The West is not "nowhere"
In the Monterey County Herald, John Yewell takes note of the coastal love affair with Montana politicians - and then slaps around the East-Coast and West-Coast Democrats who keep talking about "the middle of nowhere".
Kos is a big fan of Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a dark horse favorite of many Democrats to run for president in 2008. He's got that Reaganesque, tall-in-the-saddle swagger that lefties have long envied, mixed with a compelling, can-do populism. Winning in blood-red states like Montana takes a candidate with a hat and cattle who knows how to solve problems by using government, not demonizing it. Many liberals, hungry for a win, have become enamored of this new breed of outdoorsy Dem.But when it comes to grasping the fingernail-dirt nature of rural politics, they stumble.
Recently, after Schweitzer protégé Jon Tester won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate race against incumbent Republican Conrad Burns, Berkeley-based Kos rhapsodized over Tester, a rancher from Big Sandy, happily noting that Tester came from "the middle of nowhere."
A few days later Newsweek's Howard Fineman, in a Web commentary titled "Outside the Beltway," picked up on Kos's riff, arguing that the Democratic Party may need to find leadership outside its traditional power centers of Washington, New York and California if it wants to win the White House in 2008.
Like Kos, Fineman couldn't resist the idea of this new kind of Democrat. "So that's the place to start from in this new political era," he wrote, "not Washington, but the middle of nowhere."
Kos and Fineman have a funny way of paying a compliment -- which brings me to the Democrat's long-standing Achilles' heel.
The Democrats' Eastern liberal establishment as well as its West Coast websurgents have taken note of Schweitzer, and that Democrats are winning in conservative states. But they haven't shed their elitist attitudes about interior America. As long as the party remains largely bicoastal and fails to recognize that there is no "nowhere," it won't grasp how Democrats win in places like the Rocky Mountain West, where political success is as much about style and custom as it is about policy.
If they don't get that clue soon, don't learn to speak the language of millions of Americans, Democrats won't take control of either the House or Senate in 2006, or the White House in 2008. And that could spell the end of the party, along the lines of the Whig collapse of the 1850s.
Read the rest. Discuss.
Kari Chisholm | June 21, 2006 | Comment on This Post (10 so far) |
Your Name: Your Personal Note: | Your Email: Friends' Emails*: |
Comments
The swing states of the West are Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico. All are in the dry-land West with no Pacific beaches. For that matter the current swing states in the rest of the country typically border the Mississippi River, not the oceans. Returning to the West, the swing voter may well be Hispanic or a former Perot voter, two very different and often ignored constituencies. These are the very people we need to build the party.
Posted by: Leo Brown | Jun 21, 2006 9:28:10 PM
I agree with Leo - the key to future electoral success is to broaden the appeal and natural bedrock of the Democratic Party. Just playing to the base or appealing to "swing" voters won't cut it.
You need a sustained focus at the west, the voters out here and the issues faced by millions of Americans who, because of decades of "nowhere" rhetoric from Washington, have been left behind during national policy discussions.
DNC Denver 2008!
Posted by: Landon Mascarenaz | Jun 22, 2006 10:30:00 AM
Not to mention the consistently irritating way both bloggers and Beltway politicians (like Senator Elizabeth Dole) keep identifying Tester as some sort of a lefty outsider who dropped from Mars or something and delivered a stunning defeat to a 'true' Montana politician.
Tester is the Minority Leader in the state senate, for heaven's sake. He was elected, by Montanans, to represent District 15. Not Mars.
Sheesh!
Posted by: Christopher Walker | Jun 22, 2006 10:42:22 AM
Correction, Christopher: Tester is PRESIDENT of the state senate. The dems have a 27-23 majority in that chamber
Posted by: LT | Jun 22, 2006 2:46:59 PM
I am new to the rural west, grew up in SoCal and lived in the midatlantic (Virginia) until recently. I remember being amazed upon attending my local dem central committee meeting in Nevada for the first time. First up, let's legalize medical marijuana, next, we can't let the government tell us what to do with our BLM land. They seemed bipolar!
