Yeah, and it would have been cool too if we didn't just have two Yale Bonesmen going for the Golden Chalice either...
Opposition party anyone? Anyone? Bueller?...
Political Physics
When reality bites back, yes, they will go looking for scapegoats. The Dems' challenge will be to hold them accountable.
All I have to say is biodiesel. It's a highly progressive concept, and one that would explode the nation's agriculture economy. I'm not a fan of empty rhetoric, so how about substance?
David, I disagree witth John Nichols and thus your post. I live in rural America, and lemme tell you - they may not stay awake at nights worrying about gay marriage, but as a motivating political force, it gets them to the polls.
You yourself cited the top issue for most Bush voters: "moral values." I assure you that no matter how sweeping and attractive a Democratic economic plan for rural America may be, it comes back to abortion; it comes back to gay marriage. It comes back to fundamentalist evangelicals who see themselves as the bulwark against godless liberalism, even as those supposedly on their side are selling them out.
I think they know Republicans don't have answers to their economic problems; but I once had a red-stater say to me, "If you consider abortion murder, how can any other issue matter?"
Two problems:
Not too many places it's safe to have a family anymore if you're gay; so the reaching out for the LGBTI community has to be at a distance.
and
Some of us have no rural roots to back to. Really -- eastern european Jews got booted off the land a thousand years ago.
America,born in the country raised in the city.
I've met too many mean-spirited, narrow-minded, bigoted rural people, many of them in my extended family, to ever agree with you. Many such people live in rural areas for no other reason than to get away from the groups they hate and, in my experience, obsess on. Besides, the rural red areas are a small part of the problem, the larger part being the red suburban fringe.
I've been using my blog to mull over these issues and came to a similar place. I think the Democrats can win places like Kansas, or at least like Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Colorado, by shifting their rhetoric and policies.
Some of that will come from above (a midwestern majority leader in the Senate?) and some from below, by recruitment of candidates who can articulate a reason for rural voters to prefer Dems.
I offer some examples of what I mean at the blog.
i was kind of hoping we could go our separate ways. 
i mean, i really don't have much in common with rural americans. i am not willing to compromise on gay marriage and abortion rights.
I've been rambling on this one for years. Yes, I'm currently a Seattle Liberal. However, I come from the proverbial "salt of the earth" and was raised in a tiny logging town. I'm well aware of the concerns and think it's stupid to dismiss them completely and focus only on urban areas.
::sigh::
I agree that abortion and anti-gay stuff will be motivators for a long time to come, but I know reasonable people in rural areas that could be convinced to vote for themselves and their own interests.
This is not an agrarian society, so what would be the point?
The fact of the matter is that White America w/ an average of $88K in net worth per person is no longer interested in economics because economics doesn't effect them. You cannot only consider income when you are talking about people's economic state. A woman might be a waitress, but if her Mom left her (or will leave her) a $250K insurance policy and a house, well, you can see what I'm getting at. They've got their nest eggs, it has nothing to do with yearly income.
My point is that we are just so sure that these individuals are voting against their economic interests, when we really are not all that sure that they are in the first place. We just assume they are. And secondly, if you believe your treasure is in heaven, then sure you're are going to be a hell of a lot more passionate about the issues you think will get you into heaven, not quibbling about worldly possessions, like money.
Here’s what we might wish for: that the Democratic opposition could focus on becoming the Party of good, honest government. That we could somehow propogate a meme that would go something like this: “The business of government isn’t religion. It isn’t establishing a uniform code of morality. It isn’t bringing home pork-barrel dollars. And the business of government certainly isn’t to make itself shrivel up and die. The business of government is to protect the all the people of this Nation from external threats, from internal criminality and violence, and from anyone—corporation or individual—who would seek to gain wealth or power at the expense of any of this nation’s core democratic values.”
Any takers?
How? Rural America, as it stands, is hopelessly dependent on subsidy and still it is poor. Land-ownership is no longer the primary generator of wealth in the USA, farmers are barely making ends meet and we have nearly run out of trees to cut. I see no magic answer to that; there is no way to suddenly make the economics work for farmers, and there are scarcely trees left to cut. To some extent, "green" economics might improve matters, but "green" economics has never been widely applied; working out how to apply it will take decades and the explotative land users will fight it every step of the way.
Here in Oregon, we have just passed a "property rights" initiative; rural Oregon imagines it is going to help them. What it is probably going to do is lead to the sale of much farmland to the hated out-of-state developers and the clear-cutting of most remaining privately-owned forestland. This is going to be a long struggle.
I'm with Dr Bonzo.
We need a Tommy Douglas. He's the guy who started the CCF, the forerunner of the NDP, in Canada. As premier of Saskatchewan, bringing in rural electrification and vastly improved and extended sewer systems as well as other social and societal programs, all the while delivering some 16 or 17 straight balanced budgets. Later he was the driving force behind Canada's national Medicare, which was a risky, and, it seemed, a losing proposition but he prevailed.
Check out "The Story of Mouseland" on that link while you're there.
An amazing guy, both politically and personally (Tommy was Keifer Sutherland's grandpa, btw; Tommy's daughter Shirley was an actress and is a longtime activist).
It doesn't get much more rural than Maine and New Hampshire, and they were blues. Explanation anyone?
I'll "third" Bonzo and "second" Fiat Lux. The modern GOP is rife with contradictions spanning a wide range of issues, ranging from crony-capitalist fixed markets masquerading as a "free" market philosophy, to the "moral values" candidate being the guy that employs the likes of Karl Rove a few doors down from the oval office, to decrying the immorality of pop culture on Fox News while spreading sleaze on umpteen other Fox media outlets (not to pick just on Fox). The Dems need to abandon some of their old shibboleths, be less risk averse, and aggressively sell real solutions to real people's problems as alternatives to the GOP's fake ones.
I don't know if Wendell Berry has ever been mentioned on Orcinus (never that I can recall), but he has a take on rural America that is, if not exactly liberal, at least palatable to liberals.
The way agribusiness works in this country is to turn rural America into a colony of urban and suburban America -- a region to be exploited for its resources (in this case, its ability to produce food or timber) with little regard for the people there or even the place's long-term viability. Pragmatically, unless you have a plan for importing all our food or having it materialize out of thin air, we are bound to the rural regions; morally, I think we're obliged as liberals to get to understand the people who live there and reach out to them, as David says.
a new Progressive party needs to be created and the
Democratic party needs to be killed.
I'm not suggesting we ignore or demonize our misguided rural brethren. I am advocating that we let them stew in their own juice. If they want to destroy the world for some godforsaken ideology, let them pay for it.
If this is how they want to act, then we ought to carve up the US into autonomous regions and let them see what it's like to pay their own way.
From deep in the redest of Red America, I hear the local political commentary and compare it to the worldview of the blogosphere, and have come to the sad conclusion that the two halves of America simply cannot communicate with each other anymore. For every thoughtful comment from a Kevin Drum or Orcinus suggesting an effort to re-create the FDR coalition, I read multiple comments that we hicks aren't worth the trouble; we're too dense too understand what we're doing; fundies and evangelicals should be driven out; and semi-serious secessionism. The people here who are conservative are just as dismissive of "leftie commie abortionist gun-grabbers" in such foreign places as, oh, the East & West Coasts. I fear we are in fact Balkanized now, and that it will only intensify when the administration's fiscal & economic policies cause the collapse of our economy. Then, scapegoating will become the order of the day for all. Judging from the rhetoric of both sides, civil war is a terrifying possibility in the coming years, and I don't see any signs that either side of the political debate is softening toward the other.
By the same token, many of the issues that truly motivate people are matters of principle that don't lend themselves to compromise. If one believes that 'abortion is murder', what compromise can be made with the side which perceives 'freedom of choice' as paramount? Both sides consider the other as 'the enemy' rather than the opposition. Wish I had a solution, and I'd enjoy Orcinus' thoughts on just how we can avoid deepening the divisions in the country.
So Dave, you're suggesting that we give up on those urban-liberal ideals, or at least put them on the back burner? Liberal ideals like, say, hate-crime laws?
Not trying to troll, but honestly....isolationist is exactly how I feel right now. So, the people have spoken. If they want the evangelical Taliban, screw 'em all. I happen to value the concept of a nation of laws, bible-thumpers apparently don't. Why should I have to compromise my own moral values (like treating everyone equally under the law and not sanctioning either homophobia or 'separate but equal') to throw them a bone? They certainly aren't putting their morality on the back burner for the sake of preventing the outcome of an ungovernable nation.
And since I hear that only 10% of 18-24 year-olds voted yesterday, it will be hard to be very sympathetic, or not to tell them to quit whining, when their asses get drafted in another glorious Bush war.
Austin is correct that the true division in this country is rural-urban. Given that urban areas grow in population at a much higher rate than rural areas, the Democrats will have the most likely short-term success by focusing on developing an urban identity while making enough inroads into the burbs to swing the 51-49 count back their way. That would do nothing but deepen our divisions, but hey, winning is the only thing these days.
Oh, in case I need to spell out my meaning:
constitutional amendments against gay marriage = homophobia
"civil unions" but not marriage = separate but equal
Might have been unclear.
