In the comment section, SWR poses the question: “The real issue is how we win the knuckledraggers in the south without becoming like the knuckledraggers in the south.”
Good question from a very long-range strategic perspective, but I think it’s the wrong one for the here-and-now.
Right now, this dogfight is about 100,000 votes.
This is not D-Day. This is not the Apollo program. Hell, this is not even the Pope’s funeral. This is about 100,000 votes.
Yes, the South is the problem. No, the South is THE problem. If I had a “Wayback Machine” and could take one trip back, I’d haul ass to 1865 loaded for bear (sort of the opposite of the plot of the very good “Guns of the South”) and demand that the de-Nazification of the Confederacy be thorough and final. Southern racism and the perverse White Privilege Ideology and theology they invented to rationalize their racism is (and always has been) the biggest single source of misery for this country.
It is the headwaters of a hundred other sins. Every time some Right Wing Mole Rat pops out of the ground to denounce, well, Reality, he always wraps his bile up in the yummy yummy bacon of Almighty God. Consider what a typical Son of the South -- the trial judge said in the case of Loving v. Virgina (1958) – write when he ruled against the right of consenting adults of different races to marry:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
Subtitute the “gay” for “race” and I dare you to tell me that these squamous tubs of righteous stupidity have changed one iota in the last 50 years. Or in the last 100. Or 200. Their spoor is always the same and always easy to smell:
1. Some group to hate and blame for their fucked up lives.
2. Scripture that lets the believe that they have a Divine Right to be ignorant fucktards.
3. Some means of enforcing their will (Nooses, guns, burning crosses, fellow travelers in the courts and government.)
4. A propaganda machine to Say It Loud (pulpit, floor of the House, Fox News, Hate Radio.)
But we have three major political parties in this country: Democratic, Republican and Dixiecrat...and the NeoConfederates only survive by hopping from party to party like the opportunistic disease that they are. If we were having this discussion a century ago, I would have been a staunch Republican – a Lincoln Man and proud of it (and burned as a witch for blogging during the administration of Teddy Roosevelt.) But the perverse truth is that the Party of Lincoln is now the Party of Jeff Davis, and the Stars-and-Bars now fly over the grave of the Great Emancipator.
There are a lot of reasons why my politics are the way they are, and case-by-case I may side with a variety of surprisingly different groups, but in this case it’s easy. I look to see where the cross-burners, Fundies, militia goons, clinic bombers and racists have made their nests. Then I run like Hell in the opposite direction...and these days that’s more than enough for me to vote (D) almost every time.
But for now, fuck the South. Thinking about how to deal with them -- writ large -- is too vast. First, we have to win, and winning means 100,000 votes, and they key to that is around the edges.
The “moderate” Republicans I know are horrified by DeLay and Santorum and Terry and the rest. They thought they were voting for tax cuts. And Law and Order. And getting to keep the Glock they like fondling. Even though they had been warned (pedantically, by me among others) they really, truly never believed that the Right Wing was dangerous, and never noticed that the Fundies are about as fundamentally opposed to the original principles of the GOP as you can get.
So what’s the plan?
These people need to stay home in disgust next time around, or be so terrified of the fact that Randall Terry is now the Madam of the GOP Whorehouse that they’ll vote Democrat or Independent even though they believe that they might go to hell for it. And our job is to keep pounding away at them, personally, face-to-face. They voted for this shit and we need to hang it in all its stinking glory around their necks at every opportunity. And thanks to the towering arrogancy and rabidity of the Ultras, making this case gets easier and easier every day.
Never again let them get away with saying, “But I didn’t KNOW?”
Of course you knew. How could you possibly not know? And if you are that fucking ignorant of the A-B-C’s of your own party, what in the Hell are you doing within a country mile of a voting booth?
And more importantly, now that you DO know about it, what are you going to do about the mess you made? Or don’t you believe in “Personal Responsibility?” Man, they hate that :-)
100,000 votes is nothing. It’s a margin or error. It’s two Chicago wards.
So let’s go get ‘em!
Next up: Can this blogger stitch together dildos, killdeers and recess nominations? Stay tuned...
68 comments:
As someone who's lived all 41 years south of the Ohio River, I feel unfairly slapped by the broad brush. I'm sure I'll get over it.
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As someone who's lived all 41 years south of the Ohio River, I feel unfairly slapped by the broad brush. I'm sure I'll get over it.
