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Some of my best friends are local Democrats, so after
they plied me with uncontrolled substances one night in a
saloon, I broke down and spent $15 to attend their annual
Give 'em Hell, Harry
dinner Friday night.
The dinner is named in honor of Harry Truman, the last president ever seen in this vicinity. Before that, every president from U.S. Grant onward spoke here, since they traveled by train, which had to stop anyway to change crews in Salida and thousands of other division points in the boondocks. Candidates for high office were thus forced to confront America's outback personally; America thereby consisted of somewhat more than two coasts connected by United Airlines, and campaigns were more than 20-second sound bites on the network news.
Anyway, not a lot of Hell was given. Gov. Roy Romer spoke. He's a formidable campaigner. He talked knowingly about the importance of education and infrastructure to rural communities, although he did not mention what the governor has been or should be doing about our schools and telephones.
It's a good technique for making an audience believe
that somebody up there cares about us,
and it didn't
hurt that, after his talk, he went back to shake hands with
the kitchen crew.
The closest we came to hearing any Hell delivered was
when Carlos Lucero spoke. He explained that throughout
American history, all the thefts by gun-toting bank robbers
have come to $100 million -- one-tenth as much as just
Silverado. The total in the S&L debacle is $500 billion
and rising, but nobody has gone to jail yet for those
thefts.
Josie Heath, his opponent in the senate primary, wasn't there, although a husband and daughter were present. After hearing Mr. Heath, who talked about Josie's commitment to environmental causes and her belief in education as evidenced by her endorsement by the CEA, I realized that the primary between Heath and Lucero will be the most interesting race in the state this year, because it's a battle for the soul of the Democratic party.
It's not a contest of substance, since they're both for
the things most Democrats are for. It's a question of
style, and whom the party should speak for. Josie's from
trendy, rich Boulder; Carlos from remote, poor Alamosa.
Josie is thirtysomething
; Carlos is Roseanne.
One group is upscale and wants to enhance the American
dream; the other either desperately wants a piece of the
American dream or is desperately afraid that its little
piece of the American dream will vanish.
Thirtysomething
wins Democratic primaries, since
that's the source of most party activists, but the
Roseanne
crowd wins general elections. Republicans
knew that long before George Bush took up horseshoes and
pork rinds, and perhaps someday the Democrats will figure
it out.
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