I agree with jay taber 100% - on the other hand, I am quite sympathetic to what nightshift66 has to say. Surely, as nightshift66 notes, the isolationism is two-sided, it isn't just the "urban elite gay pot-smokers" throwing up their hands at the "NASCAR trailer-trash."
May I share my two cents with everyone? From my perspective, here in Oklahoma, I don't see that "moral values" is code for homophobia at all. Most people I know are just pissed off that we're treated like irrelevant idiots by the intelligentsia on both coasts, and I ascribe Bush's election as much to a repudiation of the east coast liberal establishment as anything. Sure, we passed a state question on the marriage issue, but many voted for it because of the hypocrisy of it's supporters. They tried scare tactics: the question will eliminate common law marriage! (which was abrogated by statute years ago). You won't be able to visit your girlfriend in the hospital!! (We are advanced enough here in the stone age to have health care proxies and powers of attorney). There is also a strong feeling here, based upon generations who struggled in adverse conditions to homestead an unforgiving and often barren land, that the values of handshake honesty, friendly treatment, respect for neighbors, and, yes, religion, are important things. We resent being told by others that we can't say a prayer before a football game, or hold a high-school graduation in a church: we have a rebellious, libertarian streak as well.
Yes, we have our crackers and bigots, but I honestly don't believe the incidence of idiots is any higher here than elsewhere. Archie Bunker was from Queens, right?
I'm going to make every effort to remind my elected officials that we want positive action in the next four years. Keep in mind, though, that my idea of positive action may not meet yours, and that should not make me a dumbass bigot homophobe redneck fascist. Can we agree to abandon the labels for a little while? Can we just ask what's wrong with privatizing social security to a program that's identical to the federal employee retirement system? They get to opt out of social security, and they do very well for themselves. Why can't the rest of us?
I know I don't belong here, boys and girls, being a middle-aged conservative Okie, but this is part one of my crusade to extend the olive branch to my brethren. If any of you want to take a cultural internet road trip to see how we survive out here in the land of the red states, feel free to ask. And if your frustration with the outcome of the election can be alleviated by emailing me with a message to shut the hell up, feel free: I know that losses like this hurt. My first vote for president was George McGovern, so I've been there....
Thanks for letting me spew.
"It doesn't get much more rural than Maine and New Hampshire, and they were blues. Explanation anyone?"
I'm no expert, but I thought that New England rural was rather different from Great Plains/Rocky Mountains rural. New England has a rather old and distinct subculture that effects the entire area. Plus, most major farming activities left rural New England some time ago. Its just not the same.
In fact, I would argue that it doesn't get much more rural than Vermont, and that's ALWAYS a blue state.
This isn't really a substantive answer, but its gettting there.
Yes! When are those elitist farmers going throw us urban-dwelling decadents a bone? When bushman forecloses on the last homestead and drives them from the ancestral home with a bullwhip? I feel very trapped as a Democrat and a Liberal. I am so mad that the repubs spit out that last word as a curse when I consider it to be foundation of this country. If governing means we have to become souless drones filled with hate (or worse yet - look the other way) then I don't know if I want my party to govern. I am desperate enough to do things that I could not be proud of - but if I ignore MY core principles then doesn't my party become the same thing as the modern repub party - a opposite caricature of what it once was? Lincoln spins in his grave and I would just as soon let FDR sleep.
"I know I don't belong here, boys and girls, being a middle-aged conservative Okie, but this is part one of my crusade to extend the olive branch to my brethren."
Actually, I would say that of all the progressive sites I know of, this would be the perfect one for you to post on. Its concerned primarily with the 'heartland.' Please, stay and give your thoughts! 
As one whose family represents a pretty good cross-section of the populace "down here" or "out there", let me temper the evangelistic ideas here...just a bit. The high-school graduate brother-in-law that lives in a trailer in rural Mississippi, the college educated Episcopal vestryman father that lives in a golf community in Louisiana, the sister bearded to a homosexual in denial and my blessed grandmother in her nursing home all came out to vote the "moral issue."
Why??? Because they simply are not hurting enough to transcend their comfortable little prejudices that shield them from the unknown. The reason that so much "good" populism and progressive thought came out of the rural areas earlier in our history was because things had gotten so bad...depression, dustbowl, grapes of wrath, the flood of '27. It was only then that they started listening.
People are not hurting enough to fear for their own livelihoods, and by extension, their brother, the black, the hispanic, the Palestinian...The trailer that was good enough for Dad is good enough for me and good enough for my kids as long as we get bread and circuses over my Internets. In short, things will have to get worse before they get better.
Believe me, I've tried to find the common ground. I've tried showing the dirt poor neo-confederate brother the "carpetbaggers" in heritage clothing. It just isn't working......yet.
I blame the decline in education as much as any urban-rural split. It is easier to stay informed when you have access to information and the educational background to know when something just doesn't make sense. Unfortunately, many of the red states have poor educational systems and limited sources iof information and that works to their disadvantage.
No offense to Oklahoma, but you would be astounded at the number of education resources that we have within ten miles of any point in Seattle. I wish that everyone in America had these advantages.
Hmm... just to clarify my above post about New England farms, etc... I'm not saying that rural = farming. In fact, only about 7% of people in rural areas live on farms. However, that used to be different.
What I was saying is that upper New England left the 'farming' rural stage quite some time ago and is also subject to the distinct NE culture. However, the people of the Great Plains and other areas in Central America have only gotten away from majority farming occupations in recent history (50 years is my educated guess, but that's just a number I pulled out of you-know-where).
And that is just one of the characteristics that sets the two regions apart.
Central America = Central US... doh. I'll stop trying to correct myself now.
>> Certainly, there's really no longer any doubt about Bush's legitimacy this time around.
Of course there is.
30 counties in Florida used those easily-rigged Diebold touchscreen voting machines, which they used over our objections, proudly proclaiming there would be no recounts this year because there could be no recounts this year.
Touchscreen votes decided the race in Florida for George W. Bush, in spite of polls predicting the state for John F. Kerry.
We will never know for sure whether Bush legitimately won Florida. That will always be in doubt.
swampdawg, I'm not sure there's any common ground left to be found, because on a national level, there isn't a concensus for action on ANYthing. Name anything serious or substantive (Iraq, Soc. Security, economy, fiscal policy), and you'll be a genius if you can get 55% of the public behind any course of action. It's too easy to snipe, label, libel, and ridicule anything, and this is a 51-49 nation.
Now, you may be right that the next Depression (which I think is now unavoidable) will create a concensus for action, but don't forget that those conditions enabled dictatorships to rise to power. Desperate people will listen to anyone who tells them it isn't there fault, it's [any small insular minority who is easily demonized]. Doesn't matter which one, nor how implausible the story. Just give 'em a scapegoat. So, when the collapse comes, the left will (justifiably) point out that the right holds every branch of gov't, and the right will attempt to shift the blame onto the most plausible scapegoat.
"I'm not sure there's any common ground left to be found, because on a national level, there isn't a concensus for action on ANYthing. Name anything serious or substantive (Iraq, Soc. Security, economy, fiscal policy), and you'll be a genius if you can get 55% of the public behind any course of action."
Our hand, of course, will be forced by events, as it usually is. The scapegoat, of course, is going to be gay--I think that's very obvious.
"There is also a strong feeling here, based upon generations who struggled in adverse conditions to homestead an unforgiving and often barren land, that the values of handshake honesty, friendly treatment, respect for neighbors, and, yes, religion, are important things. We resent being told by others that we can't say a prayer before a football game, or hold a high-school graduation in a church: we have a rebellious, libertarian streak as well."
I'll go along with handshake honesty, friendly treatment, and respect for neighbors. But these characterize John Kerry much better than W. Bush. In the end, fear of homosexuals seems to have trumped all of those virtues. And tell me, where do Catholic kids go if graduation is in your church? What about Jews? Heck, given the way protestant sects schism, what do you do about conflicts between churches? There are reasons for separation of church and state.
But all of this has been lost in a spasm of fear. David has been saying it over and over, and it bears repeating: these people are not conservatives, and they are your enemies as much as they are the enemies of east-coast liberals.
Dave, the legitimacy of GW Bush is a fact not in evidence.
The Publicans stole the last election. While there certainly is no proof they stole this one, it's a pretty good bet. Let's wait to see.
As for an urban-rural divide, I think this is a red herring. Democrats have simply forgotten to talk the language of the Bible. The Bible is a book that speaks not only to sexual morality but to issues of charity, social justice, and the love of truth. In the hands of a Jerry Falwell, it is a club to bash gays. In the hands of a Dorothy Day, it is a call to social revolution.
I have country cousins, some of whom are liberal, some conservative. But we can talk to one another because we share a common language.
While I'm sure not everyone who voted for the anti-gay marriage stuff on state ballots were homophobes, it's sort of silly to pretend that fag-haters didn't make up a big portion of 'em.
The Democratic Party has got to realize they can't figure away around fag-baiting. I don't care how wonderful a rural agenda Dems come up with, conservatives will just fag-bait it into oblivion.
Democrats must bite the bullet and start treating fag-hating like racism, in that people who practice it or tolerate it are not fit for decent company. That means those people must be shunned. You wouldn't go on TV and have polite discussions about tax policy or foreign affairs with an avowed neo-nazi, why would you do it with someone who thinks gay people are a threat to "our way of life". You can't invite them to parties, you can't date them and you can't let your friends associate with them either.
