IN SEARCH OF "REAL" AMERICA AT NASCAR

NASCAR The McCain campaign's attempt to define "real" and "fake" America has inspired The Economist's multimedia editor to do the same. He gleefully divides and conquers all the way to a NASCAR race in Delaware ...

Your correspondent is an American, and spent a day with a friend on US Route 301 playing a distinctly American game: who's more real? The McCain campaign's attempt to define real and fake America collapsed into absurdity as a spokesperson explained that northern Virginia is not "real Virginia", but all that means is that the McCain campaign failed to inherit the Bush campaign's gift for subtlety.

Just because the premise of real America falls apart under examination doesn't mean we don't all play it. My friend and I are on our way from Annapolis, Maryland to a NASCAR race at the International Speedway in Dover, Delaware (from fake to real), and we're at it for the full six hours of our trip.

My friend has a PhD (fake). He coaches his son's soccer team and watches NASCAR on television (real). He drives a Ford F-350, a schooner-sized truck (real). He powers it with recycled vegetable oil (fake). I am a journalist, spend a lot of time in London and use the word "schooner" (fake, fake, fake). In Sudlersville, Maryland I ask to stop for coffee and he warns me that we're unlikely to find a Starbucks--are the rules of the game now clear?

We pull over at a filling station, in front of which is parked a Ford F-250 with 38-inch mud tires and Mickey Thompson rims, perched on a lift kit and a six-inch exhaust. This my friend reels off to me as I find in the station a can of cold, sweetened Starbucks latte, which I do not like but purchase to be stubborn. The modifications on the truck outside, he explains, probably cost $15,000. I ask how I can hear live radio coverage of the race in Dover and the woman behind the counter gives me four different stations. The Sudlersville volunteer fire department is selling barbecue to race fans on the road. Signs on the way out of town read "NASCAR country" and "Darlene's Tavern."

In 2004 Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist, coined the phrase "NASCAR dads." They were to be that cycle's answer to Bill Clinton's "Soccer moms," a demographic that, once captured, would give the Democrats the rest of the union. Before my trip to Dover I called William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, who told me that Ms Lake had chased a shrinking sliver of the pie: southern-born white men. They are being replaced by northern-born white men who are migrating south, who are conservative but not in the same way southern-born men are.

To understand southern-born conservatism, consider that many race fans call Jeff Gordon, a four-time NASCAR cup champion, "the rainbow warrior." The name implies that Mr Gordon is both a hippie and a homosexual, and he earned it for the sin of having been born in California. Ms Lake declined a conversation with me, but I don't think she was ever chasing a real demographic. I think the point of the phrase "NASCAR dads" was not to appeal to dads who watch NASCAR, but simply to be repeated by Democrats to make their party sound more "real".

NASCAR

There are three races in Dover this weekend; we arrive for the tail end of the second, the Nationwide Cup. We have missed the intensely social six-hour pre-race party and now 60,000 people are unable to talk through the ear protection they wear to fend off the thunder below. I am here today only to sort out my press credentials for tomorrow's event, the Sprint Cup, and we stay just long enough to watch Kyle Busch win.

Mr Busch, a driver so good his car is "set up loose" (dangerous in the turns, fast on the straights), stalls during his post-race spinout. "Couldn't even keep it running, dumbass!" yells a voice behind me, and 60,000 people head for the gates.

We stop in Sudlersville again on the way home, to eat at the counter at the Parkside Family Restaurant. The Parkside is the kind of place that lists mashed potatoes and potato salad under "vegetables"; a sign at the door declares for Kasey Kahne, a driver from Enumclaw, Washington. After dinner I ask for apple pie à la mode. My friend snorts and asks where I learned to talk. "But that's what it's called," says our waitress. "Pie à la mode. You heat it on the griddle." Point to the journalist. Game to the PhD.

Picture credit: Brendan Greeley

(This is an instalment of a correspondent's diary from the campaign trail, published on Economist.com.)