If the Democratic Party adopts a geographic strategy, i.e. forgetting Dixie…

[WCGreen]

And further adds to the divisiveness of the political culture….

Then how can we claim to be better representatives of America than the republicans???

Remember, Dean has adopted a 50 state strategy…

Of course we won’t win in all fifty states…

But to write off states because they are in the “Dixie” subset, has no room in the party that elected Dean as chairman….

By being a national party, we are forced to put forth a national vision. We are forced to address core problems that are in line with that vision. Then and only then can Democrats develop the national solutions we all crave…

[brentspeak]

1. No one's going to let that happen

[lastknowngood]

2. From an old souther boy I can tell you why. because most of those

good old boys in dixie don't believe in America or anything close to it. They believe in haltered bigotry ignorance and intolerance with a liberal dose of misogyny thrown in. They are stupid and proud of it.

[WCGreen]

4. Maybe the good ol boys...

But in the more cosmopolitan areas of the south, there is a growing democratic presence...

[cdsilv]

5. As a southerner, and someone who's lived south of I-10 for 20 years....

...I take exception to your comment. We're not ALL stupid. In fact, most of us are somewhat smart.

We are tired of government by and for the corporations - many of us don't see a way out.

I live in a military community and most of my neighbors hate bush with a passion normally reserved for our 'enemies'.


I hope we surprise you and turn blue this election cycle - GOP vote theft be damned!

[lastknowngood]

9. I can understand your confusion. If you live in one of the few large

cities, but I'm talking about the majority of the fools who never left the 40's or 50's mentality. I still love the south and most of the culture but to say that most of them ain't repug loving morans is naive. My family is still there and I will retire there but it will be with the knowledge that I will be alone intellectually and politically.

[lonehalf]

37. I have said on this board many times...

...that as far as Georgia is concerned there is no 50 state strategy - it's a 49 state strategy.

I can't speak for other states.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. And even this problem has solutions.......

We can't fix it overnight, of course.

We fix it steadily over time, with better schools and teachers who have more progressive ideas...

And slowly, ever so slowly, the old good old boys will die, and leave the youngsters who are hopefully more progressive than their elders were...

I believe that this could happen, with the proper attention given.

I hope......

[sandyd921]

43. Good post

We have to think long term. I agree with Dean's 50 state strategy, but it's not an immediate fix. We have to be willing to invest for the future. In the meantime I suspect that we will see increasing infillitration of progressive ideas and wins in local and state races even if we don't get the big ones right away.

[Clark2008]

38. Not most of the one's I know.

And I live here.

I don't know where you're from, but I knew quite a few white guys who aren't racist. More than not.

That's a tired, cliched stereotype.

[Mojambo]

3. I have no problem with the Democratic party going to those areas

But they need to meet us half-way.

[blm]

7. Stick w/ Dean. No more of McAuliffe's collapse the party in redstates strategy

It was bullshit in 2000, 2002, and 2004.

Where the fock do they THINK the election process gets secured and votes counted? It has to be from a STRONG party infrastructure in EVERY COUNTY in EVERY STATE.

[salin]

41. indeed - my red state might just be a big part of handing the House

over to the Dems. Here in Indiana (sometimes called the most northern, southern state), we seem poised to throw out three sitting republicans. Are we likely to vote Dem for president? Probably not (haven't since 1964), but we might just keep sending more dems to DC - and we shouldn't be written off.

[Warpy]

8. It would be a shame if they did

since the south is slowly beginning to get over its love affair with the bigots, homophobes, sexists and sanctimonious frauds in the GOP.

The real moron corridor stretches from Texas due north to the Dakotas, with side trips to Utah, Idaho and Wyoming.

[WCGreen]

10. And the Texans are spreading to Colorado as well....

But we must not abandon any state....

[Warren Stupidity]

11. It is not 'write off the south' it is 'marginalize religious zealots'.

Make the GOP the party of the religously insane.

[Hippo_Tron]

12. IMO, it's not civil rights alone, Reagan had a lot to do with it

Civil rights did allow the GOP to begin to take over the south. But remember that in 1976 Carter won almost every southern state except for Virginia, interestingly now the most blue southern state now with the exception of Florida. Carter wasn't against civil rights, either. He even had his predecessor in the Governor's mansion running against him on the American Independence ticket but he still swept the south with a coalition of black and white voters.

