Why the Democratic strategists simply must go. Kick them out.

[madfloridian]

I found this article after reading about "Mudcat" Saunders at Kos. He absolutely loves the word "Bubba", and he is filled with ways to appeal to all the "Bubbas" everywhere. He is a strategist for some of the Virginia candidates. I find his name annoying, and he needs to lose the word "Bubba." It is insulting.

And the remarks made by Carville and Begala about late-term abortion are just overboard. I think they need to research a little. Too many strategists afraid of losing their income, I guess, as the grassroots exert more power over the party's agenda.

Advice for Democrats: Find new focus, stop wonking

Go south, and go rural.

In a salty new book, 'Foxes in the Henhouse," Steve Jarding and Dave "Mudcat" Saunders rip Kerry and their own party for essentially ignoring what they label as "Bubba" voters in 2004. Many but not all Bubbas live in the South and in rural areas all over the country, and together they represent the linchpin to a winning Democratic coalition, said the two Democratic strategists, who may line up with ex-Virginia Gov. Mark Warner if he runs for president in 2008.

Jarding and Saunders spiritedly distinguish between "Bubba" and "redneck," saying most Democratic leaders don't understand the difference. And they argue that Democrats can win back Bubbas through economic populism and a culturally moderate message.

"Bubba stands for a blue-collar outlook that transcends gender, color, economic and geographical bounds," Saunders and Jarding wrote. "Bubba-spirited females are common throughout America, and as Jesse Jackson will tell you, in the rural South, black Bubbas are also very common."

Note to Mudcat and Jarding: Lose the words Bubba and Redneck. Choose other words to refer to people in the South. Some take it personally when they find out you are doing it.

And the stance of Begala and Carville on abortion, late-term, shows they are totally unaware of what it is.

Rethink the party's rigid stance on abortion rights.

Former Bill Clinton advisers Paul Begala and James Carville argue in their book "Take it Back" that while most Americans support a right to a legal abortion, many also oppose the late-term procedure often labeled "partial birth abortion." Yet all eight Democrats who ran for president in '04 opposed a ban on the procedure, Carville and Begala wrote. "That is the very definition of extremism," they wrote.

As Governor Dean explained, and most doctors and women understand, an abortion that must be performed late in a pregnancy is one which involves a women's life....her right to choose her life over dying..a choice between her and her doctor.

[Erika]

1. The only PBA's I've ever known of

were those that determined that the last trimester would result in the death of the child or mother. The one I am most familiar with was a fetus who had only one heart chamber and could not survive the birthing process. To tell the mother she must deliver a dead child is beyond the realm of decency.

[donco6]

2. What's a "culturally moderate message"?

"We only sorta hate gays"?

[Freddie Stubbs]

9. How about opposing partial birth abortions, except

when the life of health of the mother is in danger?

[RazzleDazzle]

17. That's like saying

I oppose unemployment insurance except for those who don't have jobs.

THAT'S THE ONLY TIME THEY'RE DONE!!!!!! AND YOU BET I'M YELLING!!!!!

I'm yelling because it sure as hell seems to me the MEN who consider themselves on the Left could goddamned well learn a little bit about the goddamned ISSUES that affect women in this country in a way as viscerally important as sovereign rights over their own bodies.

Your question doesn't even pass the Common Sense Test: What MEDICAL DOCTOR would perform an abortion on a perfectly healthy, VIABLE fetus in the 3rd Trimester??!! Only a Dr. Mengele, and only on those he considered "subhumans" anyway.

These late term abortions are ONLY done in the very worst cases, where the fetus is incapable of living once born, and almost always the situation is compromising the mother's health and often her very life. They are tragedies for all involved, not some kind of abortions at whim.

And what a low (misogynist) opinion you have of ALL women, revealed by your underlying premise that there are women who would seriously consider this for a perfectly healthy, otherwise perfectly viable fetus. Aaargh.