Anyone who tolerates or looks the other way at fag-baiting also have to be confronted. Has any reporter ever asked Dick Cheney, to his face, what he thinks of the overt and blatent fag-baiting that goes on in his party?
Democrats and liberals have to make fag-hating as unacceptable in public life as racism and sexism. When a politician who fag-baits gets in as much trouble as Trent Lott did over this comments about Strom Thurmond, then you can start making progress.
The death of rural America will only drive them further into Bush's bizarro-world.
Then again, we could cut off the welfare to the Red States and accelerate the process.
The vision of an endless supply of God-fearing babies streaming into the bankrupted system, coupled with an endless need for soldiers to keep America in control of the world, gives me the ultimate creeps.
WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!!
All this bickering has put an administration into irreversible and unchecked power to change laws no longer necessary to them - without any input from YOU. If you still think they have your best interests at heart, I believe you are asleep at your keyboard. The political issues were framed specifically to divide us.
I don't care if you are a fag, a redneck, a commie, a pacifist, a hawk- we now have the same problem in front of us: hate is hate, and the climate just got a whole lot more fertile for the hating, and the punishing of those who are declared WRONG..you know, the slippery slope...
America, you made your choice loud and clear. ..you chose disinformation, revenge and punishment as a ruling system. Today, I am apalled and disheartened by our collective stupidity.
Sorry--I think you and Franks and Nichols are too optimistic about Dems' chances for the rural vote. Abortion--the killing of innocent children, in red staters' eyes--and homosexuality will easily trump economic self-interest.
Besides, any blue stater like Kerry who tries to talk about rural policy will be mocked within an inch of his life. "Oh my God, like, this rich wine-sipping French-speaking Massachusetts liberal is trying to say he'll be good for the real Americans in the heartland! Hahahaha! How, like, ridiculous!" I can just hear Maureen Dowd about it now.
Quite frankly, I think that what needs to be done with the rural states and anyone else who voted for Bush is to grind them into the ground.
Politically, metaphorically, not literally. But screw this idea of finding common ground with them. They are the enemy of what is decent and good in America, and they need to be neutralized as a political force in this country.
--Kynn
"Quite frankly, I think that what needs to be done with the rural states and anyone else who voted for Bush is to grind them into the ground.
Politically, metaphorically, not literally. But screw this idea of finding common ground with them. They are the enemy of what is decent and good in America, and they need to be neutralized as a political force in this country."
No.
Thanks, Dave - I live in a blue village in a red county in the red state of Ohio. I'd have to agree with the tenor of your post (by the way, thanks for the pieces on fascism! so I'm not crazy!) although instead of simply calling it "rural", I'd think about suburban as well. And it may be only cultural, not based in reality, these rural memes. Very few people still farm on the farms - they're mostly corporate now. I will have to work with these folks for a while, and you can't just dismiss them. They can enact laws that will affect even big city folks. Moral values is not just homophobia - it's also prayer in schools, religion intervening in all sectors of life (no separation of church and state). A bunch of people say we progressives have ceded a lot of territory to the Right - spiritual values, caring and compassion, and now the rural values. SOMETHING is convincing these people to vote this party into total control, and we better figure it out soon, like it or no. They're in a minority worldwide, but they don't think so and they're triumphant right now.
Folks, this handwringing is quaint. Reasonable people all trying to talk rationally (and a special note to Gary -- yours is the first Republican post in the last 24 hours that doesn't make *me* want to spew. Thank you for your decency. I mean this sincerely despite what the rest of this is about to say). How very, oh, I dunno, 1992.
It's a shame, though, that none of those Republcans got elected here in 2004 .
I'm heartened by David's cautiously positive post (as opposed to my looking to see how to get out of the country and renounce my citizenship). Especialy since he's been scaring the crap out of me for the last year with the facism stuff.
This wasn't just "losing an election". Hell, I've been voting since Reagan which means I'm 2-4 lifetime and a hell of a lot worse in every other race since I''ve been a blue in a reddening south. I always expect to lose in the big game (geez, my baseball team is the freaking *Astros*. And my college football team is UGA [Univ. of Ga. motto: 'we'll only lose the important games].) So it's not about losing. Losing is the norm.
I disliked Reagen. Bush I was really annoying. Hell, I came to think of Clinton as an Eisenhower Republican eventually (and it wasn't so bad). When the chips were down, they'd step up and do the right thing (or at least a not undecent thing). George the First gets no points for invading Panama, but I still think there was a shred of honest decency in going into Somalia. And you really can't let folks go around invading other countries you don't care for, as Saddam unquestionably did.
But jeez, George, could you have taught your son the same lesson?
We invaded a country that presented no threat to us. We've killed uncounted thousands of their s to keep our cost to "just" more than a thousand dead.
And we elected the leader who did this President. Who have people on staff who openly lust for a single-party state to consolodate their power.
So when the chickens come home to roost -- and we all know they will -- who do you think they're going to scapegoat.
Me. You. And eventually Gary, because he tried to be decent to us and reach out. It'll just take them longer to get to you.
This was an election for the American soul. And my side lost. Since the other side plays for keeps, good policy and a tip o'the hat to midwestern moral values won't cut it. There's going to be hell to pay, and I have a feeling lib'ruls will be writing the checks.
I so don't want to hate them, but right now I'm tired of being meal ticket, scapegoat and human shield for a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites who think that homosexuality is just fine, thanks, when practiced by force on Iraqi children. Morality my ass.
I refuse to believe that the balance of power in this country can be held by RURAL voters. For gawds sake, they drive 10 miles to see another person!
no way. just no way. The balance of power is held by the endless burbs, fat and frightened by Fox and Talk radio, running to the church to make sense of their cognitive dissonance. Rove channelling Pavlov ringing his little bell to get them to salivate vtoes on demand.
Someone with some chrisma, an Obama, or whatever, can achieve a progressive mandate, no matter what the "moral values" crowd think. They have to energize the non-voters, the young, the minorities. And non-voters won't be energized until they get a shock: a draft, depression, a major conflict that is lost, a natural disaster handed us by a groaning planet, some obscene mis-use of government power.. whatever.. a shock.
Sorry, Screw finding ways to appeal to some guy on a 10 acre plot trying to make a living growing spuds. Someone sophisticated enough to deserve to be a president will be rejected by them no matter what policy platform they have.
If you have to eat a shit sandwich in order to win you're compromised right off the bat. Present the truth, present reality, explain it a dozen different ways and if the electorate doesn't get it then wait for a bigger shock. When you do eventually get power FIX THE FREAKING EDUCATION SYSTEM.
otherwise it is the american theocracy from now on.. just like the Taliban except with plasma TV sets.
Go over to Electrolite and read the Comments there on Patrick's post today (nielsenhayden.com/electrolite). I've been as depressed and enraged as the rest of you here but there are people just as upset who are saying what Joe Hill said: Don't mourn -- organize! Don't despair! This is a setback, a terrible setback, especially when you think about thugs and fascists like Scalia and Ashcrap feeling energized -- but it's only The End if you give up!
In the fog that results from a defeat we didn’t anticipate, it’s tempting to look for simple explanations that may point us toward future strategies. In my humble opinion, Dave’s suggestion is a non-starter. I speak as someone who grew up in a rural Southern town but who is decidedly urban these days. There is a great divide in the political views of urban people I know and the rural people I know that isn’t going to be bridged in the near future. The divergent views of my rural brother and of me are illustrative of the overall problem.
My brother hasn’t farmed a day in his life but he holds on to the same rural values which have prevailed in my old hometown for generations. He isn’t highly educated but he isn’t stupid either. It’s not a question of education or intelligence. He and I just see the world differently and we’re never going to agree politically. I don’t ask him to compromise his values and I’m not willing to compromise mine. This doesn’t suggest that we won’t have some issues we might agree on someday but there aren’t any right now.
If the rural South, Mid-West and West are able to dominate the political future of this country indefinitely, more power to them. If they’re able to set a rural-friendly national agenda for the foreseeable future, then let them. But I’m not going to join them. I doubt they will be able to carry the day in every national election from now on. They barely succeeded in 2000 and just squeaked by this year but they may not always have elections break their way. I believe demographics and time are not on their side. But who knows – the future could hold surprises for us all.
due respect, but isn't the split 'round here between the fundamentalists and the realists? between those who seek evidence and then form their beliefs and those who seek evidencce only to confirm their beliefs?
whether it's the taliban of the mideast, the fundamentalist christians of the midwest, the market fundamentalists lining up behind norquist or the amrica-firsters from the neocon training camps, aren't these people all abandoning reason and empiricism for an odd mishmash of deep belief and agressive ignorance?
i mean, i know some very smart people who are still convinced that supply-side economics is a valid model.
the first step to finding a solution, i think, is clearly and accurately defining the problem.
fred
I have been much impressed by your writings on fascism. There is one book you neglected to mention - unfortunately it is little known in the English-speaking world: Ernst Junger's political novel of 1939, 'On the Marble Cliffs'; it has the most extraordinary description of the seizure of power by atavistic and evil forces that I know; and it has great relevance to what is happening in America.
With all good wishes,
Tim Harris
Bugger.
I think you're right, but it's going to be a hell of a rift to try and overcome.
