Y'all are focused on the wrong dadgum flag!

The Democrats have lost the South not because of the South's alleged love for the Confederate flag, but because of the South's love for the AMERICAN flag. The Republicans stole this symbol, wrapped themselves in it, and have replaced true patriaotism with a "good-old-boy" superficial jingoism. American flag decals outnumber Confederate flag decals 100 to 1 in the South. The South has bought the GOP's phony patriotism package hook, line and sinker. It is widely viewed as unpatriotic in the South to be a Democrat or vote for a Democrat. The word "liberal" is a nasty perjorative. They loudly proclaim "Proud to Be an American" down there, not "Proud to Be a Johnny Reb."

Add to this the social issues important to the largely Protestant South, like "family values" (another GOP bait and switch), abortion, and gay rights, and the Democrats don't have an issue left to stand on.

Then there is the gun control issue. The South has more hunters than New England has yuppies.

The South (like most of Murka) has also swallowed the Repuke lie about small "gummint" and lower taxes. If someone could come up with a bumper sticker and a soundbite that exposed this lie, it would go a long way toward softening Southern support for the Repukes.

The truth is that the Democratic Party is and has been better for middle-class, working class, and poor Southerners BY FAR than have the Repugs. But the key is Marketing and we have gotten our asses kicked for a generation now.

The hooplah about Dean's comments specifically and the Confederate flag in general are a boondoggle. You say it's racism, I say it's regional pride. It doesn't matter! Without a strategy in the South, the Democrats write off a third (or so) of the electoral votes in the country. That means failure in any one big state (Ohio, New Jersey, California, Michigan, Illinois or New York) and we lose.

Dean is right. We need to put up a fight in the South. We must appeal to the Southerners who are most harmed by neocon-Repuke policies.

"American flag decals outnumber Confederate flag decals 100 to 1 in the South"

is very true.

Closer than most of the sterotypes we read on DU....

Thanks for taking the high road and avoiding unnecessary stereotyping.

The first two of these are neocon contractions of words people used to use.

Among the panoply of Orwellian activities, events, and practices of the neocons, one is certainly the introduction of a neocon newspeak. They almost never say "A-mer-i-ca," "gov-ern-ment," or "Pre-si-dent." Instead, they say Murka, gummint, pre(sd)ent. Not southern neocons, ALL neocons.

As for "Repuke, " I was trying for a higher tone and "shit spewing subhumans" didn't seem quite right.

leftofthedial Bob

I see FAR fewer confederate flags than I did back in southwest Missouri. I honestly dont remember a particularly high number of them in my frequent trips through Alabama, Mississippi or Tennessee. Some in northern Arkansas and southern Missouri though.

It's nice to see something about the South here that doesn't appear to have been "researched" by sitting up watching the Dukes of Hazzard.

I need to go um, research, yeah, that's it, research some Daisy Duke!

and I ought to know.

Dean n'04..

How do you plan to put up a fight against an electorate that is racist, utterly and completely ignorant, proud of its ignorance, considers 'liberals' to be satanic, and is seriously expecting the rapture any day now? You can't fight them on human values issues (e.g. universal health care or distribution of income) because they have puritan rather than human values. Sickness and poverty are not just God's will but God's punishment. You can't fight them on governance issues (e.g. honesty and transparency) because they believe that a bannana republic dictatorship is the ideal system of godly government. In god's name, most of these people think the sun revolves around the earth and believe in literal biblical six-day creation! The southern masses are truely so stupid as to be impervious to knowledge.

Saying 'we need to put up a fight' is one thing; articulating a strategy to fight these moral vacuums is quite another.

should be ashamed at what you just wrote.
edit-this really pissed me off, I lost it grammar wise and I probably still am not too coherent. Why did you post that?

What would you do to bring the south east on side? Pandering to their ideal social structure is not an option as it leads directly to the kind of government that is currently occupying the White House.

Answer this question. Why are the majority of the South as ignorant as you say they are?

The south is deeply ignorant because it rejects education as a legitimate pursuit. There are several reasons for this. Resentment, xenophobia and religion are key factors.

The southerners deeply resent the educated northern elites imposing an end to slavery, and segregation. Southerners reject education as it would mean becoming like the nothern elites they despise to this day.

Xenophobia is another driving force. Getting educated would not only involve travelling outside the county (embelishment but you get the idea...) but also learning facts which would undermine their prejudices against outsiders. It is human nature to reject information which undermines ones' prejudices so the southern masses flee education as vampires flee crosses.

Puritanical religious concepts are based heavily on the principle of the elect--the idea that access to heaven is pre-ordained. There is little incentive to improve ones self in this life when god has already decided ones fate in the next. This ties in heavily with immediate expectations of the rapture--why spend time and effort on education when the rapture is coming Real Soon Now.

A final issue with religion is that of creationism and biblical literalism. The south rejects modern science on a truely massive level. Education invariably involves science; southerners flee education because it will expose them to uncomfortable information which contradicts their belief system.


