The Dakotas

[jiacinto]

They were once hotbeds of progressivism and socialism in the early 1900s. During the early New Deal they stuck with FDR through 1936. Anyway my question is, even though those states had periods of strong progressivism/populaism, why did Democrats fare poorly there?

And why were Democrats not really able to even win statewide offices until the era of Quentin Burdick and George McGovern?

[jenk]

1. perhaps it's the gun control thing

the area is pretty conservative when it comes to things like abortion too, and that wasn't really an issue in the early 1900's

[jiacinto]

2. Ok

nt

[SaveElmer]

3. Socially Conservative...still a streak of NPL

The Dakotas are socially pretty conservative...although North Dakota still has a streak of the old Non-Partisan League Progressivism left. To North Dakotans especially, the Democratic Party has come to signify big city liberalism, and radical environmentalism. Also gun control plays a part. But, if Democrats sing the right tunes, especially when it comes to farming interests, they can win. That is why North Dakota has two Democratic Senators, and a Democratic Congressman. All of which are very popular

[jiacinto]

4. They send Democrats to DC because of farming issues

nt

[bluestateguy]

5. Dakotas

Those states have an interesting political history that would get more coverage if they were bigger states, but I have some ideas.

One would be their obvious revulsion at the Democrats' positions on social and cultural issues since the mid-1960's. Unlike the old days, the farmers of the midwest simply don't see themsleves as locked in a permanent battle with eastern corporations and bankers anymore. The Dakotas are pretty homogenous and not very hospitable territory for the Democrats' liberalism on so called "God and country" issues. Still, the farm economy there tends to limit their conservatism somewhat. When prices are down and Republicans are in office a Democrat can be competitive in national elections: Dukakis lost S. Dakota by only 4 points in 1988; Clinton lost S. Dakota by only 4 points in 1992 and only 3 points in 1996. If the economy were to worsen, a centrist Democrat could definently win South Dakota. In a reversal of the historical trend, S. Dakota is now the more liberal state than N. Dakota, but Democrats with good personal skills (always important in small states) can and do win elections: Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad have proven tobe unbeatable. Oh, one more thing. I heard one time that N. Dakota had a much larger share of men than women, meaning that the gender gap in American politics that has existed since the 1980's would be a big benefit to Republicans in that state.

[jiacinto]

6. Interesting statement

But Democrats were not really able to win seats until the 1960s in those states. Quentin Burdick was the modern founder of the Dem Party in ND. He was the first major Senator if I recall.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. The farm crisis of the 1980s didn't help the Dems

since with few exceptions, they did little to help the farmers who were losing farms that had been in their families since the days of the Homestead Act.

Both Dakotas are very sparsely populated, and so the same attitude you get in the non-coastal West (We're self-reliant, and everything we have we got on our own) also kicks in.

Social conservatism is another factor. The Dakotas are made up of ethnically homogeneous towns. Remember that Lawrence Welk had a German accent, even though he was born in North Dakota. That's because his whole town was German immigrants. When my grandfather first began teaching school, he ended up in another town in North Dakota where everyone except him, my grandmother, and the railroad station agent, was Norwegian.

A lot of kids from North Dakota attended the college in the Twin Cities that I graduated from. Some of them literally had never met anyone who wasn't a Norwegian Lutheran, and the sight of African-Americans (right on campus!) freaked them out.

A note about Norwegian Lutherans in North Dakota: most of them are descendants of the Haugeaners, who were a sect of Lutheranism in opposition to the state church of Norway. There were good things about them--they thought the state church had become too bureaucratic and not spiritual enough--but they were also very Puritanical. Put a bunch of Haugeaners in a small town with nothing but prairie for fifty miles around, isolate them from other types of people, and simmer for about a hundred years. Voila, social conservatism.

Yet I knew some very liberal students from North Dakota as well, including one who had intended to spend the summer after high school working on Robert Kennedy's campaign. (Of course, she never got to, because he was assassinated.)

[jiacinto]

12. Interesting

In 1986 the Democrats won both Senate races in the Dakotas.

[gottaB]

7. migrations

They all moved to Minnesota and Wisconsin to find work.

Their sons and daughters didn't return. Many went to the West coast.

Keep in mind a lot of these people were immigrants and didn't tend to see themselves as part of the dominant USA mainstream until I don't know WWII probabaly.

Something about the Missouri Synod, which goes back to 1932 or thereabouts, but I don't want to get into it--and I'm certainly not a scholar on the matter. But if you're curious, look there.

[jiacinto]

8. What is/was the Missouri Synod?

nt

[bicentennial_baby]

10. Here:

"On April 26, 1847, 12 pastors representing 15 congregations signed a constitution that established "The German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States." Meeting in Chicago, they had traveled by horseback, stagecoach and boat from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and New York. (Also attending were 10 advisory pastors, four laymen, two theology candidates and seven guests.)