And the same problem is going to apply to all the leading UK parties, also (see the protests over the ban on hunting with hounds - framed rather effectively by the Countryside Alliance as a rural v. urban issue). If the Dems and Labour in the UK can compare notes, it might be to the benefit of both.
Certainly, there's really no longer any doubt about Bush's legitimacy this time around.
I'm sorry but I can't agree, at least not yet. I'm from Missouri. You've got to show me. Ok, I'm not really from Missouri, but I'm not going to suddenly start taking touchscreen voting on faith. If there proves to be no statistical anomaly with the touchscreen results compared with exit polling, non-touchscreen counties, previous elections, etc or if the code in those machines is examined and proven to be correct, then I'll admit that Bush won legitimately this time. I know I'll be accused of refusing to face reality, but I keep thinking about how the CEO of Diebold promised to 'deliver Ohio' for Bush, and I can't help wondering whether he made good on that promise. I'm willing to face reality. I just want to know what the reality really is.
Gary> ...but this is part one of my crusade to extend the olive branch to my brethren...
Why should I believe that any of you conservative Okies are interested in making a governing compromise with a basically atheist, libertarian in San Francisco, California? Folks like me have been telling you why repealing the New Deal is a bad idea, and you don't care because the words are coming from something disgusting and un-American, called the 'intelligensia'.
Honestly, Gary— it doesn't look like an olive branch to me. It looks like the point of a sword. Enjoy your mandate for cultural war while I get busy studying up on how the resistance inside the Nazi concentration camps was broken.
Those who studied the German elections leading up to the NSDAP seisure of power will remember that the NSDAP got many votes in rural Protestant areas.
This neocon victory is a significant step towards a theocratic, totalitarian oligarchy; and a green light towards an imperialist, unilateral foreign policy.
I don't think most Americans, Republicans or Democrats, rural or urban, wish to live in a theocratic, totalitarian state; nor do they wish to impose a bloody rule over a world that despises them.
Unfortunately the Democrats have done a very poor job of waking Americans up to these consequences of a neocon victory. Granted, it's not easy to educate people with such a docile, ratings-driven media, and with a thoroughly anti-intellectual culture. However, I sincerely believe that education, both through the media and the school systems is the only way out of a very dark and dismal future for America and the world.
being told by others that we can't say a prayer before a football game
And who is stopping you from praying? Just as long as you don't insist on forcing your praying on others -- you see, that's the problem. And it's a bigger problem that that, assuming your prayer is from a Christian perspective, because your main man, Jesus, is on my side about your public show prayer. If you won't listen to me and what I want, can't you at least listen to Jesus?
aaa:
The next step in that direction is to get our elected officials talking about it. When they speak out, repeatedly, on the same theme, again and again, it will get picked up by the press, and thereby introduce the topic to the American people. Towards that end, we need to have simple, clear, and understandable rhetoric which can be repeated by all. Any suggestions?
The reaction on this blog just goes to show that most Democrats aren't so much progressives as conceited and arrogant little bourgeois f***s. Proves again how much of a mistake it was for real (i.e. working class) progressives to put all their eggs in one basket during this election and supporting a party that has no use for them instead of building a *real* alternative.
Us left-anarchists will be organizing the rural folks while you wonder how come you're sinking into irrelevance in the face of a one-party state.
Intersting DU thread on this subject...
http://www.democraticunderground...d=2586313&page;=
Legitimacy and power are--as you have pointed out yourself--two different things. We'll never know how much vote count fraud took place this time, but we know very well how much RNC funding and trickery and obstruction went into denying and discouraging Democratic voters. We also have a good idea how many were still unlawfully deprived of their civil rights by Republican judges, secretaries of state, and election officials.
Another aspect of Bush's illegitimacy is the fact he used his power as an appointed President to kick back enormous amounts of graft, no-bid contracts, tax breaks, and subsidies to his 2000 campaign donors who in turn were then able to "donate" our money to his 2004 campaign.
In light of all this repeated felonious conduct, I think you are generous to a fault in granting him legitimacy. He controls the reins of power, granted, and he should be fought at every turn.
Class, listen up. David won that Koufax award for a reason - his batting average on the subject of fascism is running at levels impossible in baseball.
I volunteered for the Democrats on election day and the few days before it. I was at a "true blue" near-downtown polling place in a small sized blue city that is located in the middle of a red state. Yesterday at the polls, the excitement and turnout were breathtaking. A 3-story building next to the poll had Kerry signs in one of the windows and Dem. Senatorial signs in another. People were looking out the window, watching the voters go in. People across the street were sitting on a stoop and watching.
Today, I visited the same strongly liberal downtown area that has many independent and culturally/arts-oriented businesses. Although I have travelled to countries a few years after events like political violence and killings (Guatemala) and a couple years after the collapse of Communism (Russia), I have only seen such a sense of foreboding in books, movies and on 911. Even during Russia's first postcommunist election (Yeltsin), there was palpable tension and an abundance of discussions, but there wasn't the silence and lack of people on the streets and in shopsand restaurants that I saw today.
I wanted to stop the movie, but I couldn't.
David, I believe you'll be busy the next months.
Random wonderings (I'm trying hard not to have too many serious thoughts today):
Kynn, is there any discussion down there in California yet about secession?
You could do it. Think about it:
Everyone says that California, all by itself, is the fifth or sixth or seventh largest economy in the world. It's got Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Napa, tourism, a fair amount of heavy manufacturing, three important Pacific ports, and the richest farm sector in the nation. Bluest of the blue states, it contributes more in revenues to the rest of the country -- and gets less back -- than any other state. In other words, America needs California a whole more than California needs America.
I don't think America realizes this. They're so busy laughing at those La La Land libruls that they don't realize how much these clever folks are ponying up to pay their bills.The state is like beautiful, rich spouse that's routinely taken for granted and subjected to public humiliation -- even though she's the one bringing home most of the family's bacon. It's a wild-ass idea, but the time may have come for this lady to gather up what's left of her dignity, and file for divorce.
She's already showing an independent streak, by giving Bush the finger on medical marijuana, auto emissions, the energy fiasco, and (now) stem cell research. Small tests, first steps, getting a sense of what's possible. "States' rights"? Oh, yeah, Bring 'em on. She'll know just how to use them.
The most important part of this is that, as America becomes more reactionary, it's going to need a haven where it can offload its unwanted homosexuals and artists and intellectuals and anyone with two thoughts to rub together. A separate California could be that haven (and seems far preferable to some of the usual alternatives). Left to her own devices, she would marry up her gays, give marijuana to her dying and birth control to whoever wants it, convert to hybrid cars, and raise her food, air, and water quality standards to the highest in the world. She'd have greater control over her own borders, and nobody'd blame her if she got a little more protective and nurturing of her anemic tech and entertainment industries. Without that crushing federal tax load, she'd have money to invest in her schools and her one-of-a-kind university system -- and maybe enough left over for national health care and a few bullet trains besides.
The bumpkins off on the other side of the country could continue sit on their asses and laugh at the quiche-eaters and the suntanned hardbodies. Let 'em. At least she wouldn't be at the mercy of their condescening moral judgments any more; and it's likely that they'll respect her wealth more in its absence than they do in its presence (after all, they could hardly respect it less than they do now). Which means that, at least once in a while, she'd get the last laugh.
Arnie would be just the governor to do it, too. Because of his star power, the
....the White House already has to treat him with kid gloves, so he'd be very useful in the secession negotiations. And when it's done, he could get to be president -- California's first president -- after all.
It's extreme. But even without secession, I don't see that California is required to go wherever Bush and Cheney want to lead. Uniquely among the states, our shared home state has the clout to set at least some of the terms under which you get dragged along into this disaster. ("More war money? A few thousand draftees? Sorry, no. Go ask Texas.") I hope y'all start to do just that.
Another lesson I drew from Thomas Frank's work, though, was that the GOP succeeds through *fake* populism: manipulating the symbols and values of Red Staters to sell an agenda that's all about corporate power.
What we need to do is make our own simple but sustained appeal to those values: most of all, to show them how illegitimate the present regime of crony capitalism and corporate welfare is IN TERMS OF THEIR OWN VALUES. They need to be shown how far the actual practice of the corporatists at Bushco differs from their Main Street rhetoric and their appeals to "free enterprise" and "rugged individualism."
Red State America was just as socially conservative a hundred years ago, and had the same resentment of elites that Frank describes. But they weren't bamboozled by a corporate agitprop machine back then that coopted them with phony populism and deflected their resentment to manufactured "elites" like "trial lawyers."
We need to appeal to the large elements of residual populism and use it against the corporatist Right. The GOP, in manipulating Middle America's populist values, is like the sorcerer's apprentice playing with powers potentially beyond his control. Those populist values have a life of their own, and can be turned against those who try to use them.
"The reaction on this blog just goes to show that most Democrats aren't so much progressives as conceited and arrogant little bourgeois f***s. Proves again how much of a mistake it was for real (i.e. working class) progressives to put all their eggs in one basket during this election and supporting a party that has no use for them instead of building a *real* alternative.
Us left-anarchists will be organizing the rural folks while you wonder how come you're sinking into irrelevance in the face of a one-party state."
--BlackBloc
Ok, good luck. Have fun working with the Patriots. Send them my best! And stop back in a few years to let us all know how the Revolution goes.
