President George W. Bush drives his pickup truck at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Friday, Aug. 9, 2002.
Posted on 08/21/2004 12:06:16 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
MISSOULA, Mont. — Sitting among the prized huckleberry jams and manicured hogs of the Western Montana State Fair, the lone representative of the Democratic Party tried to blend in.
With his jeans and rawhide face, Geoff Badenoch certainly looked the part. And as a native of Glendive, in the wind-seared ranching country of eastern Montana, he talked the part.
But there was the matter of that scarlet D attached to his booth. It made him stick out like someone eating corn on the cob with a fork.
As one of the poorest states in the country with a long tradition of scrappy unionism, Montana seems like it could be a Democratic stronghold. But it's not. Despite a populist roar, former Vice President Al Gore lost this state by nearly two to one in the last presidential election, and Republicans expect President Bush to win big again this year.
A big reason is the three G's in the Republican culture-wars deck - gays, guns and God - the issues that resonate in the heartland and overshadow economic issues that Democrats say should move poor and lower-middle-class voters here into their camp.
The liberal writer Thomas Frank makes such a case in his recent best-selling polemic, "What's the Matter With Kansas?" In return for voting Republican by a wide margin, people in the poorest counties in the Great Plains get nothing economically, he argues, because no matter what the Republicans promise, their fiscal policies favor the rich.
The Great Backlash, as Mr. Frank calls it, "is a working-class movement that has done incalculable, historic harm to working-class people."
Such arguments, while much debated, are being taken to heart this campaign season by Democratic politicians in rural, low-wage, red-state America - even as the focus of the Democratic presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry remains elsewhere, on middle-of-the-road voters in swing states.
Democrats here in Montana criticize their own party for part of their predicament. They say it dug its own hole in middle America by becoming identified with the party's liberal urban base, making them an easy target for talk-radio firebrands.
So now any talk of economic disparities first has to cut through a fog of perception that Democrats are elitist and do not share the values of Red America.
To blunt such perceptions, the Democrats' strategy is to avoid the hot-button social issues and pound on economics. They complain that Republican tax cuts have done nothing for the lower-middle class, while wages have fallen and jobs have disappeared.
"There's a huge disconnect between what's going on and how people vote," said Mr. Badenoch.
With this strategy, the Democrats hope to win a tight governor's race here, with Brian Schweitzer, and believe they can win control of the State Legislature. In Colorado, the Democrats expect to pick up a Senate seat, with the state attorney general, Ken Salazar. Authenticity helps; Mr. Schweitzer and Mr. Salazar both come from ranching families, and consciously avoid the concerns of urban Democrats who dominate the national party.
"Our candidates speak the language and they're moderate on social issues," said Teresa Henry, a Democrat running for the Montana Legislature.
On the national level, Democrats trying to break the cultural barriers say that Mr. Kerry needs to spend less time in the reconstructed 15th-century European barn that he and his wife own in Sun Valley, Idaho, and more time shooting sporting clays, as he did during a visit to a gun club on a recent swing through the upper Midwest.
"You can run on economic issues as long as you reassure people on the cultural things," said Frank Greer, a political consultant who worked for Bill Clinton.
Still, some red-state Democrats wince when they see Mr. Kerry stiltedly asking, "Who among us does not love Nascar?" and connecting to the great outdoors by windsurfing.
And Republicans say no amount of local tailoring of his message will get the Democrats much traction outside the coasts and Great Lakes because a majority believes that President Bush's policies of tax cuts and deregulation will ultimately lift more people into the middle class.
"Why are 75 percent of Americans against the death tax when it only affects 1 percent of them?" asked Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, an anti-tax political action committee. "Because we are able to make the case that lower taxes are in everybody's economic interests."
Putting this another way, Mr. Badenoch said: "A lot of people think someday they're going to win the Powerball lottery. And when they do, they don't want the government to get it all in taxes."
Starting in the late 1960's, when Richard Nixon peeled off blue-collar Democrats and George Wallace supporters with a Southern strategy that played on racial tensions, Republicans have made steady gains among the poor and lower-middle class outside the big cities. The big shift in Montana and elsewhere came in the 1980's, when so-called Reagan Democrats deserted the party of the New Deal to vote Republican.