Your turn. How do you intend to put up a fight with the unwashed masses of the south east?

Pandering is not an option--pandering to these people is like the Saudi royal family pandering to Wahabbi extremism (al Qaida's main support base) to preserve their own power. Nothing good can come of it.

you are clearly the master of all things Southern. I will let you go on and insult another area of the country now. How about finding some fault in another part of our country? I will wait on your report.

or something you'd hear spill from the mouth of Rush or O'Really.

long before you used it.

before we can articulate a strategy for the south.

Your statement above is hate speech.

Wow, just because the repukes won in MS Tuesday, all these hate mongers come out of the woodwork! I would bet, however, that the poster comes from a state with repuke senators, and a repuke governor. But has NEVER been in the South!!!!

At least, that seems to be a common attitude here.

beliefs. And I'm in East Tennessee. The religious fundamentalism here is something I'd never seen before, anywhere else in the U.S.

in the south... hell all over the nation for that matter.

The problem is when someone stupidly acts like everybody in the south is like that... or even all the republcians in the south.

and there are fundies like that everywhere.

stereotyping the entire South that way is ignorant.

Are Democrats right or wrong on abortion, gay rights, racial profiling, Affirmative Action?

Are we right or wrong on progressive taxation?

Are we right or wrong on minimum wage, unions and labor rights?

Are we right or wrong on guns and measures to reduce crime?

Are we right or wrong on rehabilitation, education and social services?

I think it's a great idea to have a debate with the South, and the rest of rural America, on all of these issues. But if the 'debate' means letting go of core Democratic values to pick up new voters, then I don't see where we're gaining anything.

but when people attack folks just for being from the south that's not
right.

Would they even be democrats? I for one would want no part in such a party, that would embelish itself in a symbol of hate.

While Deans statement may not be as bad as it seems, there were a million other ways to vocalize that view without alienatiing minorities such as myself who were once Dean supporters.

Dean needs to apologize for that comment and if he does not, I will rather vote for Bush.

Dean needs to get it over with and move on. How anyone can believe Dean supports the confederate flag is just weird.

I don't think he supports the Confederate Flag, I think he really doesn't believe racism is much of a problem. He said Affirmative Action should be based on class and not race, now he says southern voters should put race aside and just vote together. Sounds like so many white males I hear who think if we just stopped making race an issue, it would all go away and everybody would be happy. That's not confronting the racism that still exists and certainly isn't having a debate on racism. I've read some of the AA threads on DU and I know there's a good number of people who don't want it based on race anymore. I wonder if they're the ones having a hard time understanding this flag issue.

And I live in Oregon and have seen that flag flying around in pickup trucks here, so I know it isn't just a southern thing. When it's in a pickup truck here, the driver is usually what we call a 'hick' and they're usually young white racist males. Maybe that's why I'm more upset about it, I see that attitude getting worse, not better.

"I don't think he supports the Confederate Flag, I think he really doesn't believe racism is much of a problem."

Then you obviously didn;t see the debates, or reas any quotes of what Dean said... that night or any other.


Dean said the same thing he has been saying since back in feb....

"I intend to talk about race in this election in the south because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. And I'm going to bring us together, because you know what? White folks in the south who drive pickups trucks with confederate flags decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don't have health insurance either and their kids need better schools too." (big applause)

and here is what he said the other night...

"I'm not going to take a back seat to anybody in terms of fighting bigotry. I'm the only person here that signed a bill that outlawed discrimination against gays and lesbians by giving them the same rights .

"What I discovered is that the fear of people who opposed that bill, the majority of people in my state, was mostly based on ignorance. We have to reach out to every American. We don't have to embrace the confederate flag and I never suggested we do. We have to reach out to all disenfranchised people. Robert Kennedy brought people together. Jesse Jackson did it. We're going to bring people together in this country. I understand the confederate flag is a loathesome symbol, just as I understood the anti-gay slurs I had to put up with after I signed that bill were loathesome. If we don't reach out to every American we can't win. I've had enough of campaigns based on fear, I want a campaign based on hope." -- Howard Dean, Rock the Vote Forum, Boston, 11/4/03




"He said Affirmative Action should be based on class and not race,"

No what he said was we should look at creating programs like AA that focus on class and not race. He never said anything about taking the race factor out of AA or changing AA programs.


" now he says southern voters should put race aside and just vote together. "

He says that poor working class whites and poor working class blacks should be voting toghter instead of letting republicans devid them by race, because they all need healthcare and good schools for their kids regardless of their race.

Except for one statement by Dean, I told you what I think, why would I supply quotes?

On that statement where Howard said affirmative action should be based on class, not race, he said it at least once in 1995 on CNN's Late Edition.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1103/malone1.asp

And unlike the person in this article, and apparently Howard Dean, I don't believe money alone would allow minorities to attend whatever school they wanted to. Racism is much more subtle than that and affects minorities with money as well.

There is a difference between saying don't let Republicans divide us by race and saying racism is still a serious problem. Both need to be said. For the most part, I only hear Dean saying the first and that's not having a debate on racism.

