Okay, I don't know that I've ever posted a comment here, much less a diary, but sometimes a gal's got to have her say.
About a month ago, I was in Kansas, in a farm town of about 200 people. The backstory of why I, a lifelong liberal and stereotypical bluestater, have lived in Kansas occasionally over the past 20 years and have come to love this town and its people is not important. What's important is that while there, I had a conversation with a former town official I respect very much and trust completely, a man I know I could depend on in any crisis, as selfless, funny and responsible person as I have ever known. And I asked THE question, and I got the answer I both feared and expected. He voted for George Bush in the 2004 election.
Now, y'all can lambaste me for not calling him and talking to him BEFORE the election, and the point is well taken. But I am going to, as the Bushies encourage us to, put aside the mistakes of the past and move on toward a brighter future. And that brighter future lies in his answer to my next question: "WHY did you vote for George Bush?"
He took a moment and looked around the room. He said something along the lines of, "That other guy, he didn't look like our kind of people. And Bush did, so I figured he'd do all right." Then he stopped and looked at me and said, "But I wish I hadn't voted for him." I asked him why, and he said, "He scares me now. He really scares me." Neither of us said anything for a few moments, but the look on his face was heartbreaking-- he had done what he believed was right for the country he loved and found that he had done the worst thing possible.
I thought a lot about "That other guy, he didn't look like our kind of people" over the next few days. It could be taken for bigotry, but if you were in the room you wouldn't have felt that. What it felt like to me was a kind of longing, a longing to be able to find in our leaders the qualities we value in ourselves and our neighbors. And John Kerry didn't communicate that. Part of it was, well, John Kerry ain't much of a communicator. We know that. But part of it is that George Bush was a Republican, and John Kerry was a Democrat, and for a lot of people in this country, Republicans have become the default party.
What can we do about this?
I've read some of what's been written about this, and I have looked over the lists of Democratic core values many web sites have been trying to produce. And I don't know about you, but none of the lists has captured why I am a Democrat. Do I share the values? Of course I do. But it's not enough.
Which brings me back to Kansas. While I was there, it rained-- a blessing to the parched farmland. My husband went out to run an errand with another Kansas buddy, and to do the errand, they had to drive on dirt roads. This is no surprise-- there are still a lot of dirt roads out there that lots of people have to drive every day. And, even with their four wheel drive, they got stuck in the mud. This happens frequently, and many people in Kansas simply have to stay home on rainy days. But if you do get stuck, as my husband did, what do you do?
Why, you call a friend, a nearby farmer. And he interrupts his day, brings out his tractor and gets you out. And if he gets stuck too, you call another neighbor with a bigger tractor and he interrupts his day to help get both stuck vehicles out of the mud. And so it goes until everyone is out of the mud or everyone is equally stuck, laughing and shaking their heads and walking home until the rain clears and land dries.
My husband and his buddy got pulled out and came home to do their errand another day. But it got me to thinking. People in Kansas don't always see government as the solution to the problems because, out there, government CAN'T be. We can't, as a nation, afford to have an army of tractors at the ready to pull people off of muddy roads. And people don't expect us to. (And I am putting aside the question of farm subsidies, which is a different topic and which more family farmers oppose than you might think.) These are people who know that shit happens, and you have to live with it.
What people in Kansas care about is that they know that when they are stuck in the mud, their neighbors will drop what they're doing and come help them. But it's not because they get their vehicle unstuck. See, if they called a neighbor for help and the neighbor said, "I have a problem with the barn," Kansans would leave their vehicles in the mud start walking to help their neighbor with the problem in the barn. It's not, at the end of the day, whose vehicle is where and what's going on in the barn. It's that they live in a place where doing the right thing IN AND OF ITSELF is the highest value. THAT's the key. (And, no, I'm not saying we blue staters don't also think that but we're already Democrats and I'm talking about how to expand the party.)
I haven't read Thomas Frank's book, but from what I understand from hearing him talk, one of the things he criticized about red staters is that they are willing to vote against their own economic interest. Excuse me if I'm making a point that others have made, but, in another context, what do we call people who vote against their economic self interest for the sake of what they perceive to be the greater good? We call them Democrats.
So what happened? I have a lot of theories about how this best of instincts in the red states got turned into votes for Republicans, but I only have so much time to type. What matters is how to bring them into the Democratic Party.
Here's what I suggest: forget the lists of core values. We need to reclaim the notion of rightness. It's just that simple.
Now, you may laugh, but I've always thought that one of our problems is that the Republicans are called the Right. I know, I know, it's a political label, blah, blah, but words have meaning. They have impact. They carry weight. And outside of the political class, political labels per se mean less. I have been a lefty since I played with my father's leftover Adlai Stevenson campaign literature as a baby, and the word "right" still has an impact on me.
The Republicans stole the word "liberal" from us and used it for negative purposes. It's time we took the word "right" from them and used it for positive purposes. Every Democrat everywhere should say this every chance they get: Democrats will do the right thing. You can DEPEND on Democrats to do the right thing. And there are a hundred ways we can reshape the idea-- that's for the marketing pros to figure out. (Democrats do it right, as opposed to the incompetent Republicans... Democrats know what is right, as opposed to the corrupt Tom Delay...) The Republicans will mock us, and many non-Dems may not buy it at first. But if we keep it up, people will begin to at accept that, at least, we are the party that CARES ABOUT doing the right thing, that TRIES to do the right thing. And that is half the battle because there are more people in this country who want to do the right thing than not. I don't always agree with the way everyone manifests that instinct, but I am awed by how many of us are trying. It's the ultimate big tent of shared value, and it will make people proud to join us.
Because, of course, it's true: when it comes to what's most important about this country, Democrats are Right.
Happy Independence Day.