How should Dems deal with retaking the southern male vote?
Digby, one of the best writers out there, offers this thought provoking post dealing with a very crucial issue for the future of the Democratic party, namely, how to win back those oh-so-macho NASCAR loving southern males who have gone over to voting against their own self interests.
It's a daunting proposition, and Digby points out the folly of one prescription for dealing with it. Again, it's a strategy that necessitates leaving a lot of traditional Democratic constituencies out in the cold.
posted by The Inside Dope @ 2/27/2005
7 comments
7 Comments:
I think that Mudcat is right on and I commend the DOPE for publicizing his views. Mudcat can help lead our party right back to the White House. We have to get beyond the notion that perfection is the enemy of the good. We have to have a much bigger tent. We have to drop the ideological litmus tests.
Yeah, forget the blacks, forget gays being able to have the same rights all of us enjoy, forget environmental groups... let's chuck it all in favor of kissing up to gun loving NASCAR fans.
Yeah, let's just sell out the entire party and everything it stands for. Let's just move even FURTHER to the right and embrace all these conservative ideals and attitudes, including intolerance and greed.
How can you advocate so strongly a policy of capitulation and seemingly thinking that since you can't beat them, you might as well join them?
No wonder the Dems lose. It's thinking like this that proves to people that they really don't stand for anything.
Also, you apparently stopped reading after "Mudcats" interview. I think Digby did a thorough job of pointing up just how this approach is unrealistic at best doomed to failure at worst.
Hey Dope,
With all due respect, but your strategy will take us back to the days of Walter Mondale and George McGovern, exhibits A and B. Combined, I think they won four states out of 100 in two presidential campaigns.
Let me bring you in on a secret:
we can win some of the South again and not relinquish our values and ideals in the process. Don't you think middle-income Southerners have a lot in common with blue staters (education, economics, etc.)?
Sure.
Blue Staters like NASCAR, too, and Red Staters want the deficit reduced, too.
Please don't advise your bloggers to take us off the far-left deep end. That may feel good, but it will leave us with a Walter Mondale type strategy.
Mudcat is one of the premier consultants. He engineered Mark Warner's win in West VI. We need to bring his views under our BIG umbrella and not be exclusive and elitist.
Thanks for letting me air my views, Dope.
Black Oak, no need to thank me, THANK YOU for contributing your thoughts, no matter if we may disagree around the edges. You add to the debate, and that's what it's all about.
No time at the moment for a more complete reply, gotta run, but I DO have something to say. (surprise, surprise)
THe bottom line is made by Mudcat: Dems can't wake up after every election and have fewer blue states. Bush came close to winning both Wisconsin and Minnesota this time; we'd be surrounded by a sea of red had that happened -- and it almost did.
Our party, this party, the Dem party, the party of donkeys -- had better wake and smell the coffee and start talking smarter and clearer about the All-American values on which it stands. It's time to start defining Republicans as what they are: big spending, deficit loving hypocrites.
It's important to remember that the current dominant position of the right has been a 30 year effort.
They were willing to run and lose without trying to taylor their views just to be elected.
They never had any doubt, and never wavered in their belief in their core values, and they held fast to them, with the result their dominence today. (How they acheived this could fill many books, and does.)
The fact remains that they didn't water down their philosophy or core values in order to gain power. They didn't look at the Democrats who were getting elected and decide to become more like them. They didn't even decide to shift slightly towards the left.
They stood up loudly and forcefully for what they believed in, while the Dems slept, and by the time they woke up, the right had completely taken over the government and the courts!
The way back will be very long, and it won't be due to the Dems trying to morph and change shapes into what they think the public wants at the moment.
If that path is followed, even if the Dems do regain power, it will be in a form unrecognizable to the majority of Dems, and without the slightest relation to the party of progressive ideals that supposedly forms the backbone of the party.
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