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“I don’t intend to challenge President Bush to a contest of who’s a more regular guy,” Mr. Kerry writes in his new campaign autobiography, “A Call to Service,” even as he does so. In the same book, he boasts that he’s “the son of a public employee” (in the diplomatic service) and “a charter member of one of the most selective but fastest-growing sports clubs in the world: the Nascar fans of Massachusetts.”—Frank Rich, The New York Times, 23 November 2003

Listen: I know John Kerry doesn’t really watch NASCAR. You know John Kerry doesn’t really watch NASCAR. The American people know that John Kerry doesn’t watch NASCAR. John Kerry is a blueblooded, Massachusetts liberal. He does not watch NASCAR anymore than I watch NASCAR, and while I appreciate the sight of Democrats trying to reach out to our Southern brethren, this is not the way to go about it. People don’t like to be talked down to, and the first time Kerry’s in South Carolina and someone asks him about an obscure car—like, say #47—or driver that he hasn’t been briefed on from the one guy on his staff who went to Emory, this whole thing is going to blow up in his face.

Or is it? I mean, sure, I don’t watch NASCAR, and no one I drink with watches NASCAR, but surely lots of people around the nation are in love with it. Right? I mean, it’s got rising ratings, and an almost complete lack of black people, so people in the South have to love it. It’s in the state constitutions!

But I don’t buy into this. I think people watch NASCAR for the same reason I watch football: I have no idea what the hell is going on beyond the vaguest of parameters, but it’s still a lot of fun to kick back with your friends and watch two differently dressed groups of players run lots of complex plays that clearly mean something if you pay attention to it long enough and drink beer and smoke cigarettes. Substitute “cars in circles” for “football players” and I think you’ll see where I’m going with this. You’re watching the game/race, and you’re paying attention, but more than anything else it’s hanging out with friends that’s the important thing. It’s only when women got involved that they had to make up excuses for it.

This, I think, is key to how NASCAR started:

Wife: Hey, what are you boys up to?

Husband: We’re watching Joe and Danny drive around in circles in the backyard.

Wife: Oh. Is it a race?

Husband: Um. A race? Yeah. They’re racing.

Wife: Well, that’s nice. Y’all want any sweet tea?

And from that point they had to keep making up more and more stuff, and paint numbers on the cars, and start analyzing statistics and finally come up with the Winston Cup circuit in order to add the necessary legitimacy. Guys hanging out and talking and watching people drive around in circles? Weird. Guys hanging out and talking and watching sports? Fantastic.

They’re all in on it, y’know: everyone who really watches NASCAR is saying the same thing: “Feck off. Feck off to my wife. Feck off to the people in the North. Feck off to college students who write highly sarcastic articles about NASCAR. We all gonna watch some cars drive around. Really fast.” Every time someone buys into the hype and takes it seriously, they laugh. Every time some Northern politician uses it to prove he’s “just like them,” they’re going to laugh their asses off. Because they know better.

Which brings us back to Kerry and the problem of Southern Democrats. Angry White Males, or NASCAR dads, or whatever it is we’re calling them now, aren’t going to be fooled by a sudden switch in Kerry’s demeanor. It took Bush fifteen years to erase the stigma of his roots, and he had to become a born-again Christian. Clinton was a Southerner. Kerry and Dean are from New England, and it’s going to take a lot more than shallow declarations and Harley-Davidsons to overcome forty years of Republican propaganda. Hammer home on Enron and corporate scandals. Beat the free-trade drum and the loss of American jobs (and to the North, play it as “the exploitation of poorer countries”). Play the services card—if not universal health care, think of something else. Play the economy card. But for Christ’s sake: leave NASCAR alone. It’s only when you don’t really see the appeal of it that you understand that appeal for the first time.