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The flap over Howard Dean's Confederate-flag remarks
illustrates why the Democratic Party is in trouble these
days. Dean, a former governor of Vermont, told an Iowa
newspaper that I still want to be the candidate for guys
with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks. We can't
beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section
of Democrats.
As far as I'm concerned, we should encourage the burning
of Confederate flags. To me, the stars and bars
symbolizes little except treason and racism, and it's at
least as offensive as a swastika.
But not everyone regards that flag with same disgust that I feel, and Dean was talking about my demographic group: economically challenged rural white guys who don't have college degrees. And he was saying he wants his party to appeal to more voters, which is how parties win elections.
Now, I don't think it should be too hard for a Democratic candidate to make the case that the Bushites, even if they profess to admire the wholesome values of us rural white guys in our beater trucks, are actually practicing class warfare against us. Just look at who benefits from the Bush tax cuts, consider whose children are most likely to go off to war while Halliburton rakes in the money, or ponder who lost jobs since the Bushites gained power.
But instead of agreeing with Dean that the Democrats
would do well to find a way to appeal to that constituency,
the other candidates jumped all over him. In response, he
pointed out that The only way we're going to beat George
Bush is if southern white working families and
African-American working families come together under the
Democratic tent.
Now, he could be wrong about that. There might be other ways to beat George Bush, or might be that Americans so love the prospect of going even deeper into debt to attack and occupy even more countries that George Bush will be unbeatable next year.
However, that's not the approach the other Democratic candidates took. They seem to think there's something wrong with attempting to get votes from rural white guys.
Daniel Kemmis said pretty much the same thing last
weekend in Gunnison. Kemmis, a former Montana legislator
and former mayor of Missoula, is the author of a fine book,
Community and the Politics of Place.
Speaking at the annual Headwaters Conference at Western
State College, he said that the national Democratic party
is good at identity politics,
such as unions,
feminists, ethnic groups, etc., but that doesn't add up
to a majority in the interior,
and national Democrats
haven't figured out how to appeal a Western
identity.
And perhaps they don't want to; the Democratic Party
appears to have written off the rural
population.
He pointed out that in Montana, there are dozens of
timber towns that used to be Democratic strongholds, and
now they vote Republican.
The major problem there, he
said, is that the national Democratic party is tied to
national environmental groups, and slogans like Zero
Cut
(in National Forests) and Cattle Free
(on
public lands) mean Death to Democrats
in rural
areas.
In the 1970s, he said, our environmental movements
were local.
As I recall, much activism then represented
local people trying to fight against big national and
international companies -- strip miners, clear-cutters,
toxic mills, etc. In other words, it was local people
trying to have a voice in what was happening around
them.
Today, those big companies are still around, and in the coal-bed methane zones, they're about as popular as child molesters. But on the ground, the national environmental groups are often just another big outside force that tries to push the locals around.
And in a practical sense, if you want some control over the area you live in, it really doesn't matter whether you're fighting against the national Democrats allied with United Tree-Huggers of the Universe, or the national Republicans allied with the Engulf & Devour Global Conglomerate.
In either case, you're relatively powerless, and if you happen to be in the Interior West, neither national party is really advocating your interests since, as Kemmis noted, the Republicans are under corporate control and the Democrats dance to the tune of national environmental groups who delight in litigating to destroy local agreements on public-land management.
Kemmis hoped that someday the national Democratic Party would start paying attention to rural voters.
But that day is likely a long ways off, at least if you judge by the other candidates' response to Howard Dean's expressed desire to broaden the party's base.
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