Black Bloc> Us left-anarchists will be organizing the rural folks while you wonder how come you're sinking into irrelevance in the face of a one-party state.
Yeah. You do that. Go get up in Mr. Cyclops' grill, poke him in the eye, and call him "One Eye"— I will watch from a safe distance.
Okie: Ignorance is not an excuse. However much you say "but bush appealed to their values" it doesn't matter. Whether you knew what you were doing or not, you still pulled the trigger. As a non-american, can i just say thanks a whole fucking bunch, mate. When they take your farm away because you "owe" them, think of me.
A couple people mentioned the "values"-driven question, "If you consider abortion murder, how can any other issue matter? And how can you compromise?"
Here's a possible compromise on the abortion issue, tell me how it will fly in the red states:
The abortion rate went up under Bush. The countries where the abortion rate is lowest (the Netherlands, Scandanavia) are not those where it is illegal. Do you want to make abortion illegal, or do you want to prevent most of those 'murders'? Would you rather have 1/5 the number of abortions we have now, or the same number but all illegal? As a religious person you accept that human nature is perverse: are you willing to *deal* with it?
The formula for radically cutting the abortion rate is clear: a solid economic safety net, and for women of all ages to have easy access to contraception and be expected to use it.
As an old fart and a Vietnam Veteran I always thought that the revolution would come to the USA through an economic class struggle. Tonight the NewsHour had a very interesting conversation on conservative religion and how it has taken on the characteristics of a state. All unnoticed by our so call media. Instead the revolution came and conquered rural and middle America but it was by right wing religious extremists not communists. Yes, Corporatist have tied their fate with these fundamentalists but as the Culture Wars play out, they may find as the American Taliban take over what little is left of the government, the Corporations got screwed as much as liberals and atheists by the New Order.
We've pretty much aired this, but it bears repeating since it's the focus of Orcinus: a majority of Americans voted for hate, enthusiastically supporting a racist, homophobic agenda. As an American Indian leader I know put it, "their dream is our nightmare."
Fire Rummy, Fire Rummy, Fire Rummy, Fire Rummy...
Mrs. Robinson: I don't think that's going to work. California is not a homogenous state -- there are right-left divisions which are as large as those in the country as a whole. Kerry won the state not because he is supported everywhere, but because he was overwhelmingly supported in a few regions. To make matters worse, base closings have left nearly all the significant military facilities in the state in red areas.
As much as I'd love to see California secession as a viable option... We've got our own little urban/sub(ex)urban issues here as well. Go too far in from the coast, and it's solid red.
I live in George Miller's congressional district. George is as liberal as you can get without being Barbara Lee (who's one district south). 20 miles east of here - adjacent to Lee's district, in fact - is Richard Pombo's district.
The conservative Central Valley and Inland Empire are California's two fastest-growing areas. Much of that growth over the next two decades will be Latino, so it's not a done deal that CA will be a GOP state in 2020. But it's not at all unlikely.
I always read Walter Benjamin after an election.
"*Fiat ars--pereat mundus*," says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation of "*I'art pour l'art*." Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.
So how does our Democratic Part v3.1 respond to the aestheticizing of the political? I think the blog phenomenon is a trace of this...My hope is that technology now quickly brings the visual into it as well...
swampdawg: Like Scott Bateman's cartoons, or something less directly tied to politics?
Chris Clarke--I live in Sacramento now, but grew up in Merced. The Modesto-Merced region has had Dems represent it for years, and I haven't seen it change yet. Doug Ose represented areas around Sacramento and he was a moderate Republican. Also, I heard that Richard Pombo almost got beat. I'd have liked to see him shake in his boots.
Gary,
I for one appreciate your comments. I've spent a little bit of time in Oklahoma and know a strangely large number of people from there.
I want to ask you why you perceive that people are treating you as irrelevant idiots. Are you sure that it isn't instead somebody saying "those bad people on the Coasts think you're an irrelevant idiot" rather than something you've actually experienced yourself? Somebody who might have wanted to manipulate you into disliking the people on the Coasts?
I suppose sure, there are stupid jokes told by people everywhere about people everywhere else. New Yorkers like to joke Jerseyites are a bunch of Soprano-wannabee spaghetti-eating bunch of plumbers. Ask an Oregonian about Californians. Ask a Texan about Oklahoma!
A lot of us "on the coasts" also resent being described as unAmerican, terrorist-supporting, anti-religion people - a description that contains some really foul and undemocratic political sentiments. To ask us not to be offended when confronted with that is a bit excessive.
Yet, you're taking ethnic stereotypes (Oklahomans are hicks or something) made by idiot comedians and have no intentional political content and equating those to statements by major politicians essentially arguing that the entire state of Massachusetts is unAmerican.
"Can we just ask what's wrong with privatizing social security to a program that's identical to the federal employee retirement system? They get to opt out of social security, and they do very well for themselves. Why can't the rest of us?"
Well, certainly we can have a discussion about that later . However, I seriously doubt that was a deciding factor in many people's votes in your state or in mine. I don't think this is the place or time. It may well be your pet hobby-horse and that's fine, but it's also off-topic.
I read this post with real mixed feelings. First let me apologize, i have some vision proplems, so it is difficult for me to read things on the computer screen, so I print of most everything, but I couldn't get the comments to print, so I hope I'm not repeating what others have said.
A little background--grew up in a small town, attended college in a small town and wotked for thart university in rural development programs. Worked in medium sized cities that were the market centers for rural areas, worked in urban areas, and finished my career as a City Administrator in a small Kansas town, so I feel qualified to wadew into this discussion.
First, in terms of the red state phenomenon, there is another color, behind the red, and that is white. My son thinks we are in a religiopus war. A good friend thinks we are still fighting the Civil War. Looking at the map, you can make the case for either.
Although my small town experience is in Illinois, West Virginin, and Florida, I do not believe the mainstream Protestant churches are the source of the evangelical movement. That largely comes from a few denominations that do exist in small towns (but usually considered fringe,) but mostly from large non-denominational
suburban churches.
The economic issues in rural America, are the driving force.They are hurting, and neither party has an answer. You can say that the Dems ignore rural problems, but the "Freedom to Farm," bill was created and passed by Pat Roberts of Kansas.
Rural America (as in the midwest and Great Plains) needs to be understood. Unlike New England, much of the economy is related to agriculture. Unlike New England few people live on the farm. Since the development of spermarkets that sold milk and eggs and vegatables, farmers moved into small towns, no more impassible County roads. There are far fewer farm residents in the midwest, than there are in New England.
The population of those farming communities has been declining since the 1930's. It is their survival that allows any family farms to exist at all.
Having spent ten years, trying to figure out how to save just one of those small towns, I have to admit that I have no serious suggestion. The info-bubble provided a blip, which soon disappeared to India and Southeast Asia.
I am a lifelong Democrat and most I worked with were lifelong Rebuplicans, we could find no answers.
So, I don't think that he national rural democratic strategy will be found. There is no Rebublican one either.
The posittive/negative note is that the number of red state votes continues to decline, but 10 year adjustments, paticularyl those blocked by politics like in Texas, are slow to reflect reality.
Before I forget to mention it, much of the support for subsidies for farmers has been supported, if not promoted, by cheap food urban legislators, so I don't blame rural legislators excvlusively, or even primarily.
But, bottom line to this post is that an Urba
1950's abstact art was popularised by the cia. they put up the money to buy it, because it made soviet social realism, look bad. so as a result a good many of us experience war and death as beauty. that walter benjamin gets me every time.
Some of the most effective political work I ever did was on local agriculture in Massachusetts back in the 1970s. I started with people doing community gardens in Boston and Cambridge, worked with the food coops and helped procure funding for a growers' coop in Western MA that still exists, and was part of the group that founded the Farmer's Market Assoc which took us from 12 farmers markets in the state to about 110 today. There was a real urban-rural coalition sparked by a state representative from the very urban South End and Roxbury, Mel King, a black street organizer and professor of urban planning at MIT.
After years away, I came back to what was left of the movement and tried to get them to look at the alternative economic system we had build over the last quarter century, make it manifest so that we could expand it, and those in control of the agenda actively ignored me and, more importantly, that idea.
The one thing the hippies did that has lasted and expanded is the change we wrought in how the USA deals with food. The way supermarkets display produce and the foods they carry are a result of food coops and the organic and local agriculture movements. Alice Waters and the foodies, the Chefs Collaborative, the Slow Food Movement are embellishments on the back to the landers and communes of the 60s and 70s, People's Park and the community gardens squatters in NYC, Boston, and all over the country reclaimed from trashed vacant lots all across the country.
50% of the country gardens on some level and the percentage rises in hard times. Everybody eats and the economy rests on grain not gold. We are coming into the seven lean years and that lessons learned all those years ago are ready to be capitalized on.
I spent my first 18 years in the most remote, redneck backwater of California. Grandpa was a Central Valley farmer; my uncle was a flight test engineer out at Edwards. I went to college at USC; helped run Democratic political campaigns in the far inland areas from Markleeville down to Barstow; and have done consulting for the USFS in Mammoth. That puts me on a first-name basis with most of the flavors of California conservative. There's not much about them I don't know.
