The pendulum is swinging to left, and tonight it had a big push.

[Gothic Sponge]

I hope Kerry can be as electric as Clinton was tonight.

[swag]

1. Professor Schlesinger, Jr., I presume!

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

2. See I think the pendulum's BEEN on the left

it's just that you can't tell for the screaming from the repukes in control and the media whores who pimp themselves out for the repukes and their shrill screaming.

I think this country is WAAAAY more liberal than most people think.

Case in point: my little humble suburb. It's a burb of Dallas, Texas. 125,000 people or so. The superintendent of schools? Big Dem. 5 of the 7 school board members? Total Dems, total liberals. City Council? Same thing.

Gay couples live openly here. We have one of the biggest populations of lesbians of any neighboring cities. High Hispanic population. Very little tangible racial tension. Very little class warfare. It's a mostly blue-collar working class town. Unions are big-time strong here. The Dem organization in this city is big and active and has been for years. We're about to kick our 12 year old state rep who is a repuke out of office and elect a female Dem one. He is going down and fast. People, Dem and Rep alike, are totally bummed about losing Martin Frost, our state senator, because of that crappy redistricting.

People TOTALLY have a live and let live attitude in this city.

Oh sure we have our freeper element like any place, but damn they are quiet and sit very still in this city because it's hard to even find them!!!! When a total freeper religious nutcase woman on the school board ran her husband against another member (African American, Democrat), her husband lost 70% to 30%. Take THAT crazy wacked out fundie lady! And in 2006, she's totally going to be voted off.

They say some 80-90% of the teachers in this school district are Democrats. Many of the elderly here vote Dem, too.


See what I mean? And people don't bat an eye at how anyone is dressed or the bumper stickers on their cars. I am constantly disappointed at the LACK of reaction my liberal/Dem bumper stickers get. Harumph.

And they call this place TEXAS????

[TiredTexan]

3. I'm in North Richland Hills

north of Ft. Worth, and it's much more progressive than I expected. I have had several people ask me at the grocery store where they could get a Kerry sticker like mine. I've noticed a changed attitude in the last 6 months. People are really thinking, even in Texas.

What burb are you in?

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

4. Grand Prairie

that bastion of blue-collar, working class Joes. God bless 'em all.

My grandparents moved here in 1962 and we've been here ever since. It really is a great place to live. For all the reasons I listed above and more (location in the metroplex is fantastic).

Yeah, North Richland Hills isn't nearly as conservative as people would expect, but then Ft. Worth is more liberal than Dallas, on the whole. More laid-back, too, always has been.

Now if you get TOO rural in the Ft. Worth area, you run smack dab into Freeper Country. Same thing with if you go too far north of Dallas. Ewwww.

[TiredTexan]

6. I actually have a hard time

understanding folks when I venture too far out of town. The accents are so thick, I struggle to understand what they are saying. And I've lived in Texas all my life.

The worst place I ever lived was in Plano. Those folks are really, really different. Living there converted me from a lifelong republican into a radical liberal. Really. I realized rich people don't care about anyone but themselves, and for nothing but money and power. I moved to NRH in order to remove my children from the Plano schools, where girls bought a new wardrobe every weekend. Plano was also the teen suicide and heroin capital of the country.

To this day, Collin County refuses to fund any health care facilities for the poor, and so they all travel to Parkland in Dallas. Recently, Parkland has been turning them away unless their lives are in danger. Shortly before I moved, I attended a charity fundraiser and overheard a republican local politician say that Collin County would never provide funds for healthcare facilities for the poor because that would simply encourage them to live in Collin County and they wanted them to go back to Dallas and not trash up Plano. And she was not kidding.

Now, with the rescession, Plano is the bankruptcy capital of the US, with one of the highest rates of foreclosure. Couldn't happen to nicer folks. Nonetheless, even Plano seems to be having second thoughts about Bush, according to friends who still live there. Perhaps a depression is all that is needed to wake up the those not in the top 1%.

[NJCher]

8. those Plano people are amazing

We were watching Dateline or some other such program the other night when a story came on about a teenager who'd killed himself using steroids. When they revealed the kid was from Plano, my husband and I looked at each other and nodded, "that 'figgers."


Cher

[T Town Jake]

9. North Richland Hills???...

...I once lived there not so long ago, and I don't buy what you're peddling. It's about as Freeper-Central as you can get, IMHO. Unless 100,000 hippie refugees from San Francisco have moved into the area in the last few years...

[liberalmuse]

5. Salt Lake City...

The city itself is very liberal and I especially love the breed of liberals here! I think the rebelling against the being raised Mormon dynamic might have something to do with it. I didn't run across many liberals in Las Vegas--mostly rightish-leaning libertarian.

...I drove up in the Avenues a couple weeks ago in an EXTREMELY wealthy area and all I saw were liberal yard signs. Of course in my neighborhood just outside of the city it's whitebread repub.

...I found out an 84 year old lady I've been visiting with whenever I walk my dog, who is a staunch Mormon, btw, detests Bush and is hoping Kerry wins. 'That other guy before was good. What was his name again?' 'Clinton!' 'Yeah, that's the one! He was good.'

...My neighbors are a gay couple who had a baby. The University Hospital gave the partner full visitation rights and even set up a cot for her (there were complications and she and the baby had to stay awhile). I was surprised when they told me this. The lady who had the baby also works at a job that provides health insurance to gay couples.

...The Arlo Guthrie concert the other night was PACKED. Pinko liberal commies everywhere!

...Mayor Rocky Anderson is one of the most progressive mayors in the nation, and despite much controversy, he was re-elected.

Just a few examples.

[AndyTiedye]

7. I Hope So! The Pendulum Doesn't Seem to be Working Properly

[MadHound]

10. Sure it is.

We've got two men running who have both promised to keep the Iraq War going, who are both going to enact more tax cuts for the wealthy, who are both for "free" trade, neither of whom is going to roll back the excesses of the Patriot Act, both of whom are going to keep crushing the US population with draconian measures, all in the name of Homeland Security, and so forth and so on.

This isn't the pendulum swinging left friend, this is the good cop/bad cop routine playing out once more. I think it has been so long that the pendulum actually swung left that most people celebrate at a twitch. Don't fall for it.

[G_j]

11. The delgates are further left than the candidate(s) poll says

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0726-01.htm

Published on Monday, July 26, 2004 by the Boston Globe
Poll: Delegates, Kerry Differ on Key Issues
by Michael Paulson

They are united in their dislike of President Bush, and overwhelmingly confident that their candidate will defeat him in November.

But delegates to this week's Democratic National Convention differ with the presumptive nominee, John F. Kerry, in some key ways.Unlike Kerry, who opposes same-sex marriage, 62 percent of the delegates say gay and lesbian marriages should be allowed by law. And only 26 percent of delegates share the view expressed by Kerry -- a supporter of abortion rights -- that life begins at conception.

The delegates are also deeply critical of the war in Iraq. Kerry initially supported the war, but now questions the Bush administration's handling of it.

Eighty percent of those polled said they opposed the decision to go to war against Iraq at the time it began, and 95 percent say they now oppose the war. A majority of 63 percent want US troops out within two years; only one in four say the United States should stay as long as it takes to achieve administration goals.