the last word on Democrats and the south

[ulysses]

(yeah, I know - as if. ;-) )

Before you go to sleep every night, recite this to yourself five times:

We're hosed in the south because the GOP triangulates labor and race.
We're hosed in the south because the GOP triangulates labor and race.
We're hosed in the south because the GOP triangulates labor and race.
We're hosed in the south because the GOP triangulates labor and race.
We're hosed in the south because the GOP triangulates labor and race.

Wanna win in the south as a national-ticket Democrat? Forget giving ground on race, reproductive rights, etc. Make working-class southern whites see the truth that the GOP screws them economically. (Then, of course, make sure *you* don't screw them economically.)

Thoughts?

[Terwilliger]

1. make them see?

sheeit...they won't see what they don't want to see

Remember that "because the Democrats give to the minorities more than us" guy?

[ulysses]

2. we've only asked, at best.

Haven't even brought it up at worst. It's still the only way if we want to make the south competitive without losing what's left of our soul as a party (no pun intended).

[Terwilliger]

8. what's the way?

have you figured out how to pierce the racist shields around Sothern voters? how do you let them know that they're the problem?

[ulysses]

10. not pierce, go around.

Living in the south for 12+ years as a liberal white man, I've come to the conclusion that there are many varieties of white, southern bigots. Most of them aren't reachable via "frontal assault" on their bigotry itself, but many *are* via the demonstrated fact that they share the same economic fate as their minority counterparts. If I had a dime for every time I've seen a white man here rail against "blacks" (except that they don't usually say "blacks" here, assuming that I'm one of them) and in the next breath genuinely praise or shake the hand of a black coworker, I'd be substantially more wealthy than I am now. It's the "but he's/she's different" thing. I know it gets a lot more complex than that, but that's the start.

Hell, I thought gay folks were damned in my teenaged 'thumper phase, until I met a few and engaged my brain. The south is more open than we know, as long as we refuse to play Nixon's game, and it's not as populated by hardcore racists as it is by people who're unused to thinking.

[Terwilliger]

12. I hear ya

once again, though...seems like little interest in the subject

[ulysses]

15. yeah

Leave it up to me to start a thread on the south that rides a rocket to the archives...

[dreissig]

33. Rocket to the Archives

The South is a taboo topic here. Any criticism of the South is interpreted as flame bait. Make a remark about Southern politicians and Southerners hit the Alert button.

[retread]

19. I worked at a small family owned business in the deep south.

They hired a black man and within months they were inviting him to their homes and visiting his, their children played with his while the adults drank beer together. When I "politely" asked how they could reconcile previous statements with present actions I was told "He ain't like the rest of them." My question, which went unanswered, was "How do you know? Maybe he is!"

[Pithlet]

25. I've lived here for 6 years

And I've witnessed exactly what you're talking about.

[dolstein]

3. In other words, nominate John Edwards

If you want to get the votes of working class Southern whites, why not nominate a white, Southern candidate who comes from the working class? That would be John Edwards.

John Edwards -- son of a mill worker. Worked his way through college. Made his fortune by representing poor families against greedy corporations and insurance companies. He took on the best lawyers money could buy -- and he won by winning over juries comprised of -- yep, you guess it -- working class Southern whites.

Compare Edwards with Bush, who attended the best prep schools, got into Yale as a legacy, and repeatedly ran his oil business into the ground, safe in the knowledge that he would get bailed out by his father's wealthy campaign contributors.

If you want to expose Bush as a phony, all you have to do is nominate the genuine article. That would be John Edwards.

[ulysses]

5. Edwards is running on an economically liberal platform?

I hadn't heard - do tell, dolstein. Otherwise, I'm talking about campaign platforms and, more to the point, public policy regarding the working class.

And, btw, this isn't in GD04 for a reason.

[dolstein]

9. You bet

He's anti-NAFTA. He wants to make college avilable to anyone who's willing to work for it. He wants to make the income tax more progressive.

But you need to understand that no matter how much your campaign platform benefits the working class, it won't make a damn bit of difference without the right candidate. John Kerry can talk like a populist all he want, but he can't pull it off. Edwards can. It's the perfect pairing of message and messenger.

