The Mood of The Country

by digby

I read this series of posts over on TPM and got really depressed. A number of readers wrote in to either agree with or criticize Josh for taking the New Yorker to task for perpetuating the same old creaky political narrative that we’ve been hearing for the last 25 years.

This one, in particular, made me feel very, very tired:

I was holding back, but dude?!?

“The vast majority of Democrats totally understand that Dems running in reddish states can’t have stereotypically liberal positions on hot-button social and cultural issues. I think everybody gets that.”

No, no, no. THEY DON’T GET THAT AT ALL.

“Reddish”? Dems don’t get that notion even when it comes to blood red states.

Come on. If Dems got it, the party would have never nominated Kerry, and Hillary would be consigned to the oblivion of a Senate committee chairmanship, at best.

In fact, I’m trying to conjure up any factual basis for thinking that the majority of Dems get that, let alone a “vast majority.”

I lived in Louisiana when Dukakis ran. I lived in Missouri when Kerry (his fricking lt. gov.!) ran. They were jokes. Not just unelectable. Jokes. Howard Dean? Another joke. Hillary? God help us.

Do you have any idea how demoralizing it is having these folks wrecking the top of the ballot again and again? It not just that those of us in red states have to endure GOP presidencies, just like you blue staters. But we get the shit kicked out of us up and down the ballot. It’s a disaster.

You tell me how it is that Dems managed to nominate two Massachusetts liberals for president during the greatest conservative movement in this country since–I don’t know–prohibition? It sure ain’t because a vast majority decided to accommodate the mood of the country.

With those two nominations as bookends to the last 18 years, I don’t think the problem is that reporters like Goldberg keep repeating the same old tired cliches. So long as the Dems keep living those tired old cliches, you’d have to become a novelist to write a different storyline. Don’t shoot the messenger.

I have heard this shit as long as I can remember. And yet, when moderate centrist southerner Bill Clinton was elected (with a mere plurality in both elections) — and was tortured endlessly by the right wing — I didn’t hear any let-up of the narrative or get any sense that the red states were appeased. Indeed, Clinton was widely portrayed as being the poster boy for alleged blue state values. His crime was that he was a Democrat, period. His southern twang couldn’t save him. And it didn’t save Jimmy Carter either, who was a pillar of moral rectitude. It’s always something.

There is no winning if we continue to play this game. And red state Democrats who have bought into this frame need to step back and consider the fact that this conservative era only exists in electoral politics. In every other way, this is one of the most liberal eras in history. Between the changes in marriage and women’s rights alone, society is undergoing a massive shift. The conservative era he refers to is a piddly ass backlash against forces that are far stronger than anything Judge Roy Moore and James Dobson have put forth. And the agenda that has been enacted under this conservative GOP era has had almost nothing to do with any of those social issues — it’s a radical economic agenda that has hurt working people of all “cultures.”

I’ve lived in both red and blue states for extended periods and frankly, never actually saw much of a difference; in my experience people are pretty much the same everywhere. But I respect the right to love your tribe and there are areas of the country in which regional identity is of paramount importance. It’s part of being human.

That is why I’m getting sick to death of hearing this crap from people like Marshall’s correspondent above. I’m not exactly feeling the same kind of love in return. It’s not enough that I have enthusiastically voted for Carter, Clinton and Gore, all conservative southern Democrats to one degree or another, or that I would have backed Edwards, Clark or any other red state Dem in the last one. (Kerry won the southern Democratic primaries too, btw. He wasn’t just annointed by a bunch of clueless latte sipping San Francisco fags. This guy needs to consult his fellow Democrats and ask why they did that.)

(In all my posts on this subject, this is, of course, the point where I dig out an obligatory excerpt of Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech from an earlier post of mine and recycle it once more.) I think that until we grapple with the fact that this is the real nub of the problem we will get nowhere.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

So too, today, we must ask the question, “what will satisfy them?” Will it be to ban gay marriage? Outlaw abortion? Destroy the public schools? Institute mandatory prayer? Deport all non-English speakers?

I don’t think so. It certainly will not be enough to nominate a conservative, born again southern Democrat. We did that. His name was Jimmy Carter. Here’s what they are still doing to him even 25 years later. We nominated a son of the “New South,” modern, moderate and pro-business. They impeached his ass.

No, what must happen is that Democrats everywhere must place themselves avowedly with the most conservative red states in every way. They must openly reject their own tribal identity (whatever that may be) and become them. Nothing less will do.

“The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of [liberalism], before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.”

We are not going to win conservative red states simply by respecting the culture. There is no evidence that it will work. Carter almost lost to the guy who pardoned Nixon. Clinton never won a majority. Gore came the closest and they just cranked up the GOP machine in Florida and DC and stole it from him. A quirk of the constitution, the electoral college, forged in compromise over this very issue, means that this is going to be with us as long as we don’t confront it head-on and stop thinking that we can appease this faction simply with pork rinds and country music. Republicans like Bush Sr. can do that because the GOP is the tribe’s official party. Democrats can’t. If we are to win some conservative red states we must find a persuasive argument and argue it. Short of a major catastrophe, I don’t know if it will work. But it’s obvious to me that these style points don’t mean shit when it comes from a Dem. The red state cultural conservative insists that everyone, everywhere agrees with him.

But we aren’t cultural conservatives! We can nominate nothing but born-again good old boys and girls for the rest of my life and that’s ok with me. But we cannot be all things to all people. I will never be “avowedly with” red state cultural conservatism. It’s on the wrong side of history and always has been. I can’t become it. I don’t believe in it. If I did, I would be a Republican.

I concluded that stale Lincoln post of mine with this:

Lincoln concluded the speech at the Cooper Union with this and I think it’s relevant today to those of us who believe that our side is, as Lincoln thought then, the side of enlightened, moral progress:

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

This fight for the soul of America has been going on since the very beginning and it isn’t over yet. We can take heart in the fact that in every great battle thus far, the forces of equality and moral progress have won the day. It’s never been easy.

Marshall’s emailer says that the Democrats have been fools for not “accomodating the mood of the country.” I say that’s bullshit. The “mood of the country” is an extremely complex, ephemeral thing with many permutations, not all of them political. But if the the elite press and its GOP string pullers have decided that the political mood is conservative, the last thing I want to do is accomodate it. I want to change it.

Disclaimer: I am not talking about the vast majority of the 40+ of liberal red state voters. I feel nothing but solidarity with you, my friends, and I’m sorry that it’s hard for you to be associated with me. Perhaps together we can begin to change that.

And I use the “red state/blue state” signifier as a simple shorthand. I realize that on a block by block basis or whatever, that we are all just one big purple family. But if you look at the election results of the last few elections, you will see that there is a solid block of states that votes for the Republican party. And it is regionally distinct. That is a simple reality whether we like it or not.