BUT, honestly, they weren't all that different from the voters in the rural parts of Virginia I was familiar with. Farmers, ranchers, miners, etc.--its a strange combination of prickly independence, tradition and rough innovation that's hard to harness. It takes either a certain kind of approach or a certain kind of person. Mark Warner was able to harness those independent rural voters in Virginia, not because he was one of them, but because he didn't condescend to them and presented them with a great plan.
The sort of hand picked "western democrat" as presented by the netroots or other similiar groups can not only be condescending, but reminds me a bit of the literary trope of the noble savage.....you gotta be careful with dynamite like that.
Posted by: myrnatheminx | Jun 22, 2006 4:10:00 PM
I should've also included the national democratic party along with netroots and other similiar groups in the above.
Sometimes, being the noble savage has its advantages.
Posted by: myrnatheminx | Jun 22, 2006 4:20:19 PM
John Yewell is sorta right and sorta wrong. We wouldn't call Big Sandy the middle of nowhere in Montana. We'd call it bumf*** nowhere. But he's wrong. Tester isn't a rancher. He's made a little money off livestock, but he's a farmer first and foremost.
Knowing the difference between farming and ranching has a bit more to do with understanding the west -- like understanding the difference between bird hunting and big game or fly and bait fishing -- than referring to Jon Tester's home (which isn't even in Big Sandy) as the middle of nowhere.
Schweitzer's operation, of course, was based in one of the largest counties in the state.
Posted by: Matt Singer | Jun 23, 2006 12:23:35 PM
CSPAN showed the 1st Montana Senate debate. If Jon Tester gets elected, he'll be a great Ben Nelson/Mark Pryor/Jim Matheson style conservative Democrat! For a balanced budget amendment, against giving amnesty to illegal lawbreakers, and he loves his guns! The libs we'll have to hope Bernie Sanders will be Russ Feingold's buddy, cuz it sure won't be Tester.
The DLC National Conversation is in Denver come this July. I'm going, as is Hillary, Bayh, Warner, the Salazar Bros., Carper, Mark Udall, Hickenlooper, and Vilsack. Should be kickass. The mighty centrist wing still dominates the Democratic Party!
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=253833&subid=166&kaid=126
Posted by: WyoBlueDog | Jun 25, 2006 9:03:24 PM
Hello,
I havent kept up so much on what is going on in Montana, as I live in Wyoming. What I think is going on is people calling themselves Democrats rushing to the front stage seeing how Republican they can be. I call them Republican Lite.
I have said it before, politicians are politicians, and they are the same everywhere. I have nothing against Tester, and hope a Democrat wins, but if he has been a State Senator, and Minority Leader at that, then he is a politician. The media is making him out to be someone just coming in, no political experience what so ever. This goes back to what is and who is Establishment. If you are Minority Leader, you are Establishment, plain and simple. There is nothing wrong with that, but to paint yourself as anything but, is misleading.
I think people want to see real people run for office. Real means real. Honest and open.
Democrats need to stand for something to win, our party needs to stand for something, not just what the Republicans stand for, or try to be a carbon copy of them.
If we are pushing the idea of a "Western Democrat" as something different than a regular or liberal or lefty Democrat, then I think we need to articulate that, and so do our politicians and candidates. Up till now, I dont see that happening.
Maybe its been discussed already, and I missed the boat, I apologize if I have. I think it needs to be clear. What is a Western Democrat? If its just Republican Lite, then maybe people should think about joing the Republicans.
Daniel
Posted by: Daniel Cardenas | Jun 26, 2006 1:54:04 PM
Daniel -- Under your rules, once someone files for office the first time, they become the wrong sort of person to run for office. Meet Jon Tester before you judge him. I did. I'm damn impressed and I don't take a liking to too many politicians.
As for WyoBlueDog, you continue to astound me with your misread of Montana politics. Tester is cut from a similar cloth as Schweitzer, although even those two have a lot of differences. He's not going to be a Barbara Boxer, but he sure isn't a Ben Nelson either. If you think he is, you're pretty confused.
There's a reason why Schweitzer and Tester, even as conservative Democrats are gaining strong support from former Sanders employees -- it's because their concern lies with working people first-and-foremost and not with some beltway standard of what centrism is.
Posted by: Matt Singer | Jun 27, 2006 3:24:43 PM
Ads by Google
(and yes, we know that sometimes they're very, very wrong. Other times, they're right on.)
