  Today, as I was filling out a job application at a local restaraunt out here in East Texas, I noticed an older&nbsp;man walk in to apply. The rugged man look to be in his 40's; your average&nbsp;conservative blue-collar man wearing a baseball cap with lyrics from a country song on it, blue jeans, and a T-shirt. He quickly started up a conversation with a another, younger man like myself about how his company layed him off two years ago and hasn't been able to find work since.
His story was not atypical: He had put a lot of years&nbsp;into the job, but it was all for-not, and he was told to he had 2 days to "get his shit out of there. " As I was listening to this, two thoughts occured. The first was that while liberals and conservatives often talk a lot about the economy it terms of statistics, it is nice (or in this case, not) to see the reality of it all.&nbsp; The second, was that this guy is probably a Republican, or at least, votes for them and unfortunately, probably still will in these upcoming elections. I have no doubts&nbsp;about why, it's for the same reasons&nbsp;people have been voting against their own economic interests for awhile&nbsp;- Republican talk of values, less government, and as Toby Keith (who's actually a Democrat) would put it, putting a boot in our enemy's ass. Of course, what it really means is that this man doesn't have a job anymore, in large part due to Republican's disastrous&nbsp;economic policies (it didn't used to be this way, but the Pat Buchanan wing of the party is&nbsp;all but&nbsp;dead).
This particular thought continues to sadden me, because this is the kind of guy who should be on our side. But I have no idea if Kerry's economic message is getting through to people like this man, at least down here. Though I don't know if his particular job was&nbsp;lost due to outsourcing, the same basic principle remains: &nbsp; Big companies have too much damn power in America and it is time we did something about it.
&nbsp; Republicans surely won't, but Democrats, with progressives at the grass-roots level like us edging them on, will. So I again think of what I said earlier,&nbsp;we should support the Texas Democratic Party's and Glenn Smith's DriveDemocracy Organization, and get pro-worker Democrats in and pro-corporate Republicans out. It will hard to turn back the tide after a decade of Republican control in Texas and on the national level, but we have to start somewhere. And we will start with guys like the one I met today. 
