This is an open thread for ideas to help win elections in rural or red districts. Any thoughts?
Assuming your typical laundry list of solid-left positions (out of Iraq now, single-payer health-care, gay marriage--why not?, etc.) how have others found success in pursuading voters, rather than simply pandering to them?- which is what our DLC-picked primary chellenger is shooting for. Anecdotes of other principled liberals who have done well in heavy-red districts? How would a netroots campaign be tailored to a district with high incumbent-loyalty?
Please, discuss...
Feel free to skip on ahead to the thread, this is just a little info on the district (
map) -- who's running, how I'm involved:
The seat is currently held by Virgil MZM-sycophant Goode, a politician's politician who defected to the Republican party in 2002 for a seat on the appropriations committee. Most of the voters live in rural southside Virginia, with once-prosperous tobacco farms and mill-towns now just colateral damage to the global economy, but Virgil strives only to build fences in Texas and bash gays in the hallowed halls of Congress.
My candidate is Al Weed, a 42-year veteran, farmer, father, scholar, and progressive party-builder. He ran in 2004, but his principled defense of gay marriage, his strong pro-choice stance, and his outrage over the handling of the Iraq war were too much for the electors to stomach -- the time was not yet right.
Al wants to grow switchgrass for energy independence, which could be grown right here in southside Virginia. Along with ethanol refineries, such a program could revitalize the local agriculture industry, bring high-paying jobs to the 5th district, and stop pumping all that money into terrorist trust funds. Virgil's recent energy plan makes no mention of switchgrass, and does nothing for the 5th district, so if we could get people to care about this issue it could be big. Al's also a member of the Band of Brothers, so we're of course trying to work that into the mix.
Oh and one (two) more thing(s): The north side of the district is a Democratic stronghold (UVa, doctors, lawyers) who helped Kaine win the district last year by about 2,000 votes, but everywhere else, Virgil has this image of a good ol' good ol' boy, sort of in a Bush-like way -- no matter how much he screws up, he still looks clean, so he keeps getting 64%.
(Full disclosure: I am volunteering for Al Weed, helping him get a handle on the internets, keeping track of the blogosphere and injecting some of its ideas whenever I can.)