[ulysses]

13. mistaking me for a Kerry supporter?

Or just attacking the latest frontrunner that isn't your candidate?

I'd like to see where Edwards is - for that matter, where you are - are anti-NAFTA.

And again, this isn't a GD04 post.

[dolstein]

20. Nope, just speaking the truth

John Kerry is never going to connect with white Southern working class voters. It's not going to happen. Period. Now you can choose to ignore this fact. You can choose to attack me or suggest some ulterior motives. But that won't change the truth of what I'm saying.

[ulysses]

21. ok, you think Kerry won't win the south.

Care to comment on the first post?

[lastknowngood]

4. gay marriage were done

n/t

[ulysses]

6. ?

Not sure I follow you. Are you saying that the gay marriage issue sinks us in the south?

[Bush loves Jiang]

17. It could...

But ultimately, people want a good life for themselves.

If the Democrats stopped being wimps and showed Southerners how they could help them attain a better life, maybe wedge issues won't matter so much.

[MisterC2003]

30. Right on the money

The regular folks care a lot more about keeping their own families in good shape than they do about whether some gay couple can get married in Massachusetts. As soon as the Dems start showing some real commitment to that goal, the Pubbies are sunk.

[buddhamama]

7. my family has its roots in the south

on the surface i'd say you're nuts.
they'll never give up their *issues*
but if you dig a little deeper
when the Falwells ain't calling anymore
because the phone has been shut off, tv too
and you're just about out of a house with children to feed
the DEMs have a better message and a better economic system.

[ulysses]

14. there are those

who are unreachable, to be sure. Witness some of my inlaws.

Still, I think it's a workable idea.

[buddhamama]

22. it's a very workable idea

i would suggest to any Democrat that what they should be doing
is small local gatherings. when a lot of people gather, connections can get lost; the crowd and the message gets too big. more individualized, more personalized eye-to-eye contact, plain spoken with truth.
with the money the DNC has surely they can invest in meaningful community time, and not just for presidental candidates but, the entire party.


i went and saw Dennis speak yesterday at the local UU church.
a relatively small gathering for the relatively small area i live in.
he was out in the aisles, speaking directly to and making eye contact with the person asking the questions. that means a lot, to be able to look directly into the pols eyes while they're interacting with you. gives you a sense of whether or not they are listening, hearing and sincere.

[Mormegil42]

11. Sounds like

the south and the rest of the U.S. have a lot in common. Convince people to believe that they are being screwed economically and they will revolt against those who are doing the screwing. It does not matter what region of the country you're talking about. Now if those people don't feel like they are being screwed then a credibility issue comes up.

[Raymond]

16. .

If the economy stays or contiunes to improve then we're screwed. We wont win without the south and EDWARDS is NOT the answer IMO

[Speed8098]

35. No Jobs = No Recovery

I keep hearing "Jobless recovery". What is that??

What good is an economic recovery if people can't find decent paying jobs?

And if they can't find jobs now, how do you think it will be when the illegals in this country get their amnesty?

The stock market is NOT the economy. Even if the Dow hits 20,000, what good does it do the guy who used to make $60,000 per year, but now makes $0.00

Recovery my ass. It's all BS

[Bush loves Jiang]

18. That's nice...

But the Democrats need to start by not caving in so often.

[QC]

23. Democrats/Liberals need to rediscover class.

Generations of voters in this part of the country stuck with the Democrats because they believed that the Republicans were the rich man's party. People like my grandparents, who (barely) lived through the Depression, knew this instinctively. They didn't have to study Marx or Chomsky to know that the fatcats were not their friends, and they revered FDR and Truman, the former because he cared about people like them and the later because he was one of them.

But, a couple of things happened in the past few decades to make the Democratic Party far less relevant to people like my grandparents.

One is that we also started catering to the rich. This was a deadly mistake, because it led us to shy away from "class warfare" and take positions, like NAFTA, contrary to the interests of the working class.

Since both parties were pretty much the same on economics, that left a vacuum into which "social issues" leapt and assumed prime importance. Look at this from the perspective of the working class: if neither party cares much about you but one of them at least pretends to respect you, well, which one would you prefer? If both parties are shipping your jobs away but one of them supports your right to own guns (or other issue you care about), who will get your vote? This is why the GOP is able to get so much mileage out of irrelevancies like same-sex marriage, "family values," etc.

