Reply #26: Do They Know Us at All? [View All]

[Hidden Stillness]

I also agree with Sen. Reid's comments, and have actually been pleasantly surprised by Reid as a leader, even though I don't agree with many of Reid's opinions. If you pay any attention to C-SPAN's coverage of debate on the floor of the Senate, you've probably already heard Sen. Reid stand up, fight these people, and keep it up. I wasn't sure about Reid's soft-spoken manner up against these throat-slitting Republican devils, but I have been very pleasantly surprised. You don't have to be loud and pushy, you just have to fight them. It takes courage and will. (By the way, the poster Houstonian--or, excuse me, " 'Bostonian' "--is a Republican operative plant, if anyone was not able to tell. Read post #24, for some phony, duplicitous "wide-eyed innocence." These bastards are destroying the reality of everything.)

I also believe that the national Party has been bizarrely distant and unaware of our (upper Midwest, where we elect Democrats all the time ) way of life, and often fall into the media-set trap of believing we are not that liberal, and just about to vote Repub at any moment, when really we are some of the most radical people in the country, they just don't bother to relate to us. I do not mean the fact that Kerry came from the Northeast, either. Many of the greatest families ever--the Roosevelts and Kennedys, to name just two--came from the NE, and I am sick of the Republican tactic of destroying the total reputation of whole regions of the country just to manipulate elections. Since when is New England not respected anymore as the birthplace of the nation? Since the capitalist pimp casually fucked around with yet another slander.

Often, DLC-type Democrats don't even know what our issues and problems are. We are the "Rust Belt," suffering great industrial job losses, with no replacement, and struggle to make ends meet with two (or three) crappy, back-breaking minimum-wage jobs; we are farm families, squeezed to death by agribusiness and ignorant legislation, such as the killing of subsidies, etc. Yet too often, when national Dems speak to us, they use this shorthand phrasing--"Health care!" "Outsourcing!" etc.--with no elaboration, which indicates they either do not even know what the problems are, or have no intention of helping. There is a strongly felt opinion here that all the "national/DLC" types believe they and their "cosmopolitan culture" are superior to us. Referring to "Red state America" only makes it all worse--What the hell does it mean? It makes it frighteningly alien, which is what "they" want. "How are you supposed to appeal to these people--go to car races??"

About a month after the election, there was a panel on C-SPAN on the future of the Democratic Party, and this Al From actually said, toward the end, "You know, I sort of look at trade as the spice in a savory stew." Huh? When somebody like that is doing the strategic planning for our party, you know we are going to be so far off the mark, that you will end up with this infuriating, corporate "plan" of having Kerry only go to about 20 states during the whole campaign. WHY...? You have to wonder how many elections we have lost because of this peculiar, cut-off-from-the-real-world decision-making. During Al Gore's 2000 run, I got countless phone messages from those taped vote appeals; it was very heavy. During Kerry's campaign, I got one, and not from Kerry's campaign. More lazy sloppiness? It wouldn't surprise me if, as others on this thread have noted, we don't lose because anyone disagrees with us so much as that we lose because of this horrible, long-term "top- down" neglect of the entire Party structure.

This is a huge topic, but regardless, I agree that the whole Midwest, South, etc. base of the Party has been ignored for a long time. How fucking many times do we need to beg, "Raise the minimum wage!"