us in for that in Charlotte. So we schlepped down I-40, only to find out, they cancelled the stadium gig because of an expected downpour which didn’t happen. Dude was very apologetic. I wandered downtown for a while and bought some swag — argued with a street preacher with posters of obvious stillbirths alleged to be products of abortion (the poor ass put on his website he was afraid he would be physically assaulted by a “70-year-old man,” overestimating my age by a decade because lying is their business, LOL) — but we winded up watching the acceptance speech from our hotel room. People without delegate, alternate, or otherwise official credentials couldn’t pass a gauntlet of law enforcement barriers within three blocks of the convention site, so, lacking same credentials this time, I was like, hey, screw it, let’s go to Mount Rushmore with our grandkids, which is exactly what we did.
We had last been there in 1979 on our honeymoon. The place was less developed and touristy than it is now. In the one-week trip we went from Central Kansas to Central Nebraska, up into South Central South Dakota and the Pine Ridge Lakota Sioux Reservation, then to Keystone, which is the town that sprang up including all the touristy stuff — like Branson, Missouri, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park area transversing Eastern Tennessee and Far Western North Carolina, the Black Hills Region is adorned with a whole bunch of moneymaking tourist traps like your old timey photo studios, miniature golf, mini-zoos and whatnot — nothing wrong with that, just old entrepreneurship, but I suspect most of it is corporatesque capitalism rather than by-the-bootstraps mom-and-pop small business.
From there we passed through Sturgis a week before the big Biker thing and bought t-shirts from tent-based merchants. I look a little bikerish but one touch of these soft hands could tell any real biker I’m a “citizen” (biker slang for middle class working stiffs). Note: this is not presented as a travelogue so much as observations about politics from the trip which I assure you are down below, but here I ought to mention that a good number of biker folks tend to the right-wing, mostly libertarian style sort. If you ever listen to David Allen Coe music you know what I’m talking about. Coe is like the Country Western version of Ted Nugent. In the 1970s he sold X-rated record albums including one with a ditty about a guy whose girl left him for a black dude only he used the word we don’t say. Coe does not these days go out of his way to be an asshole like Nugent. He’s probably better as a songwriter than a performer. But he's old time biker through and through, ex-con, polygamous at least per rumor, the whole nine yards. So it was no surprise to see pro-Second Amendment sentiments on some of the t-shirts for sale. What was surprising for a second or two was pro-Trump designs — no bipartisanship here. One black shirt notably featured Donald mounted on a Harley with Palin in a pair of black jeans and a black bra like Lana Kane from Archer, hanging onto his back. Well, why not? The smart merchandiser knows his or her customer base.
The type of person who would go to Sturgis is in many ways the target demographic of the Trump campaign. Now there are some “Christian Biker” groups which are just religious right assholes with Biker style, but Trump attracts all sorts of anti-authoritarians. Since Marlon Brando appeared in “The Wild One” as a black-leather-clad biker stud terrorizing a town, Harley Davidson and older American motorcycles and rallies have been a culture to which sensitive loners aspire as do the more “real outlaw bikers" AKA “One Percenters” (the latter from an ironic appropriation of an American Motorcycle Association executive in the 1950s claiming one percent of motorcycle riders are troublemakers). The experience reminded me of an episode of the old Roseanne TV show in which Dan and Roseanne recalled riding to Sturgis when they were younger. Dan and Roseanne Conner, the characters, not the real actors, Roseanne Barr and John Goodman who played them, were typical small town working stiffs who liked the freedom of the open road that you only get on two wheels, or, for those of us with balance issues, a fancy trike, with extra points if you made it yourself. I actually went to high school with several who became members of the Texas-based “outlaw" motorcycle gang, the Banditos. For more on this fascinating subculture I would strongly recommend people read Alex Abramowitz's wonderful book, Bullies: A Friendship, which is about the author’s childhood frenemy with whom he reconnected as an adult, who was a leader of an Oakland, California, biker group which Abramowitz wonderfully described as "not conflict-averse."