Another trend that has hurt us is the dominance of the country's Left by the middle class, which took hold in the 1960's. The unfortunate thing is that middle-class lefties tend to have middle-class attitudes, which manifest themselves in the scorn for working people that is so commonly expressed right here at DU and elsewhere.

I can tell you from experience that the disparaging remarks I used to get from the rich kids while I was growing up blue collar in an affluent town were substantially the same as the remarks about rednecks, trailer trash, and hillbillies that many of the Nice Liberals here like to sling around. Many liberals, when it comes to the working class, have roughly the same prejudices as a typical member of the Junior League. And this sort of thing simply adds to the common perception of liberals as elitists who hold the common people in contempt.

Rediscover the reality of class, and learn once again how to respect the folks who work at the Jiffy-Lube and live in trailers, and we can have their votes again.

[MisterC2003]

28. Well said!

It's not just in the south, either. The Democratic Party has lost its way. Led by millionaires and with a cadre of upper middle class types staffing it, the Dems have forgotten the importance of class to the regular folks in the South and elsewhere. If the Dems would just focus on their message of making life better for regular folks, there would be no stopping us. But the fat-cat Dem leaders can't see this, and so the fat-cat Pubbies get to continue their game of leading the regular folks to economic perdition by playing on thier prejudices, both religious and racial.

It's not about the economy. It's not about jobs. It's about people keeping themselves and their families housed, fed and clothed. It's about good educations for their kids. If the Dems would just focus on this, they'd get the South, or at least a large portion of it, because Southerners tend ot keep up with their extended families. So maybe Joe Bob Dean still has a decent job, but his kids are having a tough time, and some of his nieces and nephews whose parents aren't doing so well are going through hell because they got no familial backup. A message of "We'll get this economy going again" will go a long way in the South. Probably among regular folks everywhere in the U.S., too.

[GOPBasher]

24. I wish it were that easy.

We've been trying to show them for years. Apparently, people who work 80 hours a week for $7/hr think everything is just peachy in the world, so long as we have a President who forces Christianity down everyone's throat, hates gay people with a passion, believes that Jesus hates gay people, and has never hung out with a black person in his life.

[MisterC2003]

34. Yeah, but things have changed

The Pubbie economy is really starting to hurt. It's easy to ignore the Dem message and float along in a Pubbie pipe dream when you are getting by, but when you stop getting by, the Dem economic message picks up validity fast. Now is the time to really pour it on.

[KG]

26. jesse jackson says it best

dems need to figure out how to get white southerners to vote their economic dreams instead of their racial fears.

[northofdenali]

27. My daughter is a college student living in Alabama.

Now, understand, she was raised by a liberal mama (me) but still cannot believe that her fellow college students dwell on race as much as they do. This is in a big city college, not a small community.

Then, they have a huge party that is racially diverse...........

It's gonna have to be a one-on-one thing. The more people you KNOW of diverse races, the less you'll fall for the "Dems give to THEM not ME" thing.

On edit: Want to see who you REALLY support in the primaries? Take this quiz - it may shock you! http://www.votebyissues.org/

[QC]

31. Where is she in school, if you don't mind my asking.

I went to school there, too, so I probably know the place.

[northofdenali]

32. UAB. She

lives in Alabaster. Pretty little town, nice folks. At first wanted to go to Montevallo, but UAB offered more comprehensive course work for her Communications major.

[morningglory]

29. The southern white male is in the woods deer-hunting half the

winter. They all got a letter from the NRA around 1992 that said "Clinton wants to take all your guns away." I kept telling my religious Rush-listener acquaintances that I am a democrat and I don't want anyone's hunting gun. They were worried about the same thing with Gore. Gore's base is anti-gun, so he catered to them. Dean has the perfect tack for the South and I heard Edwards using the same theory today: paraphrase "I grew up around hunting and I don't want to take anyone's hunting guns, but no one needs an ak-47..." etc. Also, the Rush-listeners were told by someone that Clinton had ordered 50 million body bags. I reminded them of this for 8 years. When is he going to start killing people by the millions?