OK, I've said
plenty this week about how the Democrats can better connect with the red states when it comes to "values". But now the entire pundit class is on fire with this idea, and naturally they have already taken it way too far.
The NY Times' "liberal" columnist Nicholas Kristof says that the way to show we're in touch with heartland values is to execute more retarded black murderers. Kristof is a master at drawing bogus conclusions from morally repellent examples. (He's also said that NYC should end rent control, because that's what the Chinese Communists did.)
Being sensitive to middle America's cultural and social values is one thing. But selling our souls is another. And what's utterly missing from this discussion is any mention of ECONOMICS.
Somehow we are stuck with the same tired, one-dimensional debate about whether the Democrats should "move left" or "move right."
But we have to consider the economics issues as well as the cultural issues. We may be perceived as too far to the left culturally -- but we are already so far to the
right economically that we have become Republican Lite.
This week I finally read Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America." To me, the following passage from the book (pp. 175-177) perfectly captures what's wrong with today's Democratic Party:
While the Wichita [conservatives] worked hard to build their movement, they would not have succeeded so extravagantly had it not been for the simultaneous suicide of the rival movement, the one that traditionally spoke for working-class people. I am referring, of course, to the Clinton administration's famous policy of "triangulation," its grand effort to minimize the differences between Democrats and Republicans on economic issues. Among the nation's pundit corps "triangulation" has always been considered a stroke of genius, signaling the end of liberalism's old-fashioned "class warfare" and also of the Democrats' faith in "big government."
Clinton's New Democrats, it was thought, had brought the dawn of an era in which all parties agreed on the sanctity of the free market. As political strategy, though, Clinton's move to accommodate the right was the purest folly. It simply pulled the rug out from under any possible organizing effort on the left. While the Cons were busily polarizing the electorate, the Dems were meekly seeking the center. In Wichita Republicanism appeared dynamic and confident; the Democrats looked dispirited, weak, spent.
However well it was received on Wall Street, Clinton's strategy played right into the hands of Mark Gietzen and hundreds of other Christian conservative organizers like him around the country. If basic economic issues are removed from the table, Gietzen has written, only the social issues remain to distinguish the parties. And in such a climate, Democratic appeals to people of ordinary means can be easily neutralized. "Years ago, it was assumed that the Republican Party was 'the party of the rich,' and that the Democrats stood for working people," Gietzen writes.
Not anymore!
Today a working family with children is far more likely to be a Republican family, than a Democrat family.
Democrat leaders themselves have discarded the old notion of their party being a party for the poor.
Today, Democrat Party fund-raising events are more likely to cost $1000 per person, than a similar Republican Party event....
Recently, a member of the Clinton administration [evidently a reference to James Carville] referred to poor people as "trailer-trash" and his comment was greeted with a yawn from the media.
The title of the pamphlet in which these thoughts appear:
Is It a Sin for a Christian to Be a Registered Democrat Voter in America Today?
Plenty of Wichitans clearly came to believe that it was. In the election of 1994 they took their frustrations out on Democratic representative Dan Glickman, a staunch Clinton loyalist who supported NAFTA -- a free-trade agreement originally drafted by Republicans -- even thought the labor unions back in Wichita that made up his electoral base adamantly opposed the trade accord. Says Dale Swenson, a union painter at Boeing (and a Republican state legistlater): "When [Glickman] voted for NAFTA, I couldn't any longer vote for him. I know a lot of union members were really mad at Glickman when he voted for NAFTA." With Democrats and Republican having merged on free trade, the issues that remained were abortion and guns.
The hard truth is, we are no longer the party of the working class. That's why they're voting for the other guys. It's about time that we make a serious commitment to winning them back.
More commentary at The Situation Room