So it was not, after I considered it, unusual to see pro-Trump shit for sale in Sturgis. Trump claims to be fighting the Establishment — the "citizens" like those who passed mandatory helmet laws in the 1960s which gave police license to harass bikers. When we lived in Texas in the 1980s and 1990s, we had some bikers who got politically active to fight these nanny state laws, some of which reached out to Democrats and actually participated in Democratic conventions. I believe most of these laws are repealed now. Except for their leader, a Mohawk-haired short, round fellow who went by the moniker "Sputnik," most of the anti-helmet law people were quiet, unassuming sorts whose passions were just for the road with a two wheeler between their legs and without the encumberance of a helmet. Sure, emergency room staff call motorcycles "Donor-cycles," and quite rightfully so. But doesn't freedom always involve risk? Sputnik, now, he was a character, and smart as a whip. It was through the tenacity of him and his people that they got the Texas helmet law repealed (for adults, but not for minors). Their organization is called ABATE, which originally stood for "A Brotherhood Against Totalitarian Enactments," but now in most places means "A Brotherhood Active Toward Education," and offers rider training and organizes charity or toy runs and the like.
I tell you what, my first reaction upon seeing the Trump swag was that the first thing Hillary should do after the convention is get a tattoo and mount a Harley, but I’m sure the multiple layers of cautious handlers between her and me would make sure to keep that from happening.
It reminded me of something the late Congressman Jack Brooks (D-Texas 9th, which was the far Southeast part of the Lone Star State) said in 1994 shortly before he was unseated by a Republican upstart. He mentioned a gas station attendant in a tiny East Texas town who approached him when he passed through on a campaign swing. The fellow was sincerely grateful Brooks’ office had helped him get a hardship discharge from the Army so he could go home to take care of his ailing mother. But Brooks said the people we can help the most are often those who don't turn up at the polls on election day. And also, they are the ones who just like the Bikers for Trump, get tricked into voting against themselves when they embrace right-wing ideology.
Well, to get to the political observations, there weren’t that many political things to observe. We went through four states: we live in Central Kansas, went through Central Nebraska and its Panhandle, Central and Western South Dakota, and Eastern Wyoming, then came back through Western Kansas. We went in our daughter’s car so we went incognito, as it is bumperstickerless, unlike the Kangaroo Opinion Wagon. But I wore my Wonkette Elizabeth Warren Shirt the first day and a button every day with the H→ Clinton logo and received no comments about either. We met some people from Rapid City, another Vietnam Era Navy veteran and his spouse, at the Mount Rushmore Visitors’ Center Restaurant, who indicated they were voting Democratic for the first time since George McGovern ran, but that was about it for political conversations.
I saw exactly two homemade Trump yard signs, both in the Mount Rushmore area, in rural yards with a lot of junk in them, which reminded me of the first item like that I saw in 1980 in Pearland, Texas, a suburb of Houston, which said “Vote Reagan Stop Socialism." It's the equivalent yard art to the talk radio call-in or the letter to the editor - the late Johnny Carson, who preceded Jay Leno as the Tonight Show host, used to do a character like these right-wing activists, a confused fellow in a checkered jacket and ear-flapped hunter’s cap like Bugs Bunny's nemesis Elmer Fudd. Nothing else about the Presidential race, except last Friday at breakfast at Ken and Dale’s Restaurant in Alliance, Nebraska, I picked up a copy of The Omaha World Herald somebody had left behind, and saw right on the front page, Hillary Clinton was going to be appearing in Omaha with Warren Buffet in an appeal for the NE-02 single electoral vote and to help embattled Democratic Congressman Brad Ashford (Nebraska and Maine are the only two states which allot electoral votes according to Congressional District pluralities; in 2008, Barack Obama got NE-02’s single vote but not in 2012).