But even the most fiscally conservative Californians tend to be fairly live-and-let-live on social issues. There is a Bible Belt (it runs right along the Tehachapis, from Atascadero inland through Bakersfield and Lancaster, and then off to Barstow) but it's very thin. Abortion and homosexuality just aren't the hot buttons they seem to be elsewhere, probably because most people have had at least some personal acquaintance with both. Because of this, the culture war just isn't as hot as it is elsewhere in the country.
Mostly, we're pretty socially and fiscally pragmatic folks. I think the prospect of never having to ever send another cent to Washington would probably sway a critical mass of voters (starting with the ultra-conservative Jarvis people and the Silicon Valley libertarians) all on its own. The possibility of being out from under a theocratic federal government would galvanize NorCal, and have its appeal to LA's entertainment folks as well. Dealing with the state (which they'd see as more malleable) instead of the feds would be very attractive to the Central Valley farmers. I don't think it would be too hard to frame this as a proposition that would have something for almost everyone.
Like I said, it's an extreme, blue-sky scenario. But it's the kind of brainstorming we're going to have to start doing in order to preserve some relatively safe cultural oases in the days to come. Full secession may not be the answer, but California (and maybe New York) do have enough weight to add a bit of resistance and slow down the "reforms" to come. State-level civil disobedience? There may be some issues on which that could work.
We have to figure out where we're strong, and do what we can to make it stronger.
"I blame the decline in education as much as any urban-rural split. It is easier to stay informed when you have access to information and the educational background to know when something just doesn't make sense. Unfortunately, many of the red states have poor educational systems and limited sources iof information and that works to their disadvantage."
Ahem, that depends on what you consider "education." Is it going to high school, college, etc.? Or being indoctrinated into a certain "open-minded" set of beliefs? According to the 2000 Census:"Alaska, Minnesota, Wyoming, Utah, New Hampshire, Montana, Washington, and Colorado were among the states with the highest levels of people with high school or more education."
And look how many of them voted for Bush. Lack of education cannot be assumed to be the reason people in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain area didn't choose Kerry.
Jerry Fear has a very good handle on the problems of this area. The economies in this area are dying and they feel much of the blame is due to city dwellers who insist on cheap food, but don't want gov't subsidies to make up the difference. In 1990 a farm organization estimated that if farm and food prices increased at the same rate the rest of prices did, then eggs would be a dollar each; bread nearly eight dollars a loaf. So farmers in this area don't trust city people who won't let farm prices increase as the prices of industrial and urban products and services do. Striking isn't possible, the food, lumber, coal, etc. will simply be imported and wipe out their livelihoods entirely.
If you want them to listen to your ideas, then being willing to pay for what they provide and acknowledging that they are not all uneducated fools, and that not all their beliefs are foolish, will go far.
Ahem, that depends on what you consider "education." Is it going to high school, college, etc.? Or being indoctrinated into a certain "open-minded" set of beliefs? According to the 2000 Census:"Alaska, Minnesota, Wyoming, Utah, New Hampshire, Montana, Washington, and Colorado were among the states with the highest levels of people with high school or more education."
And look how many of them voted for Bush. Lack of education cannot be assumed to be the reason people in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain area didn't choose Kerry.
Education is not equivalent to schooling. I know an unfortunate number of people with university degrees who are still appallingly uninformed when it comes to issues outside their area of specialization.
What the school systems in much of the US have produced over the last generation are large numbers of people who do not have basic intellectual skills - critical thinking, questioning assumptions, basic research, an understanding of rhetorical devices. These skills are relegated to post-secondary education and increasingly de-emphasized as unnecessary, irrelevant, and a waste of time.
People who have been taught that there is one and only one correct answer, to be given by an authority figure and parroted back on a test, are not properly prepared to function as informed citizens in a democracy. One who cannot conceive of the possibility that there may be more than one right answer does not go looking for those other answers and is most likely to summarily dismiss them upon encountering them, because they do not match what he/she already "knows."
This, BTW, applies to rural, urban, and suburban folks alike.
"People who have been taught that there is one and only one correct answer, to be given by an authority figure and parroted back on a test, are not properly prepared to function as informed citizens in a democracy. One who cannot conceive of the possibility that there may be more than one right answer does not go looking for those other answers and is most likely to summarily dismiss them upon encountering them, because they do not match what he/she already "knows." "
Absolutely.
I'm very impressed by the material on this blog, and by the general commentary. Part of what strikes me is the appearance of a huge bell curve of opinion that reaches across the country, across both the red and blue states, and which would be fallow ground for a third party... fiscally conservative but socially progressive. I refuse to believe that the fringe philosophies contain a majority of our population. You folks voted for Kerry because he was the closest option to your ideals; others voted for Bush because he was the closest to theirs. Imagine an option in 8 years of Barack Obama running for President, the head of the Progressive Party, on a platform combining the best of Clinton and Reagan... or have I just been taking too much Nyquil?
And btw, my apologies should I stray off-topic. I'm new to this, and expect severe and immediate correction should I violate protocol.
You should know that rural communities in northwest california have gone overwhelmingly democratic in the last few years. The lack of christian fundamentalism is the only major difference between those areas and others inland that support Bush. Therefore I don't think economic issues alone would win it for the Democrats. Some of these conservative rural areas must be simply written off. suburban voters are what propelled bush to office, and more inroads can be made there.
A few things (that probably won't be read, now that the conversation seems to have petered out, but what the hey...):
- Thena's right about pre-college education. This is gonna be a "long hard slog", but it's absolutely imperative for all of us that care about rational thinking to get involved with the schools in our communities. Eventually, we can get onto school boards and improve the curriculum.
- Short term, I think we need to fight back against the anti-gay stuff and call it for what it is: hatred. We need to call a spade a spade, and tell everyone that George W. Bush fag-bashed his way to the White House. We need to expose the proponents of this agenda as the promoters of hatred that they are. For every picture of a serene Ralph Reed or Gary Bauer, show them a picture of Reverend Phelps. We need to make people ashamed that they're associated with this stuff. Remember, 51% of the voters didn't vote for Bush based on this, 17.6% did. That's 33.4% of the people that voted for Bush that we can separate. (possibly more, since it's the fag-bashing that would be targeted, not anti-abortion; I hold out hope that some of those people truly believe in a culture of life, and that there can at least be dialogue with them)
Incidentally, maybe Clinton was right to back off of gays in the military and "Don't ask, Don't tell" at that time, but I think we can turn it around now by saying that fag-bashers are weakening our ability to translate tapes.
- In the same vein, we need to distinguish between those who truly believe in a faith-based presidency, and will vote for GWB or his standard-bearer no matter what, and those who have deep beliefs, but are still able to distinguish fact from fiction. I agree with the commenter above: things would need to get much worse before the fag-bashing vote worries about it's wallet. A return to economic populism just wouldn't be effective, and would alienate the Reality Republicans that we need to recruit to regain a majority.
- Like it or not, we need people at the national level that can talk the religious talk. Some of the people that we can reach will only listen to someone who is "like them". However, "like them" doesn't necessarily extend to fag-bashing and anti-abortion. Many of us talking here are more towards the Reality Base, rather than the Reality Politicians, but we'll need both to save this country.
- Also like it or not, fear is a great motivator. For the first time, I think most of us feel fear at what will happen for the next four years and after. This needs to spur us on in the decades to come, and it will be decades. This fight will go on for most of our lives, but it must be done.
I live in a rural county in Michigan's so-called thumb and commute to work once a week to a hospital in suburban Detroit.My county is so red(ironic that "red" is now synonomous with the party of Nixon and Reagon) that there were no Democratic contenders for county offices.I worked as an election inspector Tuesday and was quite surprised when we ran the tape off the optic scan machine Kerry had carried our precinct by over 5% in what I'm told is the biggest turnout in precinct history.At the same time,the gay marriage amendment proposal won by an even larger margin.That tells me that all but the most extremist are able to separate politics and religion when they vote and while this amendment may have brought out those extremists,most who voted for it were simply afraid of homosexuality.In the two worlds I strattle I see race being the most powerful force in motivating middle/working class white people to vote against their economic self interest ,with guns and abortion coming in a distant second.Even more important is the effect of the right-wing scream machine, whose talking points I hear echoed by highly educated people who,if they applied the same critical thinking skills to their professions,would be working at a 7-11.Republican ascendence can be explained by their exploitation of the hate,fear,and greed intrinsic in all of us.
Jerry Fear,
I have a few suggestions for encouraging family farms and saving rural towns:
1) stop enforcing patents on GM crops. Many free market people, myself included, consider "intellectual property" to be an illegitimate state grant of monopoly privileges to big business. Without the ability to charge monopoly prices, most of the stuff Monsanto comes up with wouldn't even pay for itself in a free market.
2) do away with FDA labelling restrictions that prohibit identifying GM food, or specifying that organic food is grown without sewage sludge, etc. There would be a much greater market for genuinely organic food if people could see on labels what kind of crap they're buying. Agribusiness is rabidly in favor of legal restrictions against such free flow of information, so we know how sincere the GOP's commitment to "free enterprise" is. Monsanto is one of the most adamant supporters of "food libel laws" and restrictions on labelling.
3) Eliminate all other government subsidies to agribusiness. Environmental subsidies to hold land out of production go almost entirely to the big corporate farms, who have enough land they can afford to let it be idle.
