Can everyone stop talking about “NASCAR dads”? Just about every talking head on television and radio is gabbing about “NASCAR dads” just like they ran on about “soccer moms” during the ’96 and ’00 election cycle. “Soccer moms” were actually in play in 2000. Middle class suburban women with kids are often a key swing demographic. “NASCAR dads” (suburban working- and middle-class white men) always vote Republican. If the Democrats spend time and money going after these guys, this election may as well be over now.

From an IHT article about NASCAR:

It’s the prerace flyover, four F-16′s with the burners lit, 200 feet, or 60 meters, off the deck at 400 miles an hour, or 650 kilometers an hour, and the crowd goes crazy. The sky cracks and the smell of jet exhaust fouls the grandstands. I, sophisticated tourist sarcast, turn to Nascar dad, cock my eyebrow and shout, “Our tax dollars at work, huh?” He looks down at me through the beard, blue-eyed and red-faced in the heat. “Damn straight,” he says, “damn straight,” as tears roll down his cheeks.

Men who get weepy at the sight and sound of fighter jets don’t vote Democratic.

The Republicans can have them.