Posted on 11/03/2004 10:07:07 AM PST by neverdem
OP-ED COLUMNIST
In the aftermath of this civil war that our nation has just fought, one result is clear: the Democratic Party's first priority should be to reconnect with the American heartland.
I'm writing this on tenterhooks on Tuesday, without knowing the election results. But whether John Kerry's supporters are now celebrating or seeking asylum abroad, they should be feeling wretched about the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting - utterly against their own interests - for Republican candidates.
One of the Republican Party's major successes over the last few decades has been to persuade many of the working poor to vote for tax breaks for billionaires. Democrats are still effective on bread-and-butter issues like health care, but they come across in much of America as arrogant and out of touch the moment the discussion shifts to values.
"On values, they are really noncompetitive in the heartland," noted Mike Johanns, a Republican who is governor of Nebraska. "This kind of elitist, Eastern approach to the party is just devastating in the Midwest and Western states. It's very difficult for senatorial, Congressional and even local candidates to survive."
In the summer, I was home - too briefly - in Yamhill, Ore., a rural, working-class area where most people would benefit from Democratic policies on taxes and health care. But many of those people disdain Democrats as elitists who empathize with spotted owls rather than loggers.
One problem is the yuppification of the Democratic Party. Thomas Frank, author of the best political book of the year, "What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America," says that Democratic leaders have been so eager to win over suburban professionals that they have lost touch with blue-collar America.
"There is a very upper-middle-class flavor to liberalism, and that's just bound to rub average people the wrong way," Mr. Frank said. He notes that Republicans have used "culturally powerful but content-free issues" to connect to ordinary voters.
To put it another way, Democrats peddle issues, and Republicans sell values. Consider the four G's: God, guns, gays and grizzlies.
One-third of Americans are evangelical Christians, and many of them perceive Democrats as often contemptuous of their faith. And, frankly, they're often right. Some evangelicals take revenge by smiting Democratic candidates.
Then we have guns, which are such an emotive issue that Idaho's Democratic candidate for the Senate two years ago, Alan Blinken, felt obliged to declare that he owned 24 guns "and I use them all." He still lost.
As for gays, that's a rare wedge issue that Democrats have managed to neutralize in part, along with abortion. Most Americans disapprove of gay marriage but do support some kind of civil unions (just as they oppose "partial birth" abortions but don't want teenage girls to die from coat-hanger abortions).
Finally, grizzlies - a metaphor for the way environmentalism is often perceived in the West as high-handed. When I visited Idaho, people were still enraged over a Clinton proposal to introduce 25 grizzly bears into the wild. It wasn't worth antagonizing most of Idaho over 25 bears.
"The Republicans are smarter," mused Oregon's governor, Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat. "They've created ... these social issues to get the public to stop looking at what's happening to them economically."
"What we once thought - that people would vote in their economic self-interest - is not true, and we Democrats haven't figured out how to deal with that."
Bill Clinton intuitively understood the challenge, and John Edwards seems to as well, perhaps because of their own working-class origins. But the party as a whole is mostly in denial.
To appeal to middle America, Democratic leaders don't need to carry guns to church services and shoot grizzlies on the way. But a starting point would be to shed their inhibitions about talking about faith, and to work more with religious groups.
Otherwise, the Democratic Party's efforts to improve the lives of working-class Americans in the long run will be blocked by the very people the Democrats aim to help.
The Dems have a major problem - they really do think the sun shines outta their butts, and that any who dare to disagree with them is at best a moron and more likely an emissary of whatever PC term they can concoct for Evil.
That kind of arrogance does not play well in the heartland.
"What we once thought - that people would vote in their economic self-interest - is not true, and we Democrats haven't figured out how to deal with that."
Is it possible that the Dems just do not realize that people have figured out that voting for Government handouts really isn't in our economic self-interest in the long run?..... that we realize we can do a better job of spending our own money than having to pay a bunch of civil service employees to dole whatever is leftover after their salaries have been paid back to us, in whatever way they think we ought to have it?
Sorry Kristof! Those farmers, waitresses and factory workers can judge their own interests a lot better than an elitest big media liberal.
One problem is the yuppification of the Democratic Party. Thomas Frank, author of the best political book of the year, "What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America," says that Democratic leaders have been so eager to win over suburban professionals that they have lost touch with blue-collar America.
"There is a very upper-middle-class flavor to liberalism, and that's just bound to rub average people the wrong way," Mr. Frank said. He notes that Republicans have used "culturally powerful but content-free issues" to connect to ordinary voters.