A word on the political geography of the Plains and Interior West as opposed to the Great Lakes Region and the West Coast: we’re in a place that's a blast to the past. Civil War loyalties, however receding, still abound. In 1976, Jimmy Carter carried no state in the Plains or West of them except Texas and Hawaii in large part because of his Southernness. He narrowly lost Vermont, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, and Oregon, all of which could not stomach voting for a Southerner. The Dakotas used to be liberal at the Senate and Congressional level but not the Presidential one. Nebraska used to elect conservative Democratic Senators like James Exon and Bob Kerrey. All of the vertical row of Plains States from North Dakota down to Texas these days however have gone full Teabagger. There are of course exceptions like the aforementioned NE-02 - Nebraska is notable as having the only unicameral state legislature that meets in the U.S.'s tallest state capitol building, which a colleague from Lincoln told me native Cornhuskers call "The Penis On The Prairie," and for more than 40 years Omaha has sent the African-American State Senator Ernie Chambers there. Chambers is the conscience of the legislature and got the death penalty abolished, no small task. Wyoming, home of the Cheney family, is likewise overwhelmingly Republican. To round out the geography with the states we didn't traverse, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado, Nevada, and Montana are swing states more or less due to urban and college town Democratic strongholds there. Minnesota is solidly Democratic due to our strength in the Twin Cities. Oklahoma is solid red, due to religious right strength there. Arkansas was Democratic under Bill Clinton but not likely to vote for its former First Lady (some claim Bill lost his first re-election as Governor in 1980 in part due to the fact Hillary then went by the last name she was born with, Rodham, but he won the seat back in 1982 after she changed it). Kansas is, alas, Kansas; where we elected the defective Scott Walker clone Sam Brownback as Governor and he ran the state into the ground. Some say Brownback and his running buddy Kris Kobach, Secretary of State and Koch-minion ALEC Czar, stole the 2014 election ala Ken Blackwell’s alleged theft of Oho via Diebold machines in 2004, but more than likely Bill Bishop’s theory that polls are wrong because right-wingers won’t talk to college-educated poll-takers explains disparities between poll numbers and actual votes.
But except for those two homemade Trump signs, nada was seen about the Presidential race. In 2009, a crazy woman from my town, Junction City, paid for two anti-Obama billboards here alleging poor Bamz was out to destroy the country — they have since, mercifully, been re-leased to officially nonpartisan business interests. No bumperstickers either. Saw one “Coexist” sticker at Rushmore (letters replaced by religious symbols, the C is an Islamic Crescent, the X a Judaic Star of David, and the T a Christian cross).
In Martin, South Dakota, near the Pine Ridge Lakota Sioux Reservation, the motel manager said there was a restaurant in the Livestock Exchange, so we had breakfast there. A local paper I found there included a story about how the Democratic candidate for U.S. House at large seat, Paula Hawks, castigated her incumbent Republican opponent Kristi Noem for ducking the traditional debate at the state fair. Apparently Noem is so far ahead this race isn’t on anyone’s radar and since Noem has been a nonentity in Congress not acknowledging she has an opponent is probably a wise tactic. Still, one has to wonder, in a race between two females for what arguably a very important position that maybe there’s more to it; but we probably won’t hear that much because inertia favors incumbents and the political polarization as noted above. I also read a pig farming magazine somebody left while in the men’s room but there was nothing political in it.
In Wyoming, the bit of it at the eastern edge where we went, there were signs for state legislative elections, but nothing higher up. Liz Cheney is said to be running for the open at-large congressional seat, but I saw no billboards or signs for her and nothing in the local paper about the race. At the breakfast place in Sundance, near Devil’s Tower National Monument, we got there just as the old farts who gather to chat 'n' chew were leaving. I heard one say, "They said it was treason," about Trump's encouraging Russian hacking of Democratic e-mails, but from the context I couldn’t tell if he accepted that judgment or was deriding it.
Back into Western Kansas we saw a smattering of signs for local county or legislative seats, but nothing significant. Today’s Republican primary features a bunch of battles between reasonable moderate Republicans and far-right teabaggers and religious extremists. Likely these races will be decided by a handful of those eligible to vote.
Occasionally I give the old “if yard signs could vote...” lecture, but Ill skip it here because there was not much out there on the ground to tell how this thing is going to go at this juncture. suffice it to say the two homemade Trump signs are evidence there are two hyper-partisan cranks in Western SD and little else. I’d encourage other Kossacks to give similar observations of their environs and travels.
To conclude, I saw no evidence of fervor on the right while traversing some of the most far-right precincts in the U.S. Whether that means good news for us or not only time will tell. The Trump campaign is proving to be a truly moveable feast where we can’t know what will happen from one day to the next. I am hopeful of an LBJ-style 1964 Landslide but too realistic to expect it. Still….well, if Kristi Noem goes down in defeat we will know it’s 1964 again, won’t we? Then our problem will switch to avoiding another Vietnam and squandering it.