Obama lack of support in Kentucky: racism or liberalism/elitism?

An excellent point from a letter to the editor by Gregg Wagner to LEO...

following up on some stuff I'd written on Kentucky and voting by race...

Why was it that when George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry all lost the rural vote and income bracket under $60,000 in Kentucky, it was because these candidates where out of touch with rural Kentuckians? Now that Barack Obama loses the same rural vote, Kentucky is labeled uneducated and racist. Could it be that Obama is simply out of touch with rural Kentuckians the same way that McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry were?

And then, another nice point that's obvious but wasn't talked about much if at all...

Could it be that Clinton, her husband and daughter all campaigned harder in Kentucky for votes, and Obama made only one visit to Louisville? Many times if you fail to ask people for their vote, you will not get it. Kentucky is much more than Louisville.