"Dean needs to apologize for that comment and if he does not, I will rather vote for Bush."

Good riddance.

If there was no Confederate flag issue, the Dems would lose the south because of the American flag.

Concentrate. Stay on the subject. You can do it. I know you can.

of the flag flap? I mean, we just can't possibly have enough more or less identical threads about it, or enough thousands of more or less identical posts about it. I don't recall seeing this much outrage about the damn war.

This mini-controversy has given people an opportunity to engage in public moral preening about how they would never, ever do something so wicked as what Howard Dean did. Oh no, not ever! I'm just shocked to the very core of my sensitive soul! I am outraged! I just can't tell you how outraged I am enough times!

Just as conservatives tend to be motivated most strongly by anger, some liberals are driven by the desire to demonstrate their moral purity. It's positively intoxicating.

So while you have raised a very important point about what Dean actually meant and about how important garden-variety patriotism is in the South, I think a lot of people would rather preen some more than discuss it rationally.

And, for the record, I am not a Dean supporter, but I do know a bum rap when I see one. No one who knows anything about Dean or the context of his remarks could possibly believe that he is a neoconfederate.

what could be more American?

i guess.

Still, without solving, or at least addressing, the American flag issue in the South, we are fighting an uphill battle.

Then I read a post like #11 above and realize we're standing in a hole and we're still digging.

No point in making him think his raving, spittle-flecked tantrums are worth taking seriously.

they have yet to be deleted. But if we responded in kind, OURS would be!

But if you were to substitute for the word "Southern" any other proper adjective referring to a group of people, the post would have been deleted and the poster tombstoned faster than shit through a goose.

It's an old story here.

for making far less abusive statements in religious threads, for example, I must agree.

There is a protected class of hate speech here at DU. This thread proves it. Posts 11 and 17 are absolutely hate speech. There is no other suitable description. As you said, substitute ANY ethnic or regional group for "Southerner" in those posts--Arab, Jew, Christian, European, Black--and those messages would have been deleted within minutes.

Maybe part of the problem is that true liberals don't hit the "Alert" button and run crying to the mods everytime someone calls us a "bad" name.

just went in my book of favorite phrases.

:toast:

That was Kerry's lie to spin it into an attack.


Dean said the same thing he has been saying since back in feb....

"I intend to talk about race in this election in the south because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. And I'm going to bring us together, because you know what? White folks in the south who drive pickups trucks with confederate flags decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don't have health insurance either and their kids need better schools too." (big applause)

and here is what he said the other night...

"I'm not going to take a back seat to anybody in terms of fighting bigotry. I'm the only person here that signed a bill that outlawed discrimination against gays and lesbians by giving them the same rights .

"What I discovered is that the fear of people who opposed that bill, the majority of people in my state, was mostly based on ignorance. We have to reach out to every American. We don't have to embrace the confederate flag and I never suggested we do. We have to reach out to all disenfranchised people. Robert Kennedy brought people together. Jesse Jackson did it. We're going to bring people together in this country. I understand the confederate flag is a loathesome symbol, just as I understood the anti-gay slurs I had to put up with after I signed that bill were loathesome. If we don't reach out to every American we can't win. I've had enough of campaigns based on fear, I want a campaign based on hope." -- Howard Dean, Rock the Vote Forum, Boston, 11/4/03

:thumbsup:
You obviously get "it." Even if Dems lose the south, let the dialogue begin.

Yes, I have lived or stayed in a few places down south where the 'stars and bars' still flies high. I have been to a few places where the proprietor still 'reserves the right to refuse service'. I have been (on business) to a small town with a KKK office on one end of main street and for the more cosmopolitan set, a John Birch Society office down the block. Better yet, to top it all off, a 'USA out of the UN' billboard at the city limit! I have seen a cross burning - from substantial (and rapidly increasing) distance.

Racism is by no means dead down here. Anyone who says that it is has simply not gotten far enough out of town for a while.

That being aside, you are correct that many, many more drape themselves in 'old glory' than fly the 'stars and bars'.

This is why I like Clark's notion of a 'New American Patriotism'. I also like Dean's attempt to 'recapture the flag'.

No one so far has really polished this strategy, but the concept is on target. It could not only work in the south, but just as well in many other places.

the mantle of fiscal responsibility

the label "good for business"

the positive conotations of "liberal" and progressivism

and many other symbols and names. It is past time to reclaim the truths that the neocons have stolen and added to their pile of lies.

before re-escaping way up here, I found that the small towns and rural areas were the most staunchly Republican. Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile were mildly progressive; Atlanta rocks; very-small-town Tennessee was frighteningly anti-progressive.

That said, I believe it's a combination of ignorance and good ole right wing religion; that's where you find the fundamentalist attitude and voting patterns just about anywhere. Here, as well. This was a much more progressive state pre-pipeline; it seems that big business and promoting ignorance over knowledge oft go hand-in-hand.

"company town" in which the indentured workers are to ignorant and afraid to demand their rights.