MEN: Get out of your white male privilege-induced self-absorbed little worlds and EDUCATE YOURSELVES about the issues facing the OTHER half of the human race. Please. Someday these issues will affect someone YOU love.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Clark2008]

4. Actually, we do need to go rural,

but rural doesn't necessarily mean anti-choice and redneck.

Just yesterday I posted that the reason Republicans have fared so well in the South and the mid-West isn't because of racism or sexism or Godism or gunism, it's because Republicans don't openly look down their snouts at us. (I know that some probably still do, but they don't in public). They've embraced the slight difference in cultures and, after decades of Hollywood treating all Southerners as though we're backwards and inbred (we're no more so than the rest of the country, believe me) the Republicans gave the rural voters a sense of pride in the fact that we say, "Y'all" and we drawl and some of us eat hog jowl and collard greens and some of us live our lives a bit slower.

So, yes, the Democrats would do well to speak to the cultural divide by embracing the differences - and there are many that don't have a damn thing to do with race or sex. What Dems need to do to make inroads into the rural South and mid-West - and we do need to do that to win a national election - is to actual campaign in these areas and take a populist message to these voters: a message that moves away from corporate control and outsourcing and we need a strong person who won't be seen as a wimp on national defense.

It's not that difficult, really, and no one needs to stoop down to call folks "Bubba" and pretend the whole region is anti-choice or racist.

[TheBaldyMan]

16. this might be a shot in the dark, but ...

maybe there are issues that concern rural communities and there is a track record of Dems doing better for them than Republicans.

I am really thinking of other issues that I am more familiar with like: balancing the budget, lowering the national debt, not handing out no-bid contracts for cronies and the like. I'd be surprised if the republicans suddenly become honest and competent as soon as they leave city limits.

Unfortuntely it's way outside my direct experience but perhaps it is worth checking up.

[Totally Committed]

5. I've been saying this for several (almost 5, now) years....

Carville and Begala need to be the first to be hogtied with their mouths duct-taped, and shoved into a locked closet, with the key then thrown away.

Democratic "strategists" -- the lot of them -- need to go and go NOW. K Street needs to be burned to the ground, fumigated, and paved over for good.

Eeeeeeeee-yuck! Get rid of this vermin!

TC

[Mass]

6. In total agreement with you.

but so many people even here think the opposite, which is why we are in this predicament.

[Zodiak]

7. It's more like a handful of people

with a lot of time on their hands and a blind trust in anything with a D attached to it.

The bulk of us want the Donna Brasilles to take a permanent vacation from politics. They can go "consult" for the corporations they ostenbily work for.

[MH1]

8. Considering that "Mudcat" is working for a Swift Liars enabler,

I don't appreciate too much he has to say about Kerry's 2004 campaign - or anything else.

I agree with your take on "Bubba", too.

(edited to clarify - premature posting problem this morning. ;-) )

[cally]

10. I agree

The Dem strategists need to go. I just posted in another thread about my anger that Emmanuel is waiting until August to release a Dem plan. So the Reps have a more months to trash Dems about not having a plan. We wouldn't want to interfere with the Rep spin, afterall. :sarcasm: Referring to folks as Bubbas is insulting and demeaning. Allowing women to die to cave into RW spin on late term abortion is immoral. I'm so angry right now.

[Armstead]

11. IMO, partisanship should deal with Wealth and Power issues

A core of the Democratic Dilemma is that they have allowed partisan politics to shift from the core issues related to Wealth and Power and instead allowed themselves to become associated with lifestyle issues. This has diluted their ability (or willingness) to win over people who should be instinctually Democrats. The trditional Democratic Coalition was very broadly based, from "Northern Intellectuals" to socially-conservative but economically-progressive blue collar voters.

In a true "big tent" coalition, there are going to be differenes on the issues that are seperate from the core unifying principles. What I'm saying is that the core unifying principle for Democrats should be matters that relate to Wealth and Power.

My belief is that the Democrats as a party shouod focus on isues of Wealth and Power from a clearly liberal and progressive standpoint, and sell that to the so-called "Bubbas."