They were men of faith and conviction. Some were German immigrants who had come to the United States to preserve their Lutheran confession of the faith, free from government intervention. They were stirred for mission, especially to reach German immigrants, and, for some, the desire to bring the Gospel to Native Americans.

In its 150th year, The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod (the name was shortened on the 100th anniversary) counts 2.6 million members in 6,145 congregations. The original constitution was written in German (and German continued to prevail in worship and writing until World War I). Today, the list of pastors includes names like Schmidt and Nguyen and Perez and O'Connor and Zyskowski and King and Pacilli. While English dominates now, on any given Sunday, there may be worship in at least 20 different languages--including Spanish, Hmong, Eritrean, Russian, Finnish, Slovak, Chinese, even German."

http://www.lcms.org/

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. I don't know how much the Missouri Synod had to do with it

because the Missouri Synod was a group of German Lutherans who objected to the unification of the Lutheran Church and the Reformed Church in Germany. (The unified church is called Die Evangelische Reformierte Kirche.) I don't know exactly when the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod was actually formed under that name, but its roots go back well before 1932.

Anyway, the Missourians are a strange lot, fundamentalist in theology, with a few wrinkles of their own. Members are not allowed to join any Masonic organization, Boy Scouts, or Girl Scouts, or any other secular organization that has any kind of ceremony.

On the other hand, they don't get along well the garden-variety fundamentalists because they're very liturgical with lots of formal worship and Bach chorales.

At least until the more Baptist-like fundamentalists got into the act, the Missouri Synod had the largest Protestant parochial school system.

But I never heard of them being particularly strong in the Dakotas.

[gottaB]

13. Yes, I am showing my ignorance becuase I was raised as an Evangelical

and I have just the vaguest impression of a synnergy of resentments against Democrats on the one hand and the Missourians on the other, but as I said I'm not a scholar on the matter and in fact I'm an eminently impeachable witness because truth be told whenever either subject comes up at family gatherings my natural inclination is to munch on a carrot, though if my outspoken cousin H-- speaks up in praise of Democrats, I do smile and nod approvingly.

These are people, my family, I am not making this up, these are people like my mother's cousin C--, who remembers my criticism of religious faith from when I was teenager, my exact words, and the essence of my thoughts, it's been 20 years for crying out loud, and still I am asked about this, if this is really what I believe.

So by all means, impeach me on the Missouri Synod. I thought it might offer some insight into Lutheran politics, but there are better tacks evidenced in the posts upthread, and frankly my relation to the whole thing is at worst nostalgic and at best absurd.

(BTW my family had settled in South Dakota, Carthage; they moved to Red Wing when my grandparents' generation were in their teens; the great grandparents were both progressive and evangelical, but their men turned out to be conservative Republicans; the women were more liberal and more educated; their children are all over the map, geographically and politically and yes we even have Missourians in the family now, but nobody's gone back to live in South Dakota.)

[no name no slogan]

14. I dunno if it's the LCMS in particular,

but there's a lot of religious conservatism in ND (and in Notherwestern Minnesota, around Red Lake and Bemidji, for that matter). My dad and many aunts/uncles were born there, and there's still a strong streak of that in their politics. Some of them went on to become protestant evangelicals and very politically conservative, while some "stayed" Catholic and too this day are still very liberal (mostly my aunts, interestingly enough).

[Avis]

15. NW MINN

I live in NW MN - Roseau County and we get all of our news from ND stations and the paper is from Grand Forks - hospital system out of Grand Forks --- it seems to me that the democrats have pretty much given up on our area. There is so much that could be done up here -- people are conservative but that can also work with the the current situation. They tend to be very financially responsible - especially older people, and this deficit is unacceptable to them. Around here the ELCA is much stronger than Missouri - and they tend to be fairly socially liberal. The catholic church, the free lutherans and a few others, vote republican because of abortion. People don't have much up here, farming isn't very profitable, jobs low paying and scarce, what little they have, they try to spend cautiously. Doesn't help to
have republicans hammer the phrase "democrats are tax and spend" to them. Lots of kids join the military because of college money promises or no job. People are proud of their kids, and it doesn't help when the republicans call the democrats "unpatriotic". I have to give it to the republicans, they know how to get to the rural people. Strangely enough, Paul Wellstone was respected up here - people talk about how liberal he was, yet he seemed like a regular guy to most rural people. He cared what happened to us! I think Sen Wellstone was respected for his honesty and integrity and he actually came up to visit us! Kent Conrad is popular too for
the same reasons. I hear my democratic ND friends think Dorgan should get back more often and actually visit during disasters like Conrad. Wish someone could shape up Dorgan, it was such a relief that Ed Schaffer (ex gov) isn't running. I'd love to see ND get a Dem gov next time- they need a good candidate. It wouldn't take that much to turn the area around.