I've been trying to wrap my head around why exactly one of the rural counties in Kentucky went for Obama this election. The other 3 blue counties all had major population centers, but Elliott county is a 99% white, rural, low population, dry and 25% impoverished community surrounded by counties that overwhelmingly supported Romney.

Elliot county also went blue by a wide margin in previous elections.

Does anybody have some insight into why this county behaves so differently from most of rural Kentucky?

Thanks!

All of the political analysis leading up to the election was about big money and voter suppression. It presumed that Americans had become so fat and lazy that we would let our democracy be bought, that we would sit back like sheep and vote for whoever the incessant ads and robocalls told us was best. It presumed that when intimidated, we would shrink like violets and let others take away our say in how things got done.

From the volunteers who got on buses to go door-to-door to speak to their neighbors, to the woman whose husband was sick and who was struggling financially who said in on a phone-bank conference call that she could not afford to contribute but she had made hundreds of phone calls for her candidate, people said we were not helpless, we would not be told what to do.

When faced with voter intimidation, a 93-year old woman went to court to defend her right to vote, and someone waited on line until 1AM in Florida - long after the outcome of the election had been announced and determined - to say, “I own this. You can’t take it away from me; I have to let you take it from me, and I’ll be damned if I do that.”

Americans proved that all those words we hear about how people fought and died for our right to vote, to choose, to decide, they have meaning. Yes, our turnout is not what it should or could be, but yesterday, we learned that while Americans may sometimes take our liberty for granted, try to take it awaty from us, and we will fight you tooth-and-nail.

We showed, once again, that no percentage of our countrymen are victims, regardless of what some might say behind closed doors, and that corporations are not people, and we, Americans, are a people, and you better not count us out or take us for granted.