Most crop subsidies are targeted to crops that are grown mainly by big agribusiness, and not family farmers.
And large-scale government irrigation projects, especially the dams, provide subsidized water far, far below cost to big agribusiness. If it weren't for such subsidies to plantation farms in areas with inadequate rainfall, and the full cost of providing the water were reflected in the cost of produce, it simply wouldn't pay to ship produce across the country. You'd see a lot more smaller-scale agriculture in high rain areas like Massachusetts growing food for local and regional consumption.
4) Ditto for transportation subsidies. They are really a subsidy for distribution costs, a way of underwriting the inefficiency costs of large-scale production, and encouraging the concentration of capital and centralization of production. This is true of spades for agribusiness. It's only profitable to truck food from plantation farms across the country, instead of growing it where we live, because the shipping costs are reflected in our tax bills instead of in the cost of food.
All these things are examples of how big business gets rich sucking on the taxpayer tit; and they are anathema to the core values of rural state people, if their attention could be drawn to how far Republican practice differs from Republican preaching.
Oy, sorry about the reposts.
Dave -
Guilty as charged in terms of looking at the issue as urban/rural. At this point, however, I despair of ever finding common ground with people who can use the term "Biblical World View" with approbation and not a trace of irony.
Over the past 60 years, the progessive movement - largely urban, ethnic, intellectual and based through the federal government - has partnered with rural progressives to effect a huge transfer of wealth from the vibrant commercial sectors of the economy to heartland industries, via farm subsidies, infrastructure investments (e.g., rural electrification, roads and waterways, etc), grazing and mining rights, etc.
And what has this bought us? A giant, overwhelming rejection of our entire philosophy of government and value set. I feel bad for progressives stuck in these communities, but at this point, we need to marshall our forces where we can to protect what we hold true in our own communities. If Red State progressives want to build coalitions, it seems like the ball is in their court at this point.
Well, I have only gotten through the list to Bonzo and Fritz and they have it about right. I am very familiar with prairie politics and their memes, a $13 dollar bill word for a simple concept. Land hell, that is for selling to the highest bidder, even if it is a hunter from the city. Let agribusiness take over then there will be no people to vote for the likes of Bush. The sooner the better. Fools don't think or act reasonably, they act in desperation, and cruel truth is what they have voted for--so give it to them.
According to Robert L. Borosage, "Post-Concession Reflections" by Campaign for America's Future, one of us I presume,
"http://www.ourfuture.org/onmessage/borosage/
tp_kerryconcession.cfm"
most of us don't know what we are talking about. Enthusiasm is worth something I guess, and blowing of steam is necessary, but maybe we need to understand the problem before we try to define it.
"but maybe we need to understand the problem before we try to define it"
I think we understand it completely. It's the principle of the thing. There is no way that I can hate an entire group of people based on someone else's (anyone else's) decision that I should. I can't do it. It's not part of my makeup. And, I won't do it. And "they" are insisting that I must, just as strongly (stronger, actually) as I resist the "wrongness" of such a concept. The civil war is dividing us once again - are you for slavery or against it - only this time the "slaves" are "towel heads" and "fags." I can't - I won't!! This line will divide us right down the dinner table, just like the Border States in the last American Civil War.
What's needed in rural areas is outreach - what if nearby big-city papers 'adopted' rural towns and covered them maybe once a week? A community-minded newspaper can do much to improve the civic tone of the community it covers.
The Sac Bee does this for outlying areas, but maybe they need to spread further. Otherwise pretty much all the rural-area news - and worse, opinion - available comes from the local paper, which can be a community disaster.
Anna: I think you're seeing a symptom of a larger problem in journalism: a lack of coverage for local issues of substance. Local coverage in many newspapers (and on television stations) seems to dominated by crime. The result is that people believe that the cities are filled largely with criminals.
We need to help create coverage of local politics, from school board on up.
For starters, if our voting had been as transparent and honest as Venezuela's, Kerry would have won. If you want one issue to work on, that is it, because nobody like Kerry is going to be elected until the voting is honest.
As a wild-eyed lefty who's lived in a red state-styled county (David will recognize Mason County) for seven years, I'm seeing stuff nobody is talking about.
The county would be economically dead if it weren't for military retirees. The other industries out here are military bases, prisons, and logging the state forests.
The so-called rural lifestyle is a lot of bull-pucky. It looks real to David because a lot of high-value crops are grown in his neighborhood. In most of Ruraltania the farming is either 'play farming' by retired people, or farming by absentee corporations.
There are two reasons I'd rather not see 'urban liberals' go back to their 'rural roots'. The first is, they don't have 'rural roots' and, at the very least, will look absurd trying to find rural roots in Ruraltania. Trust me, if you found them, they would be bitter and poisonous.
The second is that, as a member of a worker's collective milling stone ground flour in the 70s, I did a little reading and found that the whole mythology that led leftists to support good food was just that, mythology. Good food has become more popular because it tastes better and we're smarter. If you want to eat good food, you'll find more of it in the cities, because people out here put on way too much salt and don't know much about cooking.
In short, if this country will get up to speed on administering agricultural subsidies, cut our war budget to match those of European nations, honor human rights including the rights to healthcare, food and lodging, and end the War on Drugs- THAT will solve our 'agrarian problem'.
It pretty much gets back to what FDR and Churchill said about the Four Freedoms and the United Nations.
Finally, will all the white people stop whining about how bad this is? So you're going to live like blacks, native americans, and indigenous pot smokers have lived- let it sharpen your appetite for change.
catowner --
Actually, I grew up in southern Idaho and still have family there. My wife's family is in Montana. I worked my way through college doing farm work, and worked as a reporter and editor in those two states for about 15 years. Wife and I, of course, visit often and stay in touch with what's happening on the ground there.
So mebbe my view of what constitutes the rural lifestyle is different than yours.
In any event, I'm not urging urban liberals to "go back to their rural roots" by moving there or some damned thing. I'm talking about the progressive movement in general and its rural roots. Progressivism always had a streak of plain common sense talk that formed the core of its appeal to rural people. More to the point, it was concerned with their issues. I think if progressives are sincere about preserving the ideal of Jeffersonian democracy, it's incumbent on them to take family-farm issues seriously. There is a whole complex of reasons why this is so, and I don't have time to get into them here. But suffice to note this: Jefferson saw this as a nation, first and foremost, of citizen farmers. He understood that the communities formed by these farmers would, for ill or better, form the nation's cultural bedrock. And when we neglect it, it is likely to turn on us.
Specifically, I think Democrats need to start working harder at cultivating young progressive activists and politicians in rural areas and rebuilding their networks there. I think there are whole boatloads of issues that would make a real impact on improving life in rural America that progressives could get behind -- see Kevin Carson's post above on this topic for a really good start.
We need to start building bridges of our own. And unlike what's currently being offered by Republicans, these can't be phony.
Specifically, I think Democrats need to start working harder at cultivating young progressive activists and politicians in rural areas and rebuilding their networks there
That might work. It's disappointing to read suggestions that what the Democrats *really* need is better marketing -- more talk about values, played out by friendly faces on TV screens. It's going to be a lot harder than that. How about a double movement, with Democrats going more local while simultaneously rhetorically branding the national Republican party as extremists and outsiders? It kills me to have the GOP become the party of "common sense," when their side is filled with politicians stuffed with radical ideas. Rural liberals will have to arise from rural areas themselves, because I don't think we can create them through transplant or conversion.
Something that ties David's last comment together with what I view as a more important subject.
I live in the middle-of-nowhere Montana. At a recent rural candidates forum, a rabid (but reasonably intelligent) government hater asked a local hard right politician what he could do to help bring down the cost of health insurance for her and her family - insurance that she could no longer afford. The crux of the matter, of course, was that she didn't want him to suggest a government fix, she wanted him to come up with a "private sector" solution that she would find morally tolerable.
What does this show us? A couple things. First off, we've allowed the other side to set the rules of the game. For example, the term "Government" has become synonymous with “Bad,” as has "Liberal." My point? If we cede conservatives control over language and imagery, then they'll always have the advantage. We need to regain control of the political agenda, and we need to do so by framing the conversation in ways that appeal to a wide variety of Americans.
For example, I believe it was a huge mistake on John Kerry’s part to talk about W.’s distortions, or the way that the administration “misled” the American people about Iraq. He sounded, quite frankly, like a politician - wanting to chastise the President but unwilling to do so by “going negative.”
Frankly, that’s bullshit. The majority of American voters saw Kerry’s almost-attack as just one more case of his wishy-washy personality. What Kerry should have done - and what would have won him the election - is if he’d stood up during the first debate and said, “George Bush is a liar and a hypocrite, he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, hell, he’s not even a Christian. True Christians don’t .....” And then proceeded with a litany of Bush’s abuses of power and privilege. Until the Democrats can find someone who’ll project honesty, strength and moral conviction - including the ability to tell the truth when it might not seem popular - they’re going to be relegated to the political wilderness.
Which wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the future of the world wasn’t in the balance.
From an earlier coment:
"You yourself cited the top issue for most Bush voters: "moral values." I assure you that no matter how sweeping and attractive a Democratic economic plan for rural America may be, it comes back to abortion; it comes back to gay marriage. It comes back to fundamentalist evangelicals who see themselves as the bulwark against GODLESS LIBERALISM, even as those supposedly on their side are selling them out." emphasis mine.
