Values Voters = Hating Liberalism

If it wasn't gays, guns and abortion, they'd make up something else. Alot goes into it, but it's about alot of individual things that gets turned against "loony liberals". What do you expect a logger to do when he can't support his family? Or a farmer who can't grow crops because a bug is endangered? Or when a bunch of kids from the city move to your town and brings drugs and violence with them? Or you're told you have to teach sex education to 5th graders when you've always waited until 8th grade because you don't have a teen pregnancy problem?

Alot of things go into the decision of a rural voter to vote Republican and the Republican machine is excellent at manipulating that vote into an overall anti-liberal vote. But we're condensing it into god, guns and gays and that's far too simple. There are good reasons for a rural voter to vote Democratic, but until we start respecting their work and culture and life choices, we're never going to get anywhere.

women's rights, civil rights and reality, they're not going to get any of my support.

Can't eat Christian values? You can't eat civil rights either. There's a way to bridge these gaps, but name calling isn't going to help.

"Christian" values are not really Christian, but only people's delusions and petty beliefs. I'm sorry, but if people do not respect what I have mentioned before, we have no need for their support if they continue to vote along these draconian sentiments. This is the same if they are Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Agnostic or any other religion.
By the way: How, exactly, do you bridge this gap without sacrificing anything?

They are voting AGAINST a whole lot of things that they label "loony liberal". God, guns and gays is the face of it; but when you look closer it's a whole lot more than that. These people would never vote to completely outlaw abortion. They are mostly okay with responsible gun laws. And without everything else they're voting against, they'd be fine with civil unions. It's too simple to label it a Christian vote, there's just alot more going on in rural American than that.

As a rural Missourian I find this disheartening. They (Red America) will listen if we have better communication. They will stand for Democratic values if we frame them in language they will understand. Republicans have beaten us in word choice. For example: "tree-hugger" or "flip-flopper"...

Speaking of women's rights, rural voters will listen if you talk about domestic violence issues, child support stuff. And I don't think that any one of us who is "pro-choice" believes that abortion should be necessary. Bill Clinton said it best: abortions should be "safe, legal, and rare" Meaning, we know it's going to happen, but let's try to make it not happen so much with adoption funding, availability of birth control, etc.. When we say "pro-choice" what is it supposed to mean? That we can just kill a fetus at any time? A lot of people think that late-term (or as they say "partial-birth") abortions should be made illegal. I think that hurt Kerry a lot when W talked about how much he wanted to ban it, but Kerry voted against it. WE know why he did, and it was later overturned.. but to Red America, all it says is that John Kerry hates nearly-developed babies.

The war on drugs? Come out to my part of the country where meth labs clog up the forests. It's like moonshine was replaced by meth or something. We've got nothing to do out here so we turn to unprotected sex and lethal drugs.

Blue staters, if you want to win Red America, you've got to TALK to Red America. Don't turn your backs on us!!

I live in a red county. This year and in years past it has always voted red at the federal and state level. This year, while the chimp won with a narrow margin, we resoundingly re-elected Sen. Feingold and Congressman Ron Kind. Both Democrats who worked hard to get out a progressive message.

The problem in my rural area is that there is no informative media. Except for perhaps a one-minute rush through national and world news, the nightly news is all fluff and crime and sensational tripe. The daily papers are all corporate own propaganda machines and the small weeklies won't touch anything political with a 20' pole because they might lose what few subscribers they have. The only thing close to news comes from the nightly talk show and talk radio. People out here are working too hard to have any time and energy left at the end of the day to spend it finding out what they need to know to make informed decisions at the ballot box. One-liner lies perpetrated by my skeezy state rep to scare the hell out of rural voters work out here because there is nothing to counter him but a lonely Dem candidate with piss poor party support at best.

The only thing that swung my county toward Dem reps is their informative commercials combined with incompent opposition who didn't have huge GOP backing.

