anyone read Confessions of a cultural elitist?

[mitchtv]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=127&ncid=742&e=7&u=/ucru/20041110/cm_ucru/confessionsofaculturalelitist
Kerry voters Smarter Than Bush Voters
NEW YORK--Democratic hand wringing is surrealy out of hand. No one is criticizing the morally incongruous Kerry for running against a war he voted for while insisting that he would have voted for it again. Party leaders have yet to consider that NAFTA, signed into law under Clinton, may have cost them high-unemployment Ohio. No, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, darling of the "centrist" Democratic Leadership Council, blames something else: the perception "in the heartland" that Democrats are a "bicoastal cultural elite that is condescending at best and contemptuous at worst to the values that Americans hold in their daily lives."


Firstly, living in the sticks doesn't make you more American. Rural, urban or suburban--they're irrelevant. San Francisco's predominantly gay Castro district is every bit as red, white and blue as the Texas panhandle. But if militant Christianist Republicans from inland backwaters believe that secular liberal Democrats from the big coastal cities look upon them with disdain, there's a reason. We do, and all the more so after this election.

[Wabbajack]

1. All true but

we can't win by attacking them. We need some of those morons to vote D next time.

[WyLoochka]

2. "we can't win by attacking them"

Dems have subscribed to this theory for 25 years as the red staters have dragged us further and further and further to the right by doing what?

Attacking US! They won by making liberal a dirty word, by making us defensive of a label.

It's long past time to label THEM and mount a sustained attack which will associate the reviled label with the deplorable policies they actually implement in peoples' minds.

I have put the couple of Bushbots in my office on the defensive by referring to them as "Fundie enablers." It makes them really uncomfortable because they aren't Fundies.

I remind them that when one casts a vote it is a vote not just for one person but that person's entire constituency and the policies that constituency wants enacted. I point out that Bush* is a self professed Fundie and his constituency is largely made up of Fundies and ask them what the heck is an old school, born and reared conservative, civil liberty loving Repub doing voting for a radical, Constitution undermining, anti-American, Fundie agenda just because the front guy has an "R" behind his name?

It does embarass them. Figure if they can't be appealed to with reason, maybe they can be humiliated into waking the hell up.

[NJCher]

3. flaunt reality in their face

Bottom line is in fact that they do support a fundie agenda. They see only the part of the agenda they want to see and ignore the rest. For example, an NRA member may not necessrily be a fundie but he votes for bush anyway because of that single issue. They crowd out what they don't want to see.

A "flaunt reality" strategy another DU-er used was to tape pictures of injured Iraqi children in the rear window or bumper of her car. She said people couldn't get far enough away from her.

Imagine if the media actually did its job and showed the American people what bush is really doing in Iraq. What if they showed pictures of these injured children? Really told the story of the 100,000 dead?

Cher

[WyLoochka]

5. You're right, Cher

They DO support a Fundie agenda with their votes but not really in their minds. I am on a one person campaign to put a huge wedge between the Fundies and people who are not Fundies but go along with their agenda anyway just to "win" for the "R's."

I am also trying to put a big wedge between the small government, local control, mind our own business, fiscally prudent, paleo conservatives and the huge centralized global government, fiscally profligate, intrusive, control freak, power mad Neocon mafiosos who have hijacked their party and could not have done so without the assistance of the Fundies who are already demanding a pay off.

Alas, many paleos appear to be immune to reason these days, so I decided to try to drive the wedge by the "humiliation" and "guilt by association" techniques.

[mitchtv]

6. you know how the anti-choice KKKrazies are lways flaunting

pictures of dead fetuses? they should come out of their meeting places to be greeted with lurid photos of *'s young victims in Iraq.

[xchrom]

4. indeed -- isn't it funny -- we can agree that lieberman

is the wrong flag bearer -- but put a different face on it{i.e. clinton = nafta. kerry and the war} and we accept it.
now i voted for clinto and kerry -- but those incongruities make me uncomfortable.
you cannot make peace with right wing america with the tactics we've been using -- we have the best evidence to abandon them -- we're losing.
we have to get MUCH more in their face and call them on their hypocrisy -- and point out their transgressions.
take no prisoners -- democrats should BE who they are and proud of it and refuse to have their faces ground into the dirt.