Sorry, especially since your role as progressive/liberal/whatever-we're-called in the South is especially important.
There are decent people everywhere that vote GOP and that can be "gotten" if they are worked methodically, directly and firmly. They fish around for reasons to pretend that the Bad Guys aren't really all that bad...or they're far, far away...or they're not really responsible.
Our job is to take those reasons away from them and to continue to highlight the dissonance bewteen GOP principles and deeds until their ears bleed. And living where you do, that job falls with special urgency to you.
Ok, I'm gonna gush here for a second time.
Drifty, your prose reminds me of something that was once said about Raymond Chandler: "[He] writes like a slumming angel."
'Nuff said.
Hola, Tanbark, and welcome.
The paint's still wet and the furniture's arriving (like every other effing thing but debt) by slow freighter from Bejing, but here it is.
I took your suggestion and added my email address to my profile in case anyone want's to shout out that way.
As to sending specific post addresses, one is supposed to be able to click on the email icon next to the comments line to send a post out to others.
Me? I just bop down through the index of posts (or the archives) on the right side of the page, click on same, and copy/paste (Now a verb: "To Bloomie" something) the corresponding address that pops up into URL window in to my email. Old fashioned? Old school?
Now if I could just figure out what this light switch does?
100,000 votes is nothing. It’s a margin or error. It’s two Chicago wards.
The problem that anybody who's ever gone to a college with a bad football team will recognize is that it's never really that close as the close score will indicate.
The reason I brought up the South wasn't because I hated it (the way that rather bizarre person in the previous thread seems to think) but because it's the equivalent of spotting the other team points before you've begun.
Every state outside the South (except for Utah) is competative. New York and California could conceivably go red a long time before Mississippi could go blue.
That's the problem. We could win Ohio the next time and lose New Jersey and Minnesota. The Republicans have no chance of losing any state in the South.
The key question for me seems to be:
How much of the Republican lock on the South is dependent upon a culture liberals can't appeal to without giving up their ideals as liberals and how much of it is simply bad organization?
For example, Chicago isn't really "liberal" in any sense of the word. New Jersey isn't "liberal" but in both cases, the Republicans have bad organizations so they can't compete.
Now the question for the Republicans is "can we win Illinois without giving up our right-wing ideals?"
Is it a bad organization or is it something intrinsic in our identity.
Same with us and the South. Are there any states with can pick off? (eg Arkansas or Tennessee?)
And living where you do, that job falls with special urgency to you.
Nashville? It's deep blue, compared to most of the state. So's Memphis. Between those two cities, that's nearly 50% of the state's population, I believe.
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I do, also think, that until we get a verifiable, user-auditable ballot trail (a/k/a Athan Gibbs TrueVote system), all this talk about what states are gainable, etc., is premature. Not to mention beside the point.
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Nashville? It's deep blue, compared to most of the state.
Sorry, but you'll have to move :-)
Actually, Illinois is very much the same way: more unipolar, but still deep red when you get south of the Chicago suburbs. I go to Springpatch on business often and bend their country mouse ears about "why are you voting GOP?" every trip.
Yes, we need changes to the mechanics of the voting process..and the way polls are set up, and the way voting rolls are handled.
My point was more that the situation is not as bad as some of my doomsaying liberal brethren seem to believe. The Moderates and the Wingnuts are two drunks leaaning on each other, neither able to stagger over the finish line on their own. Disrupt that relationship even a little, and we win.
Move? That's like not staying to fight the good fight! Personally, I'm not ready to give up on TN just yet (2000 data).
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My point was more that the situation is not as bad as some of my doomsaying liberal brethren seem to believe. The Moderates and the Wingnuts are two drunks leaaning on each other, neither able to stagger over the finish line on their own. Disrupt that relationship even a little, and we win.
We can do without Ohio and Florida (probably lost causes).
We need to keep everybody we got in 2004 (including the borderline states in the north Midwest) and pick up at least one state in the West and one state in the South.
New Mexico + Arkansas?
Arizona + Tennessee
Who is perfectly solid for the Democrats?
Illinois and California most likely. And the Northeast is most likely as solidly in the Democratic camp as the South is in the Republican. I don't think Kerry's being a local helped im take New Hampshire. I think it's a permanent addition to the "blue" camp. And if the Republicans run someone as horrible as Schundler for governer in New Jersey there's nothing to worry about there either. Pennsylvania's a question mark, as are Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota.
