![]() ![]() ![]() There are no candidates or campaigns in “Rabbit Redux,” no demagogues or ward bosses. ![]() The populations in these states are not especially diverse, but they seem, time and again, to yield the richest harvest of “independent voters,” so often depicted as paragons of the national character - thrifty, family-oriented, churchgoing - especially if they are white males of Protestant stock, each an Everyman caught in the tangle of post-industrial America, a “man in the middle,” as John Updike puts it in “Rabbit Redux.” Published in 1971 and set in 1969 - the year of Chappaquiddick and the moon landing, the beginning of Richard Nixon’s presidency - it remains the most illuminating and prophetic of modern political novels, though on the surface it seems not about politics at all. ![]() In most cases the outcome hinged on the marshaling of dependable blocs of voters.īut in the heartland “battlegrounds” - Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin - the calculation seemed more complicated. Some were on the Eastern Seaboard (Florida, Virginia), others in the West (Colorado, Nevada). As the long election night began to take shape, all eyes remained fixed on the swing states. ![]()
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