Piss poor party support. That's exactly what I'm talking about. We have no rural strategy at all because DC Democrats don't understand rural America at all. I have lived in rural America since I was 16 and I know there's plenty of non-fundies out here. Plenty of people to reach if we just have the platform to do it and I don't even think we need to concede any of our values. 1% of abortions are late term and are medically necessary. We NEVER should have conceded that fact or the fact that we're still doing them, just chopping up the fetus inside the mother's womb instead. It was a meaningless political football that the Democrats couldn't figure out how to fight.

We have to live on this planet too!

I think that was the point.

IMO, I'm a values voter. I vote my values. That's why I vote Dem.

You think your values are any different than a farm family feeding their kids? They aren't. A city job is being shipped overseas because a company can't compete with US environmental regulations, suddenly city people have a voting problem. Which is no different than the family farmer who can't farm because of an environmental regulation. There's ways to bridge those gaps and talk about both, but we just sit around and label people and look down our noses at them. We lost alot of city voters because of "government regulations" too, and until the Democratic party addresses it, we'll continue to. John Kerry was the one to do it, but unfortunately, somebody in this campaign decided it was "too controversial".

You think your values are any different than a farm family feeding their kids? They aren't

I agree.

I'm not even sure what your point is or how I offended you, but my post was very clear and 100% accurate. If you could be a little clearer on exactly what you found objectionable, I'll respond as best I can

You usually have much more interesting posts than this. Today seems like your nose is stuck too far up in the air to see the keyboard.

unless you're looking for some name-calling to add to your repertoire

Got it, whatever the hell that means. Don't know what you're looking for either.

Inform you about what? Your posts are as uninformative as you say mine are.

Of family farmers hurt by regulation, rather than banking practices, subsidies to large-scale agribiz, and an ag policy in general that is controlled by the packaged and fast food industries?

Organic is becoming economic for small farmers who haven't been competitive with megafarms for years. Tighter definitions of "organic" (and new tighter categories like "sustainably grown") will help, not hurt these people. Organic is sullied enough as it is. Some of the big producers like Santa Cruz don't look anything like the cute little farm we imagine when we buy organic.

Or is a "family" that owns three hundred thousand acres still a "farming family" to you?

Pesticide regulations. Problems that we ignore. Certainly agri-business is a problem too, but we haven't fought for the legislation to make subsidies only go to family farms.

And yes, if a 300,000 acre farm is truly run by a family, then the success of the farm doesn't disqualify it.

Or we can just keep saying their too stupid to know how to vote in their own best interest. That's been working well so far.

Not on the federal tit at least. I think the current official acreage limitation on fed water is 1300 (started as 160/320 per married couple) but that has never been enforced. I guess the policy concerns are very different on top of the big aquifers, though.

The idea of pesticide bans hurting small farmers is ignoring the 800 pound gorilla called agribiz. If your point is that small farmers can be made to THINK pesticide bans are causing their decline, I agree. Same thing happened (more on grading and drainage regulations) when they tried to make a new county in California a few years ago. The idea was to use rancher votes to pull "Mission County" out of Santa Barbara and then promptly cover up all the ranches with housing tracts and shopping malls. The effort failed, fortunately.

FDR. There's reasons we pay people not to grow crops. The idea is to keep them in business, but regulate the use of the land and the amount of food to keep supply/demand balanced. No matter how large the farm is. Pesticides and environmental issues was just a couple of things I threw out there to make people realize rural America is thinking about more issues than whether Susie got an abortion or Billy is gay. Agri-business is absolutely another one. When we brand rural American issues as god, guns and gays; we've lost 90% of the picture. That's just the way I see it.

teen pregnancy problem in rural areas. Surely not - do you? I live in the country - seven miles outside of a town of 2500. Some guy in my college class made a joke about all the pregnant teens in our high school a couple of weeks ago. I wish I could remember exactly what he said. No matter, though - the point is there is a BIG teen pregnancy problem there.

And drugs? We had a fifth grader arrested last month for bringing marijuana to school and passing it around. I know a guy whose THIRD GRADER was caught with a bag of meth. Said he had picked it up at his mothers and didn't know what it was. The meth problem here is the largest actual life-threatening epidemic I have seen in my 39 years.