So perhaps the real question is, how much did the Terri Schiavo case hurt the Republicans? How much does their association with out and out fascists hurt them?
Part of the reason to be optimistic, actually, is the fact that we almost won with John Kerry, and he wasn't the strongest candidate out there.
Who's going to run in 2008? Can someone like Richardson or Wesley Clark keep Hillary and Kerry from screwing things up?
jp:
Howdy, neighbor. Thanks for the map link.
One thing I noticed is that while urban Nashville is solidly blue, the bedroom communities (whose population has mushroomed in the last couple of decades) are very much in the Repug column. So maybe we've just been attracting too many of the wrong kind of Yankee.
Let me be the first, then, to propose a new foundation, whose mission will be to encourage Northern liberals to emigrate south of the Mason-Dixon line. (You listening, Mr. Soros?)
Seriously, though, I think jp is quite right, when he says the Dems shouldn't give up on Tennessee. I'm not that old, but I can remember when we had both senators and the majority of the House delegation. And these were not Dixiecrats -- moderate to conservative, yes, but nothing like the down-home little redneck creeps and corporate zombies infesting today's political scene.
The biggest problem for the Democrats is that they've allowed themselves to be defined by their enemies for the past three decades. Try driving through the South (or pretty much any rural area) nowadays, and it's Rush or Right-Wing Jeebus on the radio. I could be completely wrong, but I think there's a tremendous potential here for some ass-kicking Democratic populists to even the odds.
prof fate -- The thing to remember about maps (other than to change your ink cartridge before your big National Press Club panel, so your red states aren't green) is that unless adjusted by population density, the area fill color is misleading, at best. Davidson County doesn't look "all that blue," looking at area fill, but blue won the day in 2000 & 2004.
The U.S. map that is 90% red neglects to mention that in the red areas, cows outnumber people by sixteen-to-one.
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Jeffraham Prestonian,
That's the very fight we're constantly having with Springpatch. They insist that mapping be done geographically. We point out that "acreage" doesn't use services, go to school or work three jobs, so that maybe mapping by population density would be more appropriate.
They're a cow-town that never got over the fact that Chicago is roughly 30 times their size.
On the plus side, Springfield really is near a town called Shelbyville..which makes for some fine Simpsons-based humor.
drifty -- Springfield. The fight is over... what, exactly?
Sorry if I'm just slow on the uptake. :)
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jeffraham prestonian
Your point about the "90% red" map is well taken and in general sense quite true, but not for these particular areas of inflammation. Surely you're not going to claim the Brentwood/Franklin and Hendersonville corridors are sparsely populated? If so, then maybe it's been a while since you've driven out that way...
Besides, once you get beyond the extended suburbs, Middle Tennessee itself is pretty consistently blue (though a paler shade) and these are definitely rural areas.
So I'd say my observation about the type of suburbanite we've been attracting still stands. The Sunbelt cities have seen the greatest growth in their suburbs, and -- for whatever reason -- these areas tend to go all red and irritated when it comes time to vote.
Jeffraham Prestonian,
Sorry, I was unclear. Basically funding for...almost everything. Allocation of resources. What information to use usefully track and collect to determine if services are being used and, if not, how to redeploy them. How should "success" be measured?
Most Federal money comes through the state government. There's always a fight over Chicago getting "too much" so fairly framing the debate over how things are measured and distributed is critical.
prof fate -- No; I know those areas are growing, but I'd be willing to bet the population density is still like 50-60% what it is in the deep blue areas of Nashville, proper. Lots of big-ass homes, on large lots != many more voters.
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jeffraham prestonian
Well, since metro Nashville has a larger percentage of land devoted to commercial development, I'd say it's probably a wash, with the more built-up sections of places like Brentwood and Williamson County having a slightly lower pop density.
Besides, the latest trend with the McMansions is a postage-stamp size yard, not the expansive tracts more typical of high-income development prior to the late 70s.
Whatever. Unless we have a pop. density overlay on the electoral map, there's really no way to determine who's right. (Plus, I'm not really certain what we're arguing about, anymore.)
I'll leave it at this: Isn't debating population density (at least as applied to electing a President) somewhat pointless, as long as we have the Electoral College?
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