Carol M. Highsmith , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Mark M., Dave S., Mark O., Dennis C., Paul C., and Geoff Carter
Heads up:
As I recall few can access these NY Times links, but I think some can. If not I’ll nutshell it:
- First of all, an upbeat piece.
- Calming in its simple common-sense strategies.
- Context is this bright dem from rural SW Washington state that beat the long incumbent Republican. Marie Glusenkamp-Perez How’d she do it?
- I haven’t yet fully scrubbed the story, but got the gist pretty quickly, in a phrase, 2 year tech school skills.
- Now obviously that wasn’t the sole issue but it is a good metaphor for the overall campaign strategy of ditching the typical Dem/AOC/Bernie/Liz pitches. She held a little post state of the Union discussion at a high school and made some strategic invites—long time Rs. She wisely points out Biden’s missed opportunity of only using the word “rural” once in his speech. (Be interesting to see how many times Trump/DeSantis/etc… use it.)
- All one has to do is talk the issues that matter to locals. You don’t have to bring up the hot issues (critical race theory, abortion, trans….),rather, focus on what is top dead center to them—getting their kids a decent education, keeping them off opiods, making sure health care is reliable/affordable. In fact, IMO, given the idiocy of much of the Republican party, this is “easy pickins”. I think far too many of us surmise/believe/whatever…. that the majority of “rural folk” are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans and it is like moving a mountain to get them to vote blue. The article points to 4 other states where this worked, including Fetterman in PA.
Hope springs,
Dave.
Dave,
Thanks for sending this! Now we can get back to politics., my unhealthy obsession.
I am going to complain about this column’s default assumption, which is that Democrats are a bunch of woke-obsessed, baby killin’, LatinX-spoutin’ gun-haters, too blinded by their citified ways to appreciate Real America. I ain’t buyin’ it.
“… she is determined to stress those differences in a way that might help Democrats lure back some of the voters it has lost, even if it means getting a lot of puzzled looks and blank stares in the Capitol.”
“… some Democrats are still a little uncomfortable around someone who supports both abortion rights and gun rights, who has a skeptical take on some environmental regulations, and who has made self-sufficiency a political issue.”
“ She said there is a kind of “groupthink” at high levels of the party, a tribalism that makes it hard for new or divergent ideas to take hold.”
Sorry, I think this is lazy, weak journalism. He simply paints the entirety of the “National Dems” as zombie adjuncts of The Squad, bottling every fart from AOC and calling it perfume.
Yes, it’s true that Dems are struggling in rural America now. But this new congressperson is not the first & only Dem to address rural issues. For example, Ron Kind just retired from his House seat of 20 years in the LaCrosse area. (My daughter worked as his scheduler a few years ago.). He is not a wonderful, caring, charismatic person. Far from it. But he knows Ag issues cold. He could have been re-elected into perpetuity in that rural district. I think he chose instead to cash in as a lobbyist. Now he’s been replaced by Derrick Van Orden, a gold plated Trumpist a-hole. But I think Kind’s long tenure refutes the “out of touch” stereotype being sold by the column.
I’ll give another example. My nephew, age mid-40s, grew up in rural western Pennsylvania, a prime area for out-migration cuz there just isn’t much economic activity. He worked for a while running a giant crane that lowered a bucket 100 ft into a flooded pit to mine gravel. Then he was a welder making mining equipment for Joy Global. That went belly up due to the ongoing collapse of King Coal. Who was to blame? Obama, of course! Not really, but he is a convenient scapegoat. But my nephew did not leave the area–he got retrained in special voc school as an electrician, and has been doing well for years. Now I don’t know the particulars, but I will wager that his government sponsored training program was funded & organized by Democrats. That’s what Dems do. (And GOPers hate!)
The newly elected person highlighted in the column just barely squeaked in, by under 1%, mostly due to the idiocy & incompetence of her election-denying Republican opponent. I don’t see any particular magic in her approach that rural Dems haven’t been trying for years. The main problem for Dems is the massive cultural grievance & resentment that has built up in rural America as the countryside empties out and their children leave for the city. This has been fanned by right wing media for years, and is made more powerful by the built-in Electoral College advantage of the small states.
Dems can only move so far in their attempt to win back rural America. As they say, you can’t argue with a sick mind.
Mark M.
Wait….got out the laser level and….dang!…..you’re right! The glass is definitely half empty.
Seriously, great cold-blooded journalism points about Kind….and I’m sure there are dozens of similar examples across the amber waves of grain. On the other hand, now that he’s been usurped…does that not give air to the article’s default assumption?
Question everything, everywhere, all the time, (new take on Question Authority)
-D.
Awesome point-counterpoint Dave and Mark. And great lines like. the “laser lever” and “bottling AOC’s farts and calling it perfume”. Ha. And I like Glusemcamp-Perez’s quote from the article, “Nobody stays up at night worrying about socialism.” True, but people sure like bitching about it. Complaining and moaning about creeping socialism, gay rights issues, critical race theory, etc., has become quite the rural pasttime.
Take a long bicycle ride down any rural road in Wisconsin. Mark can attest to the plethora of almost bizarre right-wing signs and posters that you’ll see dotting sundry farmsteads and compounds and pick-up trucks and mobile homes across much of the agricultural regions of the Dairy State. From MAGA and Trump to gun rights and confederate flags, folks seem itchin’ to make sure everyone knows that they’re “proud to be everything liberals hate” (as one bumper sticker proclaimed).