"It was social issues, family issues and a feeling like they had been abandoned by Democrats who only cared about the poor," Mr. Greer said.
But he said Democrats applied lessons learned from the Reagan Democrats to the campaign of Bill Clinton, who carried many Southern states and Montana as well in 1992.
Al Gore, however, didn't carry a single Southern or Rocky Mountain state, except New Mexico. Nationally, among the poor and lower-middle class, Mr. Bush made significant inroads, though the Democrats still carried a majority of people who earned less than $50,000 a year, according to exit polls.
This year, the focus of the culture wars is gay marriage. It figured in the knockout blow dealt this month to Bill Kassebaum, a Republican state legislator in Kansas, running for re-election in the primary. Mr. Kassebaum comes from a storied line of Kansas Republicans. His mother is Nancy Kassebaum Baker, a former United States senator, and his grandfather was Alf Landon, the Republican presidential nominee in 1936.
Mr. Kassebaum voted against amending the state constitution to outlaw gay marriage, saying it was already outlawed by Kansas statute. He also voted for a tax increase to help public schools, particularly in rural areas. Both positions brought him heavy fire from conservative talk radio hosts and outside groups like the Club for Growth.
In neighboring Missouri, voters this month came out overwhelmingly against gay marriage. Mr. Kerry did not decry the vote, saying gay marriage is a state issue. But Republicans say Mr. Kerry's opposition to a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage will be fatal for him in the big swath of rural red, and it could hurt him in swing states like Ohio.
They say Democrats are fighting trends that may take generations to reverse, and that party leaders remain clueless on how to reconnect with their old bib-overall and lunch-bucket constituency.
"It's a mistake to think this is all about evangelical voters," said Gary Bauer, a janitor's son and head of a conservative political action committee, the Campaign for Working Families. "Joe Six-Pack doesn't understand why the world and his culture are changing and why he doesn't have a say in it."
http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/content/this_land_af
Click on WATCH MOVIE. (A good laugh)
FReeper KDD found the MOVIE bit called "THIS LAND"
LINK in Post #4.
Now wonder The NYT put this outrageous quote in this article. They agree with Mr. Badenoch's thinking that anybody west of the Hudson is a barefoot retard.
Keep on printing articles like this NYT, it's fun watching you guys dig yourselves a deeper hole.
I assume the Times will print an article about us long-suffering Republicans in blue states, like Connecticut? Should I hold my breath?
Save your breath.
That movie's wicked funny!
They can't he'p themselves...
LOL! Just noticed the typo, but the snobs at the NYT editorial desk reading this no doubt will say "see, see, they are barefoot retards" per my reply #6 of this thread. :^)
Reminds me of the "fantastic" joke. A missionary was preaching long and hard to the natives. At the appropriate moments in the sermon, the chief would call out fantastic and the crowd of natives would respond, "fantastic". The missionary was right proud of himself thinking he had really impressed the chief and the tribes people until he was leaving the chapel and the chief grabbed his arm and said, "don't step in the fantastic, the cows roam freely."
It makes me think that on Mr. Kerry's next tour, we(Bushists) should be along the route with Kerry/Edwards signs... See if they'll stop to talk to us. Once they are out of the bus, change signs and shout "Four more years!"
:-)
HA ha....
Spelling you can correct, stupidity at the NYT is another matter.
Oh...that's funny!
And then laugh your self silly!
HA HA HA!
Around these parts, they stick out like like someone eating squid with a toilet plunger. We're talking red state.
I think it's hysterical.
Hahaha! "Who among us does not like NASCAR?" That's the funniest thing I've ever heard this loser say. When you grow up in a lefty diplomat's house and your cousins are French, you will never be a red-blooded American man, and you shouldn't even attempt to fake it.
"President George W. Bush drives his pickup truck at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Friday, Aug. 9, 2002."
He would be advised to tool around in an old K-5 Blazer. Real men don't drive prissy cowboy Cadillac pick up's and SUV's, they like real 4x4's.
Ahem, not to mention my DD is a 85 K-5 full size Jimmy.
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