Johnson's prediction that we would lose the south for a generation due to civil rights was way over-estimating it if you factor in just civil rights alone. Hell we didn't even lose some southern states at all until way after the civil rights movement. Texas, for example, voted for Johnson, Humphrey, and Carter. Only until Reagan did it start really trending red. Reagan is the other half of the reason that we have such a hard time winning there now. He convinced people that the social welfare system and "welfare queens" were the cause of their economic woes and won a lot of them over on abortion and gays as well.

The south has a history of opposing big federal government programs even before the civil rights era. During the 1930's, FDR had a lot of trouble getting some Democrats to support the New Deal and many of them were from the south. He even attempted to purge many of them in primaries in 1938 but he failed mostly.

[WCGreen]

15. Most of the people in place in 1964 were still incumbents

by 1976...

Many until 1994 when the Republicans took over...

remember, the Senate switched back and forth several times....

[Clark2008]

39. Clinton did as well

This belief that the South is "red" is relatively a new one.

[Hippo_Tron]

42. To a certain extent, yes

But I think that some of that was largely a reflection of his popularity in general. The sad thing is that much of the political ground that we won back in the 90's, we lost again in 2002 and 2004. Georgia is a prime example of this.

Also, I would like to see someone elected who will govern to the left of Clinton. Not too much to the left of him, but to the left in several key places. Doing so might cripple that candidate's ability to compete in the south like Clinton did.

[ACK]

13. 50 State Strategy works - Tennesse and close VA races good examples - but here is the key

Listen any coalition in the South has to be between highly educated whites more likely to be liberal than others in the South, African American citizens, hispanics citizens who are becoming a bigger force, soccer mom women from the Southern big city burbs and a small but significant number of poor whites who are just too damn dogged by life to give a fuck about race as a hate issue.

Sounds crazy? No it can happen but its a pretty diverse coalition and reaching out to all these groups and tying their interests together would be very difficult and require a lot of planning.

[mitchtv]

14. I have little hope for TN and VA

I hope I am wrong

[WCGreen]

16. I fear we will lose both....

But that they will be closer than they should have been....

[AspenRose]

17. It isn't good to leave potential black democratic candidates hanging

because they happen to be in the south.

Look at what's happening to Harold Ford.

If for no other reason than to neutralize the racists who would never vote for a black candidate in a million years......and to counter the hate-filled campaigns the GOP is GUARANTEED to throw at said candidates (they've demonstrated this over and over).....Democrats have got to regroup and retake the south.

[WCGreen]

18. Here Here......

[mitchtv]

26. Not by giving up our values

Dino is one thing; scumbags like Beebe in ARK deserve to lose.

[WCGreen]

28. If someone is corupt....

Then we should not support that person...

[Zhade]

19. Just as long as we include equal rights for all and a woman's right to control her body...

...fine.

Otherwise, buzz off.

[sandnsea]

20. The south doesn't like the national vision

They don't like abortion. They don't like gays. They don't like gun regulation. They don't like progressive taxes. They don't like social services. They don't like keeping church out of government. They don't like government.

So pray tell, exactly what is it that we're going to build a national vision on??

I agree we need to be in every state, but if nobody is talking about further left politics, then I don't expect any wins in the south any time soon.

[tkmorris]

21. I disagree

You're right about some of the things the South doesn't care for. No they DON'T care about gay marriage. They really don't like gun regulation. And yes, they do tend to be a bit more religious.

They do however use, and like, many social services. They don't give a tinker's damn about progressive taxes, most of them don't really care about the concept, just as most Northerners don't. They want THEIR taxes to be lower, but then we as Democrats want that too. The taxes that need raising are the ones on people other than your average Southerner.

You can sell em on our tax vision. You can definitely sell them on Social Security. Plus you can talk about other things that matter to them, like jobs. Minimum wage. Labor Unions. Outsourcing. Values. And by this I mean REAL values, the kind we have that made us Dems in the first place, not the phony variety offered up by the crooks on the other side of the aisle.

You see, when you get right down to brass tacks, we are the party that most matches those Southern ideals. The Repubs pretend to them, and once upon a time they sold them on the idea that Repubs were more like them, while the Dems were either Northeastern metrosexuals or San Francisco gay rights activists. The idea is absurd of course but since we didn't bother to go down there and challenge it it took root. Now those roots are rotting due to the Repubs excess and arrogance. We will never get a better chance to win them back home to us.

