so, what are YOU driving? the Times examines blue cars and red trucks in today's issue

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> Driving: Your Car: Politics on Wheels

So, what are you driving? I'm in a VW Golf, which may tell you a little something about my politics even before you see the Kerry bumpersticker fading on its back window. This article is interesting not only for the prejudices it confirms about insecure Republican males and their big trucks, and the fact that Democrats are more likely to live in cities where parallel parking spaces favor the nimble and small, but for the surprises:

• There's a whiny country singer with a hit song about what happens when a liberal lady in a minivan makes fun of the patriotic bumper sticker on "The Bumper of my SUV." Boo Hoo Hoo. (Another piece of conservative claptrap about those oppressive liberal elites with all their keying of bush/cheney bumperstickers, spitting on Vietnam veterans, burning of flags, and other [sub]urban legends.)
• "Porsche owners identified themselves as Republican more often than owners of any other cars, with 59 percent calling themselves Republicans, 27 percent Democrats."( I would have thought Hummers would be at LEAST 75 percent Republican. And I used to dream about driving an old 911 Targa.)
• Steve Sailer, "a conservative journalist who has analyzed the red-blue divide" tells us that NASCAR has an American-made requirement (no smart remarks about what might have been if Dale Earnhart had been driving a Volvo, you liberals you!) and that "In truth, a lot of fans would be sore about ending the all-American monopoly. Nascar has become a covert ethnic-pride celebration for red-state whites of Northern European descent."(COVERT? The only things they lack are the conical hats and white sheets.)

So, what are you driving and what are your politics? (Full disclosure: I've owned an MG, 3 VWs, a Fiat, and a Datsun in the thirty years I've been driving and I'm a True Blue Liberal.)