Consider these imortal words:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are..." emphasis mine
Now... you can't even get half way through the second sentence of the first American founding document with encountering this "creator" guy (who ever he is...).
What if "godless liberalism" got down off its intellectual high horse, and "got God"?
Food for thought...
I'll be a rare Republican to post here; yes that means I'll likely get flamed, but so be it. For the most part, a healthly look inward after losing an election is good. But in many of these posts, you obscure the important points. Much of the blame for losing the election is pointed at Rural vs Uban voters' preferences. This is part of the picture, but not nearly all of it. Here are a couple of other important points to consider:
1) Bush pulled strong support from Rural and Suburban voters. In fact, demographically, his suporters are -- on average -- just as wealthy and educated (and often more so) than those who voted against him. In many posts above, I sense a feeling that dumb, old farmers were duped by W. Just not true.
2) Those who voted for Bush didn't necessarily vote against their economic interests. Despite inheriting a recession and the 9/11 attacks (not scapegoating Bush, just calling out the terrorists attacks as a true economic shock), the economy is pretty strong and has been for some time. The difference with this economy versus other recoveries is that there is more difference between the "haves" and the "have nots." If you lost your job or work in an industry that had a major downturn (mostly confined to industries like trave & tourism, retail apparel, manufacturing, and some areas of tech), your view of the economy is generally negative. If you didn't lose your job, your view of the economy is generally positive. With an overall unemployment rate that is still low by historical standards, most people have not been overly impacted by the recession. Thus, this issue wasn't nearly as important to much of the electorate as was presumed by Kerry.
3) Kerry never did connect with the majority of Americans. Despite what should have been an easy victory for Democrats (given the war in Iraq, net job losses, and a constant stream of negative news in the mainstream press for three months leading up to the election), Bush won by a fairly large margin in the popular vote. In fact, Kerry never really was a significant factor in the election. The overwhelming majority of voters either voted FOR Bush or AGAINST Bush. Relatively few actually voted specifically FOR Kerry. This is his fault. A better candidate could have fed on the anti-Bush sentiment, and used it to establish a stong base of people looking for change who would support him because he was worthy; not just because he wasn't the anti-christ that Bush was made out to be by some.
Will the next four years bring prosperity, bankruptcy, or something in between? I don't know. Traditionally, second terms tend not to be very successful. However, if Bush does move back toward the center (he has traditionally governed as a more centrist conservative, but moved far to the right in his first term), he has a chance to make a positive, lasting legacy. If not, the next four years will be even more contentious. Personally, I hope for the former as I feel he governed too far to
I came across this op-ed by Thomas Frank this summer that shows the strategy that was used to defeat Kerry...the warning signs were there and dem's did not respond.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/1...print&position;=
The last few days Slate has had a number of writers comment on the statement "Why Americans Hate Democrats". Does anyone beside me take offense to this wording? When have "Democrats" become the opposite of "Americans" ? I'm really angry now at Slate and the feeding frenzy of hatred on their site.
Dave has touched on a few issues that may not be familiar to some readers.
Jeffersonian democracy envisioned a nation self-sufficient in natural products, not really a part of the world trading nexus. With no need to protect world traders, and two oceans protecting us from invaders, there would be little need for a large Federal establishment.
This was, and probably still is, a good idea. Unfortunately, 'big government', in the form of farm subsidies, waterway construction, irrigation, and dominance of world trade to protect the interests of Cargill (now so large that we pretty much don't need to consider any other commodities brokers) have made this nation into a wholly owned subsidiary of International Grain Speculators Inc.
Domestically, huge subsidies for road construction, airports and irrigation have, in one way and another, pretty much wiped out local produce suppliers. This is all a huge story and it would help if more liberals got up to speed on the nuts and bolts.
In another comment Dave says he's not suggesting that liberals literally return to the land. Actually, that wouldn't be such a bad idea, if life in the rural areas wasn't ruled by criminal gangs.
For example, Paul Goodman suggested (c. 1965) that radicals move to ruraltania and establish schools and residences for the disabled. If you try to do that, however, you may discover what I found- the state payment system for care of the disabled is adminstered without regard to the rights of the disabled, with no accountability, and a major component of this system is Catholic Community Services.
Similar problems exist with other ways of making a living in ruraltania, and in addition you pay a ton of money to drive the long distances.
That said, one way to protect the environment is to buy some of it and protect it. Changing the rural economy will involve at least some people actually getting out here and changing it. And if there's one thing ruraltania has plenty of, it's young people doing poorly in school- lots of opportunity for teachers if you can live on no money.
Whatever you do, read some books. Read the Nearing's books about building stone houses, read Page Smith about American history, read Paul Goodman if you feel you're growing up absurd or possibly already have. Cheaper and better for you than going to the movies.
I live in the South, in a rural county, am a pro-choice New Dealer who believes the GOP is the party of the rich and powerfull and of corporate robber barons. I am a Republican, but I am miserable being so. I know I am voting against my own financial self-interest, but I will NEVER vote for a Democrat while they are the party of gun control.
Bill, thanks for saying that. I know you aren't alone. I live in a rural county. Guess what, all you haters of rural counties? There are a lot of Democrats here. We could use your support. Of course, rural Democrats support gun rights, because its at least 45 minutes for aid to come from the sheriff when you live at the end of a ranch road. What about gay rights and abortion and all that? Really, most people don't care about that stuff as much as you'd think. The candidate pushing the "moral issues" out here got trounced because it became obvious that he was the sort who would suffocate Grandma with a pillow when no one was looking. Work harder at re-framing what "pro-life" and "pro-family" means, and Democrats will win on "moral issues" everywhere.
Good golly, doesn't anyone ever watch a Steven Seagal movie? Does he use a gun? I live out in the woods, if I come home and find a gang looting my place (as I have on occasion) a cellphone in my truck won't work to call the sheriff. Think laterally, learn to use a crossbow or knife, spend the cost of a good gun on a video surveillance and warning system, or do what any good pot smoker does- ignore the damn law. They'll run even if you're not hitting them and they won't complain to the sheriff about your illegal gun.
Anyway, I logged back on this thread to point out that the Progressive movement was not just, or even primarily, a rural or agrarian movement.
The Progressives created a third, nonpartisan force that dealt head-on with the fact that American cities were ruled by two criminal gangs- the Republicans and the Democrats. Nationally the Progressives often get credit for anti-trust and pure food and drug laws, but maturing industries themselves needed reliable inputs (flour without sand) and protection from predatory combines, so the credit should be shared.
Locally, the Progressive movement often resulted in non-partisan city government, and then the Progressives disbanded their temporary alliance.
For those with an interest I recommend (as always) Page Smith for a good overview with a lot of pointers for further reading, for those without I suggest that the Progressives changed the flow of major socio-economic currents and are more important than the final agrarian movement that emerged under the leadership of LaFollette.
Hispanic voters are the biggest long-term story of this election.
Clinton got 73% of the Hispanic vote, and his Republican opponents about 25%.
In 2000, Bush got 35%.
In 2004, Bush got 44%, and the Democrats about 55%.
Bush carried majorities of Hispanic voters in Arizona and Florida (55% in the latter) and one of the two Hispanic senators elected was a Republican.
Conclusion: the Hispanic vote is now fully 'in play' nationally, with a strong trend towards the Republicans.
This means we can't wait for this fast-growing demographic to rescue us from the GOP. Note that New Mexico, the state with the highest Hispanic percentage of the population, went for Bush this time after going very, very narrowly for Gore in 2000.
The figures also align with other data on Hispanics, which show rapid assimilation -- a majority of Hispanics are already using English as the predominant home language, and a very large percentage of the American-born are marrying non-Hispanic whites.
Evangelical Protestantism is also making rapid progress among Hispanics; about a quarter have converted. (On a personal note, there's a Hispanic Baptist church down the road from where I live here in Santa Fe, NM.) Protestant Hispanics went for Bush by a 61% margin; Catholic Hispanics gave him only about 39%.
Democrats do realtively well with Hispanic voters, but only for the reasons we've always done well with poor immigrants -- and immigrants are, almost by definition, poor.
We don't have anything like the 'lock' on them that we do on blacks.
I realize this has already been noted, but, as a person who worked for the last few months on the Daschle campaign in South Dakota, I learned that trying to talk to people about how to save their farms or how to keep their small towns from shriveling away comes in a distant second to abortion and the Federal Marriage Amendment. The feel of discouragment I feel is so incredibly strong, precisely because I felt that we were the campaign that was talking about constructive ideas for the rural community. We were betting on people caring more about drought relief or ethanol. Instead they voted in droves for Thune, primarily I believe, because of the abortion issue. I saw the green "vote pro-life signs" dotting all the rural towns that I worked in, and I saw Tom's catholic supporters receive mysterious mailings, containing highlighted clippings suggesting that anyone who voted for Tom would need to make a public apology to be forgiven. And then there was the "Vote for Daschle, Vote for Sodomy" stickers that were mailed to churches all over the state, in an envelope that make it appear as though they originated with our campaign. Abortion and FMA were the only issues the Thune camp talked about--and apparently the only ones they needed to talk about.
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