Election 2004
The recent Newsweek poll says 86% of Republicans will vote to re-elect Bush and 10% will not; among Democrats the percentages are precisely reversed. Which means the election will be determined by the Independent vote. The independent vote (with no actual Democrat candidate) is 50% against Bush, 43% in favor. There is the Democrats' opening. If the Democrats can forget about their liberal base for a while and start thinking about how to appeal to the Independents, they will actually have a chance. Howard Dean was right when he tried to reach out to working-class Southerners, only to be slapped down by John Edwards and the other Democratic candidates who are desperately searching for any stupid trick to slow down Dean. Even tricks which shoot the entire Democratic Party in the foot. But Dean was on to something, and it is vitally important to the future of the Democratic Party.

What working-class Southerners need to understand is that guys like Pat Robertson are Republicans not because they are preachers, upholding good old-fashioned American values, but because he is a multi-millionaire media mogul and so his interests are very much being served by Republican policies. Democrats need to be populists because they need to take back good old-fashioned American values. These values appeal to that huge segment of independent voters who determine the outcome of Presidential elections. Democrats also need to make it clear they are the friends of small business--it is just the Enrons of the world who are the enemies of working people. And it is the Enrons who ought to be our enemies, not business in general, and certainly not the millions of small businesses which are the heart of our economy. This life is, and has always been, a struggle between the rich, powerful and privileged and the rest of us. It is when the Democrats represent the rest of us--ALL the rest of us--that they are successful. And let the Republicans call this "class warfare" if they want. Our reply should be, "class warfare is the only kind of warfare civilized people ought to be engaging in."

Yes, there is tension over race between the Southern working class part of the Democratic coalition, and the liberal part of the coalition. But there was tension over this same issue when FDR first put the Democratic coalition together; but folks then understood that it was more important to unite around what they agreed about than to splinter over what they did not. This is a lesson the Democrats better learn again if they ever plan to elect another President.

Actually, what the Democrats need is Lyndon Johnson without the Vietnam War. They need a candidate with a liberal heart and populist sensibilities. Lyndon Johnson was the last guy to be it perfectly. We could elect him today in a landslide. The problem with Dean--who wants to be a populist--is that he doesn't really have any manure on his shoes. Governors of Vermont are not exactly the kind of politicans who can easily appeal to the guys in the pickup trucks. Taking off your jacket and rolling up your shirt-sleeves isn't enough. There is more to it than that, and Dean touched on something real for a moment, only to be reminded again that political correctness on race is the third-rail of Democratic politics--the one we use to electrocute ourselves.

When Dean said he wanted the vote of the guys with the confederate flags on their pickup trucks he was absolutely right. That is precisely the issue the Democrats need to emphasize to be successful again. They have to rebuild the old FDR coalition, which consisted of Jews, blacks, liberals and poor working class urban dwellers and poor working class Southerners. We have lost the Southerners and many of the working class urban dwellers, who are now mostly working class suburbanites. We have to get them back or we will never win a national election again. Dean should have stood up the liberals in the party and said to them, "You're damn right I want the votes of the Southerners. They have a common economic interest with everyone who is left out in the Republicans' vision of prosperity for the rich." "You're damn right we need their votes. We want them in the Democratic Party again. I say to my hard working conservative brothers and sisters in the South, come home to your party. Come home to the party of Franklin Roosevelt. Come home to the party of your granddaddies. Come home, you are welcome."

This is the Democrats' only hope, and Dean lost his nerve. Shame on him. But shame, mostly, on the Democratic Party for making political correctness on race its effete preoccupation. And shame on John Edwards and the other Democratic candidates for using political correctness as a weapon to attack their own.

11/21/03