Let Me Try Again
by Julia Grey
Tue Dec 02, 2003 at 06:12:54 PM PDT
I was taking a new antibiotic last night that apparently has a peculiar side effect similar to prednisone: it lights up the brainpan, making you wakeful and aggressive and sleepless. I was buzzin'!
So anyway, to restate my thoughts regarding Dean's Confederate flag error:
The way to regain poor white Southerners for the Democratic party is not by telling they are stupid dupes of the Republican party's racialist tactics, but the same way you induce a wild cat to come up on the porch so you can take him to the vet to get his shots.
You put out a saucer of milk (health care). You sweet-talk him, in a soothing voice, about all the nice things you can give him if he'll just come up and take little drink (show him how his kid will benefit educationally). You sympathize with him about how cold it is out there in the barren yard all by himself (job losses). You reassure him that those mean, fat junkyard dogs (CEOs and Wall Street predators) won't be able to get him if he comes inside the warm little nest you've made here in this box with the piece of hamburger at the back. You pet him and tell him he's a pretty cat, a clever cat, and that he has nothing to fear from you.
What you DO NOT do before you've got him penned up and purring over his nice meaty Democratic meal is show him the syringe or in any way remind him that there is a guy in a white coat who is waiting behind the kitchen door.
You DO NOT grab his whiskers and get into his face and scream, "I know what you're doing out there in the yard with those dogs, and you're wrong and you're a bad, stupid cat to believe what those rotten canines say. Okay, I know you can't help yourself because you're too stupid to figure out your own best interests. You don't know that you have to get these shots because you're just an ignorant cat and you've allowed those bad dogs to fool you. But I'm a smart human and I know what's good for you, so I'm going to tell you what your interests are and what you should be doing. Now GET UP HERE ON THIS PORCH!!"
That, whether he meant it or not, was the subtext of Dean's "brave" and "upfront" message to the Democratic party. Dean was, unfortunately, speaking to several different groups with those remarks:
1) liberal Dems who, like him, seem to believe that the Confederate Flag folk (using that as shorthand, of course) dislike black people only socially, "just because," and that they are somehow too stupid to see that they have common economic issues with blacks. These Dems think that all the Democratic party has to do is point out the common cause and the poor whites will come flocking back.
and
2) Confederate Flag folk who think it is insanely arrogant for the Democratic party, of all people, to say that black people are on an equal economic footing with poor whites when, in their minds, affirmative action and other Democratic-induced "perks" have given blacks an unfair advantage these days.
and
3) Southern politicians who have in fact been desperately, quietly trying to DELINK the race and economic issues so that they can lure poor white cats back up onto the Democratic porch. Dean's explicit recharging of the race + economics issue kicked that effort right in the teeth. Mr. Nothern White Man has presumed to "begin talking about race again," and decided all by himself to reset the agenda in a direction they had been trying to move AWAY from for the last 15 years. That's what the really passionate "don't come down here and tell us what to do" thing from Edwards was really about, I think.
The only people pleased with Dean's bulling into the Southern china shop this way are the folks who, as I said last night, like what he said because it confirms their own moral arrogance. "We know what's right, and we're not going to be delicate or persuasive or gentle in how we go about convincing you. We're going to MAKE you see it our way!"
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