That's part of my point. It isn't as simply as god, guns and gays. There are alot more issues and different opinions as to the cause of the problems. BTW, every rural area doesn't have a big teen pregnancy problem. Not to say it doesn't exist at all, but not to the extent it does in cities. Their view is if it wasn't socially acceptable for a teen to get pregnant, if they were expected to get married and be personally responsible for that child, they would take sex more seriously. The boy and the girl. And it's the liberals and free sex and no sense of right and wrong and easy welfare programs that's to blame.

My point is that unless we start expanding the debate to focus on all the issues and become willing to listen, we're never going to get anywhere. And meth labs is absolutely another huge issue and one where Kerry could have made some headway with some real credentials to back up what he was saying. We didn't use it at all, except to say we shouldn't be locking people up at $50,000 a year instead of spending $10,000 on education. Doesn't appeal to rural America because they just want these people locked up and gone, no fooling around with them. When you know exactly who the meth dealer is and have seen him go in and out of jail for 5 years and come right back and start dealing meth again, you get sick of it. And rural America blames bleeding heart liberals.

All of that is "moral values" and they see the cause of all the problems as "liberals".

and it's higher in red states than in blue.

And meth labs is absolutely another huge issue and one where Kerry could have made some headway with some real credentials to back up what he was saying. We didn't use it at all, except to say we shouldn't be locking people up at $50,000 a year instead of spending $10,000 on education

You are dead wrong about this. Edwards was out campaigning primarily in rural areas, and every mention of the speeches he gave referred to him talking about meth labs in rural areas and how bush* had done nothing about them.

But you're right about how they blame it all on liberals.

Wallowa & Union, 13 & 19; 65% Bush. Multnomah 47 per 1000; 72% Kerry. Teen birth rates can be different because of the prevelance of abortion. And every county isn't the same as every other, certainly, povety and cultural issues play into it as well. Arguing about the statistics doesn't change the attitude anyway, and it's the attitude I'm talking about. And talking about the terrible scourge of meth labs doesn't offer a real plan of dealing with them and if he didn't do it in a way that helps diffuse the idea that they're because of lax liberal values and lax liberal laws; it draws attention to the belief that liberals cause all the probems as well.

Somebody posted about belief systems, and that's what I'm saying. Rural America votes against liberals for alot of reasons, it's an entire belief system that says liberals are bad and the cause of everything that's wrong. A rural Republican can cite issue after issue and find reasons to blame liberals, and never mention abortion or gays or guns. Moving this way or that on these 3 issues isn't going to address the perception that liberals have caused all their problems. In fact, to them it looks like weakness and pandering and makes them hate us even more.

that it was true for every rural and urban area.

Arguing about the statistics doesn't change the attitude anyway, and it's the attitude I'm talking about

I strongly agre with you here. We've been reciting statistics for decades, and look where that has gotten us.

And talking about the terrible scourge of meth labs doesn't offer a real plan of dealing with them and if he didn't do it in a way that helps diffuse the idea that they're because of lax liberal values and lax liberal laws; it draws attention to the belief that liberals cause all the probems as well.

I wish I had a link or a quote from Edwards rural speeches. I think that that is exactly what Edwards was doing. He was arguing that the way bush* cut taxes on the rich instead of paying for the police to help rural america with problems like drugs was an example of how bush*'s "values" were wrong for America.

rural Republican can cite issue after issue and find reasons to blame liberals, and never mention abortion or gays or guns. Moving this way or that on these 3 issues isn't going to address the perception that liberals have caused all their problems.

I think you're spot on with that. We need to look at our values, and see how our policies fit into those values, and then find the language to use to promote those policies while at the same time communicating OUR values. Changing policy positions won't do nothing, if people do not understand the values that underlie those positions.

I remember hearing the cops funding on the meth labs, now that you mention it. During the primaries, I always liked the way Teresa talked about everything being connected and how service built communities and taught people to be responsible for each other so that programs weren't necessary anymore. I always thought the "values" argument for the college and senior citizens service program would be as appealing as the funding for college. They didn't choose to go that route, but that's the kind of underlying values that would help bridge these gaps, seems to me.

