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Among the writers, retired lawyers, bankers and a handful of younger Americans in the Paris living room, the Democratic Party's prospects looked impossibly bright. That perspective seemed distorted even to the event's host, Constance Borde, the kinetic head of the France chapter of Democrats Abroad. The organization's mailing list of about 2,500 Americans living in France includes hundreds of people who moved to Paris decades ago, fell in love with the city, and never left. "These people are totally ideologically out of touch," she said. "They don't realize how conservative America has become." (George Yates, a displaced San Francisco attorney who runs the France chapter of the Republicans Abroad, estimates his group has only "about 200" supporters, suggesting that the American expatriates here are largely Democrat. The Republicans in France "tend to be a little less vocal in terms of waving the flag in the streets" than Democrats, he said.)
It took a dose of straight talk from McCaskill a fourth-generation Missourian who was her high school Pep Club president and Homecoming Queen to inject a note of reality. Asked if she would win endorsements from the Kansas City Star and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, she laughed. "This isn't about St. Louis and Kansas City," she said. "It's about rural Missouri. The challenge is on gay marriage, abortion. That's what we're up against." With another weary sigh, she added: "The problem we have as Democrats is that so many of the leaders come from the very, very blue states," she says. "They go home to the echo chamber. They never go to places like Missouri." But if you're a voter in Europe, Missouri can now come to you.