Deer Hunting with Jesus

[Wiregrass Willie]

This book review by Fred Reed got me thinking about how the Republicans stole one of the Democratic Parties most solid voting constituencies -- the Redneck. They voted solid Democratic until 1980. We need to steal them back !

All we have to do is point out to them how much they have lost under the GOP. And they lost a bunch.

Deer Hunting with Jesus, by Joe Bageant

Bageant knows what he is talking about. I know he does because I grew up mostly in small Southern towns and half-empty counties, including King George County, Virginia, a few hours from Winchester. Same people. I dated the girls and got drunk with the boys and saw how they lived. Those people worked. My best girlfriend in high school got up at four in the morning to help her father pull crab pots on the Potomac. She was pretty as any picture could hope to be, even with lots of imagination and on acid, but she could have thrown a Volkswagen over a four-storey building. They worked.

The thing is that people who went to college mostly don’t know about rednecks, or how many there are, or why they do what they do.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm

[The River]

1. Joe is a Socialist

and his writing cuts through all the corporate control and "politics as ususal" BS.
Go read them here: http://www.joebageant.com/joe/

The essays are linked on the left side.
Leters from readers and his replys in the center

[Wiregrass Willie]

10. Thanks

I had never heard of Joe until this morning. Looking over his essays, he appears to be a kindred spirit.

[qdemn7]

2. Real simple answers as to how to steal them back

When Democrats totally STFU about any and all Gun Control, especially about the "eeevvuull assault weapons".
When they state in the most profound terms that the Second Amendment is an Individual Right, and is not referring to the National Guard.
When they understand AND accept that owning guns is NOT about hunting, or target shooting, but rather defense of self, family and property.

[ikojo]

3. It's not only the second amendment people

are concerned about...the Democrats championed NAFTA, GATT and the WTO. Those trade treaties did NOTHING for working class Americans. The second amendment is a red herring used by the Republicans to mask their true economic agenda of transferring wealth from the 80% of Americans to the top 20% of Americans. Unfortunately there are too many Democrats who sign onto the Republican agenda.

[Catch22Dem]

4. It's not all about guns

Christian fundamentalism is prevalent in the South. They love their fundie candidates. Guns are just a piece of the puzzle that is the Southern voter.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. Plus many won't vote for "a Yankee"

I was told by our local Democratic County chair in 2004 that they weren't supporting Kerry because he "didn't like guns" (which showed their ignorance) and because "he was a Yankee". Funny, these same folks have no trouble taking our Yankee dollars to buy homes and land and their goods and services. Personally, I think the local chair should have been drummed out of office-he did NOTHING to help the Democrats except those at the county level-and they all lost.

[qdemn7]

8. It's not really a puzzle

It's the change that happened to the Democratic Party when they decided that "educated" white collar people in the urban areas, were more important than "uneducated" blue collar people in suburban and rural areas.

It's like the term "redneck". It's OK for me to call myself a redneck, but when people in the Northeast, Great Lakes or Western states use the term, for them it's a term of derision.

Why should people show any allegiance to those who think they are inferior?

[GeorgeGist]

11. Rednecks, as Bageant explains in detail, are dumber than dirt.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. But the Dems also have to tell them

in 2004, our local Democratic chairperson was so uneducated about the candidate's positions on guns, it was shocking. He said Kerry and Dean had never hunted-this a week after Kerry went hunting! When so-called "active Democrats" at the county committee level don't know anything about candidates (and didn't want to know), no wonder our message doesn't get out to the masses!

[bluerum]

7. I hear the fear,,, eom

[Wiley50]

9. I'm Reading, "Deerhunting With Jesus" Now

Joe sent me an advance copy because he mentions me in the acknowlegments on page 271.

Joe has always had his finger on the pulse of why working class americans ( and that class is much bigger than many understand because we all like to see ourselves as middle class, even when we aren't ) contiually vote repuke against their own interests, instead of voting democratic as they have traditionally done.

If we ever want to take back this country from the repukes, we have to first figure out how to bring these voters back into the democratic fold.

This book is a must read for any of us doing work for the party ( and all of us, really).

I hope that all beltway political consultants read this book and finally get it

[Wiregrass Willie]

12. Let's hope the consultants do a lot of reading

Joe has always had his finger on the pulse of why working class americans ( and that class is much bigger than many understand because we all like to see ourselves as middle class, even when we aren't ) contiually vote repuke against their own interests, instead of voting democratic as they have traditionally done.

I was beginning to think I was the only one who realized this about us Southerners. For some reason our people will almost *always* vote against their own self interest. I think it goes back to Plantation days when the small white farmer always deferred to the Planter. Mostly out of tribal instinct, imo. W. J. Cash had a lot to say about that. Too bad most Southerners don't read "Mind of the South".

If we ever want to take back this country from the repukes, we have to first figure out how to bring these voters back into the democratic fold.

This book is a must read for any of us doing work for the party ( and all of us, really).

I hope that all beltway political consultants read this book and finally get it
"That weren't no coyote. It was a fox!"

My sentiments exactly ! We have to get the South and the rest of Red Nation back in the fold of the Democratic Party. The best days of this country was when a coalition of rural South and Big City North controlled the Party -- and it controlled our country.