"Service"

It's a value that underlies many of our positions. A progressive tax system is way that the rich can perform their service. etc...

It was mentioned a few times in this election, but not near enough. The first time we've ever had a war and a tax cut. Bill Clinton mentioned it a few times too, the wealthy want to do their part. This campaign should have been the call to service, to all of us, that we never got after 9/11. And John Kerry's record should have been the reminder of all the social progress we've made in the last 25 years, that too many people forget, ignore or never knew. *sigh* I love the guy and I hate saying bad things, but there was just so much more we could have done it seems to me. Or maybe it's just monday morning quarterbacking, rambling, grieving, I don't know.

They do. I worked at the polls. I heard one lady as she was going out the door saying "I don't want the damn liberals running this country". I really did.

--why would there be any meth labs in those areas in the first place? If a particular dealer never gets out of jail for a long time, there are plenty more where he came from. I'm still trying to understand why it's so easy to predict the race and population density of home town by their drug choices. So why is it that someone running a meth lab is just about always white and rural, and someone peddling crack is almost always black and inner city? In both areas, part of the explanation is lack of other economic options, but this particular cultural difference is really befuddling.

...turn them off to the GOP and voting altogether by showing them time and again that they are being used by Roveco.

Now that the GOP controls Washington, the culture warriors are going to expect radical social changes. we must point out at every turn how the GOP is failing them. When the GOP tries to say it's Democratic obstructionist, we simply show the warriors how effective the GOP has been at implementing the ueber-rich agenda.

We shouldn't try to win their vote (I certainly don't want it and wouldn't vote for a candidate that did), we need to break their radical blind faith in the GOP.

There are always those who will never be "won" but in the boonies, reason and fact rarely makes news.

In fact, there is no news. As an example, in my rural county where cows outnumber its 33,000 people, there is no media to speak truth to power. They are stenographers at best, when their chickenhearts decide publishing an article won't kill their newspaper. The television news is 29 minutes of weather, sports, a little crime and loads of fluff, with one minute of national and world news. I don't have to tell you how poor the networks are at informing the country about what is truly going on in the world.

My red county just went for Sen. Feingold and Congressman Kind by 10+ points. This county has never gone for them even as incumbents in previous elections let alone at such a high margin. These people, by and large, aren't stupid. They just don't have the time to chase around the truth. They hear puke soundbites backed up by whore media and screaming heads on talk radio. Why would they vote Dem? In the case of my county, for a change, Dem groups and Dem campaigns themselves actually got some good air time.

There are reasonable people out here in the boonies. When presented with reasonable debate and the facts in an issue, they vote Dem. Problem is, for too long, the Dem party has had the same attitude as you. If no one spends the money to get the truth out, then all the rural voters have to go on is a pack of puke lies.

Not a way to win elections if you ask me.

Ok, I'll bite. They have crappy news in the sticks.

In case you haven't been reading every other thread on this board, people think the media is dogshit EVERYWHERE.

I don't think it's too much to ask citizens to watch at least one debate, and if they did, they could probably make an informed enough decision consistent with their values.

Anyway, the heart of my argument was not aimed at reasonable rural voters who prefer Republicans. I don't have any quarrels with them.

I am talking about the cultural jihadists who were driven to the polls because they thought their vote would somehow result in sweeping social changes. These are relatively new voters, and I am sure they will be disenchanted with the results of their vote if we simply ask them to question the GOP's effectiveness in implementing their wishes.

And I say to people who are driven by such issues: fuck you self-righteous bigoted pigs. I would not support a candidate that pandered to these hypocrites. I just want to put a crack in their blind faith to the GOP. (a sex scandal should take of that real quick)

To me respect means we don't belittle them for believing the way they do. Of course Rush will still tell them we liberals look down our noses at them.

--howthehell does that help them support their families? It will for a few years, and then it's all over, period. I'll bet that quite a few of them actually get this, being eyewitnesses and all.