Unfortunately we just toured the East and West coasts so we didn't run into any rednecks.
When you come from the Midwest, you have a more open mind than if you come from the West Coast or the East Coast.
It doesn't bother me that I'm not a household word on the East Coast. Baton Rouge, Raleigh, Minneapolis - I'm so popular in these cities where you've never imagined an East Coast comedian working.
No, I don't think about the myth of the West. It's not the kind of thinking I do. That's more suited to people who live in big towns on the West Coast or East Coast, people who stay under a roof, in a room, all the time.
Between the two dream coasts, we're just called flyover country... If you aren't known as an amorphous Eastern Seaboard writer, you're dismissed as a regional author.
To them, the real United States is just flyover country.
I want to make sure that ours is a party that is focusing on both middle class issues and not becoming a party of our two coasts.
One thing in the Middlewest: If you're in my business you're aware of the low opinion both coasts have of the midlands. And that is quite mistaken. New York would be a Kokomo if it weren't for Middlewesterners coming there.
People like me who are here in flyover country, we're tired of East Coast moderates.
We have the highest graduation rates, the broadest health care access, and the greatest level of home ownership and workforce participation in the country. And we did it all with a small population in a cold state that coastal big shots refer to as fly-over land.
I resist and resent the idea of California as a metaphor. It's something thrust upon us, usually by people in the East.
