Two hours of rural driving, not one Clinton sign

I spent the weekend in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. It’s about a three hour drive from my house.

The first hour gets you to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. After that, you’re on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and in rural Delaware, traveling lesser highways.

Signs for various political candidates begin to appear. Most of the ones we saw were for state and local candidates. However, Donald Trump was represented.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, was missing in action. We did not see a single sign for her in two hours of driving (though it’s possible we missed one or two).

I should put this in context. The Eastern Shore and rural Delaware remain pretty conservative. And Clinton stands to carry Maryland and Delaware easily on the strength of the vote in big cities and suburbs, so there’s no need for her campaign to have signs in thinly populated conservative parts of the these states, even in areas traversed by drivers from population centers (except on the road from Philadelphia and its suburbs).

It may also be the case that signs, or at least road signs, are becoming obsolete as a tool in major campaigns — I don’t know. And it may well be that signs are not worth much as an indicator of popularity in a locale. Clinton will probably carry my neighborhood with 80 percent or more of the vote, yet there aren’t that many Clinton signs here.

Still, it seems remarkable not to have seen one sign for the Democratic nominee for president — a candidate whom the polls say has a slightly better than even chance of winning. I would have expected enough isolated enthusiasm for Clinton and/or energy in her campaign to generate a campaign sign here or there just about anywhere in America.

Not in rural Maryland and Delaware, apparently. Perhaps this is hopeful news for Trump when it comes to winning that one electoral vote from rural Maine.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses