Mudcat Supports Mike Signer for Lt. Gov.

Mudcat on the Race for Governor

Exclusive Interview: Mudcat Saunders on the Virginia Governor’s Race

Lowell Feld

Blue Commonwealth
Wednesday, March 25, 2009

I just interviewed Dave “Mudcat” Saunders – formerly senior strategist to Mark Warner, Jim Webb and John Edwards – about the Virginia governor’s race. Here are the highlights of what Mudcat had to say, including some most definitely “quotable quotes!”

Happy 60th Birthday Mudcat!!!

Dave Mudcat Saunders turns 60 this October 27th.

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Editor’s note: All but one of the comments below are actually from the person they appear to be from. (See if you can guess which one isn’t.)

Mudcat for Obama (Video)

(From YouTube) Mudcat Saunders discusses Barack’s support for rural Americans in Virginia. Visit http://VA.BarackObama.com/rural for more information about the Obama campaign in Virginia.

Appalachian activist targets rural voters (Toronto Star)

By Olivia Ward
Link to the original article: http://www.thestar.com/News/USElection/article/519730

David “Mudcat” Saunders, a rural strategist for Barack Obama’s Democrats, is aiming to “clip off enough votes to win the state” from the Republicans.

ROANOKE, VA.–Mudcat is in a down mood. He’s just in from a hunting trip and the deer got away. Having winged it with an arrow shot from his trusty bow, he has decided he must go back to make sure it isn’t still thrashing in the bush.

It’s rare that David “Mudcat” Saunders misses his target, he allows with unabashed candour. And that holds true for the kill-or-be-killed world of politics.

While Mudcat the Hunter is the central casting image he revels in – crouched in a tree eyeballing his prey in the hills of rural Appalachia – Saunders, the Democratic rural strategist, is gunning for bigger targets than Bambi. He aims to pick off the likes of Republican John McCain and fellow hunter Sarah Palin in a state that traditionally sends Republicans to the White House, but is now swinging toward Barack Obama’s Democrats, mainly due to the new demographics of suburban northern Virginia.

Rachel Maddow show – MSNBC (Video)

Mudcat interview begins at about 4:45 into the clip.

The Greed Message

“Enforce the antitrust laws that have decimated us. He (John Edwards) said we’re gonna make the playing field level, that the American workers are the most productive workers in the world still—let’s put ’em back to work. We’ve traded local economies for Wall Street dividends. That’s all that’s happened. Since the dawn of time, the big sons of bitches kicked the little sons of bitches’ ass. And that’s what’s happenin’ now. I mean, it’s a time to fight. I mean, anybody who doesn’t think we have a problem with economic disparity, it’s the worst it’s been since the eighteen-eighties. And the redistribution-of-the-wealth argument? I love it when a Republican says to me, ‘The Democrats wanna redistribute the wealth.’ Well, there’s been a redistribution of wealth—but it’s the other fuckin’ way!”

-Dave “Mudcat” Saunders
“The Appalachian Problem: Obama goes to rural Virginia”
by Peter J. Boyer, The New Yorker, October 6, 2008

The Appalachian Problem (The New Yorker)

Will Jim Webb’s Scots-Irish populism work for Obama in the hill country?

Obama goes to rural Virginia.
by Peter J. Boyer, October 6, 2008

Barack Obama’s September 9th trip to Lebanon, Virginia, in the southwestern hill country, came at a moment of deep unease among Democrats. John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, eleven days earlier, had yielded rich results, in Republican enthusiasm and in polling numbers. Several polls showed McCain pulling ahead of Obama, and some Democrats worried that Obama’s slogan of “Change” was a frail substitute for an emphatic message spelling out just what change he hoped to bring about. It seemed that the Obama camp had been knocked off balance by the Palin factor. Some Democrats feared that Obama himself—cool, cerebral, aloof—was a problem, reflected by the campaign’s apparent inability to counter McCain’s bold communications strategy effectively. Most disturbing, polling revealed that voters were increasingly inclined to trust McCain on the economy—an issue on which the Democrat should have the advantage.

The Pugilist at Rest (L.A. Weekly)

John Edwards’ Rural Advocate Mudcat Saunders Pipes in From the Sidelines

By Joe Donnelly
Published on September 03, 2008 at 6:37pm

Those who bothered to check out the Rocky Mountain News before the Democratic National Convention were greeted by a picture of the enigmatic Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, whose nickname and job description — rural advocate — became indelibly marked in my consciousness this past spring during John Edwards’ doomed primary campaign.

Pondering the cultural baggage of elitism, slickness and otherness that adversaries have been trying to saddle on the Democratic nominee — a clever trick considering that Barack Obama is as much a poor white boy from Kansas as he is anything else — I wondered if ol’ Mudcat would be doing any advocating for the campaign of the rural sort, and set out to find him.

America’s Crooked Road (Rocky Mountain News)

By Mike Littwin, Rocky Mountain News
Published August 9, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

“Gah-dayem, son,” Mudcat says. “It’s not about race. It’s about the gah-dayem culture.”

He offers up this pearl of socio-political wisdom as we cruise through the hills of western Virginia – Mudcat driving, me riding shotgun – to test his theory of how culture trumps race here. It’s not just any theory. All that’s at stake is quite possibly who becomes the next president of the United States.

We’re taking “The Crooked Road” music trail – an aptly named back road that, I’m told, will lead us directly to music heaven, which is apparently located on a stage in the back of the Floyd Country Store. Every Friday night, when they hold their gospel and bluegrass and old-timey-music jamboree, this town of 432 turns into a festival of banjo-pickin’ and flat-footin’ – a mini-bluegrass Woodstock, except with no nudity in evidence but, as compensation, some mighty nice-looking store-bought coveralls.