Uncourted Voters, Too, Hope for a President Who Mirrors Them

New York Times
By PETER APPLEBOME
Published: November 1, 2008

You don?t need to stop by Sign of the Times, sort of a hippie toy store on Main Street here, its window full of Obama T-shirts (?Jan. 20, 2009. The End of an Error.? ?I?m Voting for ?That One? ?) and a leftover flier from the Oct. 17 Boogie for Obama concert, to see the signs of the times.

Instead, in our forgotten corner of the national political landscape, you can?t miss them: the Martha Stewartesque tableau of Obama signs and stickers outside Joan Silbersher?s antiques shop in the quiet hamlet of Pound Ridge in Westchester; the front page of the student newspaper at Norwalk Community College in Connecticut (?N.C.C. Students Choose Obama ? Student Poll a Landslide Victory?); the Obama-Biden poster at the rear of the kitchen at the Shadman Pakistani and Indian restaurant on Grove Street in Jersey City.

It?s not about figuring out who wins New York, New Jersey and Connecticut on Tuesday. Barack Obama?s chances of winning this corner of the country are no more in doubt than John McCain?s in Texas, Utah and Alaska.

Instead, if you drive around New York and its environs at the tail end of this tumultuous and lovely autumn, trees awash in orange and gold, it?s hard to miss something else. In the heart of Blue America, along with judging the candidates? positions on taxes, the war and health care, there?s almost a palpable yearning for a president who, for once, seems like us.

So Craig Machado, the director of the English as a Second Language program at Norwalk, likes Mr. Obama?s positions on issues, though he doesn?t think either candidate has leveled with the American people about what?s really possible given the floundering economy. But he also likes the idea of a president whose symbolic signals and dog whistles aren?t about clearing brush, professing his faith or conjuring up the campaign trail?s nostalgic vision of heartland America, half true, half illusion.

?I like the way he presents himself, his self-confidence, his intelligence, his poise,? he said of Mr. Obama. ?Unfortunately, what?s gone on in the country is this kind of bashing of intellectuals, bashing of people who have educational credentials, as if there?s something wrong with that, that it?s not valuable. There?s the appeal of Sarah Palin, that?s she just a hockey mom, just a Joe Schmo, and that?s what we need. I don?t know where we got that idea.?

You hear something similar from Ken Jablonski, rigging stage lights at the Riverspace Arts center in Nyack, and from Natalie Giusio, sitting outside a coffee bar in Jersey City. They cite friends abroad ? Europeans for Mr. Jablonski, Argentines for Ms. Giusio ? who are baffled by and contemptuous of the past eight years of American life and figure that maybe it?s time for a political vision of America that?s more like the world they see in front of them.

Sometimes you hear anger, the other side of the rancor that courses through the McCain and Palin rallies. Asked whom he was voting for, a man in a sweater and sandals at the Shadman restaurant in Jersey City who declined to give his name said, ?Obama.? Asked why, he said: ?Because America in the last eight years has been more like barbarism than anything else.?

No one expects miracles, but Mr. Obama?s supporters here seem to believe that if he wins, he can deliver on at least some of the hope he?s selling. Robert Suda, who is 77 and works at the antiques shop in Pound Ridge, can remember Franklin D. Roosevelt and how much difference a president who is smart, confident, upbeat and focused can make. Almost every Obama supporter seemed to cite the immediate, galvanized boost Mr. Obama would provide to America?s esteem abroad.

Some caution that more changes will take patience, a quality in short supply.

?America wants a microwave,? said Pernell Vassell, 40, an assistant manager of a gas station who hopes to go back to school in Norwalk. ?We have to slow-cook our way back. It?s like if you have the flu. You don?t expect to be all better tomorrow.?

Others said that whatever Mr. Obama?s faults, the alternative was much worse.

?If we don?t change direction, we?re going to end up in some kind of ?Mad Max? post-apocalyptic situation,? said Kerry McCrohan, 32, an assistant director of television programs, who is from Jersey City.

There are plenty of skeptics here, too. At his florist shop, Peter Korek says business stinks, but he?ll still take Mr. McCain?s experience over Mr. Obama?s promise of change, which strikes him as more na?ve than substantive. ?You can?t always get what you want,? he said, as the Stones? song played on the radio.

The general election has played out far away, as if in a different country ? no rallies at a hip river town like Nyack, a green Westchester suburb like Pound Ridge, a Fairfield County community college like Norwalk. Certainly, there have been no set pieces like Grove Street in Jersey City, with its acupuncturist and Ibby?s Falafel; El Sason de las Americas restaurant; New Mashallah Grocery; Sava Polish Diner; La Conga Supermarket; Soul Flavors restaurant and the rest of the new urban polyglot.

Maybe it?s the most audacious hope of all. But Mr. Obama?s supporters here still dream that after the countless rambles through the Midwest and the South, his improbable caravan will finally end up in a place where it has hardly ever been.

E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/nyregion/02towns.html