These leftists just don't get it... in America, simply put anyone can become wealthy, through hard work, determination and grit... they see the futility of taxing the wealthy and don't buy into the idea that you can tax the wealthy and expect the non wealthy to be better of.
90% of all millionaires in america are first generation millionaires! Anyone in america can become one, by simply putting away $60 a month!
These leftist hate mongers need to go read a simple book called "The Richest man in Babylon".. spend the $7 on it, read it cover to cover, get your nose out of your Chomski america bashing and come to understand the simple realities.
Thanks for your link.
this guy is TOTALLY clueless !
The democrates JUST DONT GET IT !!
If it wasn't so sad it would be hillarious !
Reading the title I thought the article would be about the RAT voters. Because, as some analyst observed recently, the RAT Party is essentially a party of the very poor and the very rich. And all the others still in it, I'd venture, just haven't gotten the memo.
I don’t know about that. I came from a pretty conservative family. My mom came from an almost full-blooded southern/union/liberal family. Neither of those families paid a lot of attention to “teenage girls dying from coat-hanger abortions” because it wasn’t really an option to be considered.
They preferred you not screw around until you were married (and let you know it), but the general rule was that if you are old enough to “carry on like married folk” and knock someone up, you were old enough to have a job, pay rent, and support her and your offspring.
That very scenario happened several times. I have three cousins that never graduated from high school for that very reason – they were immediately “graduated” to “working man” status.
Or take my mom, for instance. She was one of nine kids. My grandmother had the first at 15 years of age. My grandfather was 17. He had been working several years by then and had only attended school part-way through the sixth grade.
Never a consideration of abortion in any case. But that was back in the Old Days, I guess.
The nimrod shows here what the real problem is - for all his agonized navel-gazing here, HE STILL DOESN'T GET THE REAL PROBLEM - HE THINKS HE KNOWS MORE THAN THESE STUPID RUBES and his political beliefs would benefit them if they would only listen.
Did it ever occur to the liberals that maybe, just maybe, the "Working Class" thinks/ knows that the party that will benefit the country economically is the Republican Party?
Why is it an "automatic" in the minds of journalists and other ivory tower, never-done-it-in-the-real-world, libs that Democrats are better for the working class? Excessive taxes help no one.
"The Democrats ought to take a good look at themselves and figure out where they want to go as a party. They've gotten to the point where they have a lot of supporters in New York and California and Washington D.C. who think it's great to crack jokes about people who live in trailer parks in the South and on farms on the Great Plains, and to make fun of people who dunk their heads in the river and say they've found Jesus -- but those people are the dominant political force in the United States. The Democrats will never be able to govern in this country if these people are all voting for Republicans, and the Democrats have P. Diddy doing interviews on all the news programs on Election Night with the words 'Vote or Die' on his T-shirt." -- Mike Barnicle
People would rather "vote against their class interests" than be insulted by elitists.
It's always amusing to watch liberals try to understand non-liberals. They can understand why they, personally, would vote against their own economic interests to promote welfare or affirmative action but they are astonished that we would put our values over our pocketbooks (even if it was true).
Is this a huge disconnect or what?
This statement is utterly false. Bill Clinton only became president because Ross Perot understood the issues these working-class people face.
And John Edwards doesn't understand sh!t about this challenge -- which is exactly why he was going to be run out of his Senate seat in North Carolina this year if he hadn't given it up on his own.
In terms of this class warfare tact that the author takes, I think these people got it right yesterday -- by casting their vote for a candidate whose personal fortune is smaller than that of either candidate on the Democrat ticket.
If these elitists would bother to read the INTERNAL numbers from the exit polling yesterday they would see that the number one issue of those who voted for George W. Bush yesterday was not terrorism, the economy, jobs, the wars, or anything close to that.
It was VALUES.
It's quite simple: we've got them, they don't.
That sound they are hearing is this country taking one giant step to the right.
The DemocRats are the party of the rich. Warren Buffet, George Soros, Bill Gates, Hollywood - they are all RATS. I was a Loew's last week and the cars in parking lot with Kerry bumper stickers were all Mercedes, Audi's, BMW's and Lexus's - and SUV's to boot.
Poor people voting Republican AGAINST THEIR OWN INTERESTS?? No. Working people who happen to not be rich but happen to be smart (something which the Democrats can't seen to accept) realize that their jobs come from people who have money to hire them. They also would like it if the few things they DO own, be it a small business, a home, or a small inheritance or investment, are not taxed to the point of taking away their small nest egg.
If Democrats are going to keep on perceiving poor Christians as STUPID, they will keep on losing.
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