Considering that a lot of rural people depend on Social Security and various agricultural subsidies to make ends meet I’d like to think they’d be more open to the party that has fought for the programs that help them survive. But then I see a sign that says “US Govt.–Keep your hands off my Social Security” posted next to a confederate flag and I can’t help but wonder how many people out there are utterly clueless about how shit really works.
Republican efforts at keeping schools and education programs underfunded helps keep people clueless. Fomenting a message that the damn lib-tards, the Others, want to take away their guns so they can’t fight back when the Surgeon General comes to cut their sons’ weiners off and turn them into ladies keeps them engaged — it’s a compelling story to an uneducated person who lacks critical thinking skills. Plus, these and other right-wing conspiracy theories are way more interesting to talk about in the bar than corn subsidies.
Grassroots efforts by Democrats promising better Ag policies and vocational training face an uphill battle against such gripping drama. The Dems need to get better at story-time if they hope to sway rural voters.
The latest conspiracy theory that seems to have some legs–at least down here–is that the Superbowl halftime show is filled with Satanic brain-washing messages planted by the Illuminati. Since NFL team owners are mostly Republican, maybe that’s an issue the Dems can use to their advantage. Maybe some finger-pointing at Jet’s owner and major Trump doner Woody Johnson (who, of course, orchestrated the whole thing). He could be branded as a conservative version of Bill Gates. Then add in a bit of coded, veiled racial criticism of players and performers by Dem candidates in white, rural districts to really get the ball rolling.
Much like the rigged Presidential election theory, this story has no actual basis in fact, so nothing can really be done about it. It’s a non-issue that rural folk can talk about. They’ll make wacky signs like “Tell Woody that Jesus wants his halftime back” and condemn those evil Republicans for trying to brainwash hard-working Americans to join Satan during the superbowl halftime show.
That’s how to win back rural districts.
DC
Ah, Dennis, you missed your calling. You should have been a political strategist and speech writer. We need a Democratic version of Steven Miller, whispering evil one liners into Tony Evers’ or Chuck Schumer’s ear & ordering 100s of pizzas delivered anonymously to Rand Paul or Ted Cruz.
I just listened to a long ass podcast of the Ezra Klein show (he is a NY Times pundit). He spent 45 minutes interviewing a trans activist (ACLU legal beagle) on the state of trans oppression in the states, most notably Texas. Governor Abbot was getting hammered by his primary opponents for not being cruel enough to transgender families, so he decreed (just before the election) that ANY treatment beyond counseling is hereby automatically defined as child abuse. Brilliant! But cruel. The pod lays out what the various “gender affirming” treatments are, when they are given in a person’s life, and what are the risks (of treatment, yes—but more importantly, of the failure to treat kids). This was informative.
After that great background, Klein indulges in some political speculation as to why this rush of anti-trans legislation is occurring across the nation. (Because there clearly is NO grass roots push to crack down on the trans—it is wholly a political strategy).
He asserts that the old GOP alignment of, say, 10-15 years ago, has been replaced. In the old “normal” Republican Party, the economic interests (aka the super wealthy) called the shots. All kinds of promises were made to the evangelicals, but that was all just red meat for the rubes. The real business of the Party was cuts in taxes and regulation.
In the current GOP, the culture wars — stirred for all those years by talk radio & Fox News— are ascendant. So the Party is searching for the hook to translate all that anger into votes. Immigration has been a decent issue, but it runs into the problem that immigration is just not all that unpopular in the mainstream. So now they have fixed upon this transgender issue as a way to gin up the bloodlust of the faithful. And of course they fixate on “edge” cases— bearded high school transgender girls winning swim meets, and the occasional regretful surgical switcher. (And note, as we’ve stated before, that gay marriage has totally flopped as a motivator for conservatives.)
So this is why all these “bathroom” bills & intrusive laws forbidding parents from making decisions for their families have surfaced.
I think it’s a weak issue. It will be flashy for a while.But in 3 or 4 years, transgender issues will be about as prominent in the political debate as gay marriage—which is to say, not at all prominent.
Meanwhile, the GOP will have moved on… to what? The correct method of execution for abortionists? (Impalement vs burning at the stake.) The correct style of stocks for women who get abortions? The purge of the Civil War from history texts? The mind reels.
Mark M.
Sorry I’m a bit late—again—on this one. Great political insights from disaffected rural voters to the elephant-riding cultural warriors of the right. I think a lot of the rural problem goes back to those votes being taken for granted by the Democratic Party. I remember back in 2016—pre-apocalyptic political times—when Hillary was criticized for not once visiting Wisconsin. I think daughter Chelsea showed up at the Anodyne in Milwaukee, but that was about it. That’s some cocky shit. I think a lot of those rural voters, particularly farmers, had been suffering for years with lowered subsidies, higher taxes, and being priced out of the market by the massive agribusiness machines. So those voters said fuck you to the Democrats. We might as well go Trump. And they did.
I also think that whenever Agent Orange plays the victim ticket—that the DOJ men in black are after him—and which he does often, it tends to strike a chord with these disaffected voters, who have also felt victimized or ignored by their own representatives.
Transgender and education are easy targets for DeSantis and his ilk. Attacking them makes it seem as if they’re actually improving America. The irony is that the majority of Americans don’t care about trans politics or critical race theory. They do, however, care about abortion rights and gun control measures. Maybe they’ll be the next great rising, like our rural friends, of the disaffected.
—Geoff