Hillary Clinton has been revealed as a ruthless politician that will go to great depths of negativity in order to win. The Mark Penn memos show that her camp was willing to smear Senator Obama as "not fundamentally American"--essentially a foreigner--because of his exotic upbringing and mixed racial heritage. To her credit, the strategy was not used full bore. Republicans will exploit any perceived weakness they can find. Obama is in trouble with Southerners as the presidential campaign wears on for running what one Democratic strategist calls an "elitist" campaign. The Times of London published an explicative laden interview with Dave 'Mudcat' Saunders, one of the few self-identified "hillbillies" in the Democratic Party. He says Democrats talk a lot about tolerance, but “They don't give a f*** if we're with them or not...They think we're a bunch of hillbilly heathens who go out and burn crosses and do crazy bullshit". Hillary did well with the descendants of Scotch-Irish immigrants who were first pushed out of Scotland and then Northern Ireland before settling in the isolated, mountainous frontier of Appalachia. She easily won the Democratic primaries in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. Saunders, who is a friend and consultant of John Edwards, thinks the strategy to win partially urbanized Virginia is also in trouble. Relying only on new voters, urban liberals, and blacks is a mistake. In his blunt words, "When he [Obama] stands up and says that I'm gonna get 30 per cent more black voters — I'm gonna get 30 per cent more of my people to turn out for me — what is Joe Six-Pack thinking?” In his view the solution for Obama is to talk about social justice in detail, face to face with rural white voters. In 1968 Robert Kennedy did exactly that in Indiana and West Virginia. Some party leaders agree that Obama has to get specific, fast. There are social and cultural parallels to be drawn between South Side Chicago and Appalachia, but not on the Internet. According to 'Mudcat' his people are watching reruns of "The Andy Griffith Show", not their computer screens, if they have one. Obama has to breach a cultural barrier likened to Hadrian's Wall--and exploited by the Republicans at every opportunity--which separates these working-class, rural voters from what should be their political home.[photo credit: ruins of Emperor Hadrian's wall built by the Romans to keep the northern barbarians at bay, BBC]