View Story | 33 comments
Comments: Expand Shrink Hide (Always) | Indented Flat (Always)
I'm sorry. I just don't see it like this. I don't get any sense that Dean or his supporters expect to simply recite facts and expect all to cow before their brilliance. Again, I think Dean's message was intended as a wake-up call to Democrats, not an insult to working class Southern whites. There's no question it was clumsily worded, but it will live on only if folks like you keep dredging it up trying to make it into something it's not.
Actually, I think Dean gets it. These folks are not the ignorant rabble easily swayed with scare tactics that the Rs have taken them for all these years. And I share his sense that these people are aware that all those Republican votes haven't gotten them jack s**t. But they still don't trust the Democratic Party because they see it as a party of panderers who try to be all things to all people.
So the Dean campaign comes in and tells folks that they want to help them with the things that matter most and affect their everyday quality of life. Whether you're white or black, you and your kids need health care. Your kids need a decent education so they have a chance at life. And you need jobs and job security so you can put a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, and clothes on their backs.
It's OK to be against abortion. We're not going to force you to have one. But neither are we going back to those days when poor women were butchered in back alleys while rich women saw Park Avenue doctors. Our insistence on fair treatment for gays and African-Americans means will will also insist on fair treatment for you. And we respect and will preserve your right to pray anywhere anytime, but we will also respect the beliefs of others and resist codifying religion into law.
Straight talk that's not condescending. I believe most Southerners can respond to that.
by Phil S on Tue Dec 02, 2003 at 08:18:52 PM PDT
[ Parent ]
In all fairness, perhaps this is because you are one of them? Or at least is this possible? I do often have that sense, not so much from the Dean campaign (which I don't pay so much attention to) but from the sample of Dean supporters that I run across on the Internet. (In person they are less "certain" I must say. Perhaps its the combination of the medium and the context of argumentation that fuels this, I dunno).
All you have to do is read this thread and the one from last night to see it, but I could pick out almost any random thread from dKos and find it.
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds. --Elie Wiesel
by a gilas girl on Tue Dec 02, 2003 at 10:50:15 PM PDT
Absolutely possible. I'm human too.
I see two general types of Dean supporters in threads around the blogosphere. (I stopped reading the Dean blog itself because I OD'd on exclamation points.) There's the "Dean's great! I support Dean! End of argument!" types, whose arrogance do the candidate and his more thoughtful supporters no good and actually alienates folks. (In fairness, Wes Clark seems to attract a fair number of these types also).
Then there are the more rational supporters who attempt to analylize and then offer honest opinions. Folkbum comes immediately to mind, but there are many others. This group, of which I'd like to think I'm part, has it's biases, too. We've picked a candidate to support, after all, and we are interested in persuading others to support him.
I may be guilty of being myopic and focussing on the latter group while ignoring the former when I make remarks like the one you highlight. I tend to do this with Clark supporters, too, bypassing the starstruck in an attempt to try and understand what the man's appeal is and why it is so lost on me.
by Phil S on Wed Dec 03, 2003 at 10:49:21 AM PDT
wide narrow
View Story | 33 comments