"Forget the Heartland"

[RedSox02]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/11/04/heartland/index.html

I thought this was a great snippet from a column in Salon.com today. Not sure I agree with ditching the heartland, but the writer raises a great point.

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"By the time I had gone to bed, the chorus of pundits had fixed on a single tune, as they always do, and remarkably quickly, too. (Do they watch one another's feeds in the green room?) They had dusted off the old theme that the Democrats need to "reach out" more to the "heartland." Reach out? How, exactly? Forget that these folks blindly ignored all objective reality -- and their own best economic and national-security interests -- and voted for Bush. Look what they did at the Senate level. In Kentucky, they refused to use even basic sanity as a litmus test, and reelected a guy with apparent late-stage dementia; in Oklahoma, they tapped a fellow who wants to execute doctors who perform abortions, who was sued for sterilizing a woman against her will, who pled guilty to Medicaid fraud, and who largely opposes federal subsidies, even for his own state; in Louisiana, they embraced a man who has made back-door deals with David Duke and who was revealed to have had a long-running affair with a prostitute; in South Carolina, they went with a guy who thinks all gay teachers should be fired; and in Alaska, they reelected a woman who was appointed by her father to the job after a spectacularly undistinguished career as an obscure state senator. And compared with the rest of the GOP Class of '04, she's the freaking prom queen. These are the stellar elected officials that the "heartland" has foisted on the rest of us.

"Reach out" to these voters? Yeah. Then boil your hand till it's sterilized."
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[BillZBubb]

1. Marvelous, and I agree with the writer.

Every one of those southern senators is a moral disgrace. Yet the "moral" Sheeple elected them all over more qualified (and saner) Democrats. And everyone knew the facts.

There is nothing we can do to get people like that on our side, except to become Repukes.

Democrats must be Democrats. If it means being a minority party for decades, so be it. When the Repukes destroy the economy, we'll rebuild the nation.

[RedSox02]

2. exactly, what a joke those candidates are

The GOP should have been embaressed to even run those people. Bunning should have been an even bigger National story himself. The GOP certainly woudl have given a Dem in that condition a hard time. Fox News would have made him a huge target and a huge story.

[ThoughtCriminal]

3. I guess we could reach out to the least retarded 5% GOP vote

Might be enough.

[RedSox02]

4. That is a good idea actually

People like this author forget that in each of these races, the Dem candidate, in a heavily COnservative state, was within 10% of the vote. Swing 5% the other way and we have it. We just need to covnert 5% in each of these 'heartland states" and things look a lot different. We are not that far off.