Here's an example of what I mean. Garrison Keillor is Dem to his core. He is also quite popular in the South. Why? Because he espouses simple human values. Love, caring, family. They identify with that and so do I. We allowed the Repubs to lay claim to these concepts once upon a time, believing apparently that no one in their right mind would believe them. But, in our absence, they did. It's high time to take them back.

[brentspeak]

22. Good post, tk

:dem:

[sandnsea]

24. Low taxes, small government

First, no, many Democrats do not buy into automatic 'low taxes' campaigns when they know their schools and health and courts and cops are under-funded. I've had conversations with DU southerners when they had tax and school measures on their ballots, and they almost always vote against any kind of tax. They buy into flat tax and other schemes and reject higher tax brackets for higher incomes. It's how they end up increasing taxes on themselves, they reject progressive tax in principle. It matters.

Second, southerners I've known have been more inclined to reject unions and minimum wage and required health insurance and the like. I didn't say they reject Social Security, I said they reject social programs. Government health care. Government anything. I've heard too many Katrina survivors say get the government out of the way and just let them rebuild and they'll be fine. Almost every time there's a minimum wage debate, some southerner will argue that nobody makes minimum wage in whatever booming southern economy they live in, the 'free market' works just fine.

Third, they've got no clue on environmental and other business regulatory issues. I've talked with some who didn't even recognize there are other ways to manage national forests besides cutting all the trees down and replanting. That's normal to them and perfectly acceptable, for instance.

There are huge differences even between southern Democrats and Democrats in the rest of the country, on all issues. Garrison Keillor tells nice stories about nice families in small towns. Yes I think those families are better off because of Democratic policies. But Democrats IN the south don't even stand up for those policies all the time, so there's nothing to build on for a national campaign.

And note I haven't even got into issues like strict child rearing and Ten Commandments in schools and the well-groomed southern woman and the insistence that there's no racism and all the rest.

Again, I support building the party in the south. But people should be prepared for what we'll get and that's a more centrist national party because that's the only way southern Dems can win. I am sick of people screaming at the Democratic Party for centrist positions and then turning around and screaming at the party for abandoning the south. It's irrational. And if liberal Dems IN the south want to move the south to the left, THEY are going to have to do it because it cannot be done from the outside.

[Zhade]

32. Centrism is fine - to a point. That point includes our rights.

We will not allow the party to come to the point where they embrace oppression of GLBT folk, or the restriction of a woman's inherent right to control her body, in order to win a dubious victory where we don't gain equality for all and protect everyone's rights.

That's simply not going to happen. If that's where people want the party to go, they do so without my vote and without my support.

[WCGreen]

23. I have a little news.....

The country, as a whole, is neither liberal nor conservative...

It is, and always will be, pragmatic...

In other words, what's in it for me...

That's what politics all boils down to....

[sandnsea]

25. morals vs. money

Money doesn't always win that debate, ask any gay person who chooses marriage over tax cuts.

[WCGreen]

27. Well, when we get Civil Unions.....

Then that will take care of that...

[sandnsea]

29. No, because it's not gay marriage

And is an example of what I was talking about, not the entire basis of the southern moral values vote.

[WCGreen]

30. So if you were offered Civil Unions, which will afford ..

all the protection of a marriage, you wouldn't take it...

It has to be 100% your way or you will not even talk about it....

Am I getting right....

[sandnsea]

31. Has nothing to do with me

Has to do with what I've been told by gay rights activists.

And again, that was an issue to make a point. Pragmatism only goes so far. People really do vote morals over money, quite often.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

33. Indeed they do......

Just look at the book "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

They will vote contrary to their own economic interests once they've been convinced that this is vital to their own well-being. Even when it isn't.

[mitchtv]

34. there is no almost equal

its like slightly pregnant



believe me I'd take a real civil union any day. I just don't want to lose my home as a senior when/if partner dies.(property reassesment/gift tax etc_)

[bemildred]

35. Fifty states, nothing less. nt

[Polemonium]

36. Absolutely, you've got to show up, to stand up....

:)

[ClassWarrior]

40. You're right, it's probably better to divide us beforehand with a...

...hypothetical "if" statement, to which none of us has any answer. :eyes:

NGU.