With the exception of a truly boneheded minority, THAT is what would bring the Democrats support and votes. A coialition based on HONEST PROGRESSIVE POPULISM on issues like corporate control, workers' rights, survival of the middle class, the need to preserve a domestic economy, universal access to affoirdable healthcare, etc.

The social issues should be left to the individual beliefs of candidates, based on their own beliefs and those of their constituiencies. IMO, it is more likely that a liberal position on most social issues would also be a winner, because most Americans ultimately have an attitude of "Live and Let Live" combined with "Keep your nose out of my personal life." So they would tend to be more pro-choice, against intrusive government surveillane, the imposition of Bible Laws through the state, etc.

[madfloridian]

12. Mudcat's bedspread...is this true or satire?

I don't trust Weekly Standard, but it was an interview supposedly. This part made me rather sick inside. I have many ancestors who fought with the South in the Civil War, but I don't feel the need for a bedspread about it. Maybe this is clever satire, the whole thing...and I am missing something.

"When Howard Dean stepped in it, during the run-up to primary season 2004, by suggesting that his party needed to appeal to guys who have Confederate-flag decals on their pickup trucks, Mudcat was his target demographic. Mudcat's bedspread is a large Confederate flag, which he pedantically insists is the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. The rest of the Confederacy appropriated it, he says, because it was Virginians like J.E.B. Stuart and Stonewall Jackson who "did most of the ass-kicking."

Since his own great-grandfather got his shoulder blown out by a yankee at Seven Pines, Mudcat is a proud member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. But he wants it made absolutely clear that his celebration of heritage doesn't mean he's some racist--a common misconception, he says, which is why his fellow Democrats reacted to Dean as though he'd advocated electrocuting puppies."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=5716&R=C80C3F5

[blm]

13. I agree with your take 100% on this. These guys don't see that the biggest

problem the Dems face is that since 1997, the GOP has been in near total control of broadcast media.

WHY? Because they are the beneficiaries of the corporate media that lines their pockets, too.

[WildEyedLiberal]

14. Unbelievable

"Bubba"??? He calls southerners, midwesterners, and blue-collar people "Bubba"?? And then has the audacity to wonder why the fuck said blue-collar people think "Democrats" look DOWN on them?

NOTE TO "STRATEGISTS": You will NEVER win the vote of people you condescend to. EVER. Carville and Begala need to be strung up and thrown out into the street. "Partial birth abortion" is a make-believe bogeyman created by the right to scare average Americans into thinking that abortion kills living, breathing, crying, cuddly newborn babies. It's as despicable and false a tactic as Reagan's racially-charged "welfare queen" crap in the 80s meant to convince people that their taxmoney was subsidizing some lazy unemployed black woman in Harlem who had six kids by six different fathers.

I think I'll not listen to any of their lamebrained "critiques" of 2004 - they all should have been put out to pasture eight years ago.

[AtomicKitten]

15. The Dems simply need to be forthright about their positions.

... instead of having them reek of being concocted in the kitchen by handlers.

Having transcribed surgery reports for 30 years in California, I have never, as in ever, come across a "late term abortion" procedure. The rarity of these procedures and the conditions under which they might occur must be clarified by the Dems; they certainly are not done "on request." That is a more potent argument than the slippery slope meme.

Part of the problem with Democrats is that they simply do not give a clear, concise message.

They need to start hammering the crimes of BushCo, the lies, the obstruction of justice, the purposeful lack of oversight by the Republican Congress. Clearly.

[NoPasaran]

18. When did "Bubba" become an insult?

It's a pretty common name in these parts, both for men and dogs.

(I hope that didn't cause anyone to spit their latte out on their keyboard! :sarcasm:)

[Bake]

19. I agree with you, MF (no pun intended), on both issues

Both as to the "PBA" and "Bubba." As a Southerner, I find the term "Bubba" very condescending and downright insulting. It just makes me cringe. We'll never win voters who think that we think we're better than they are.

Bake

[mmonk]

20. There is only one strategy that will work.

Expose the republican lies and tell the truth. Anything else is REPUBLICAN.