So, the guy in the pickup with the confederate flag says to the reporter..

In last 48 hours the news media is playing a game called: go down South; find a good old boy with a truck with a confederate flag on it and inteview him (because they are harping on Dean's statement).

This has turned into a real no win/no win/blow up. I've seen answers ranging from a) I don't trust Dems and will never vote for them because they do everything for minorities; to b) I'll never vote for a Dem because of the terrorists/war stuff---Bush is doing right attacking those Muslims.

I hear a lot of raging (even here) how we have to reach out to these southern white boys. Are we suppose to a) campaign down there wearing a white sheet, caring a burning cross and a noose in order to appeal to redneck A?? Should we b) campaign in the South promising those good old boys that if we were in office we would attack the whole bloomin' Muslim world and not Mickey Mouse around like Bush to attract good old boy B???

In other words, this interviewing of these people are giving the republicans a beautiful propaganda moment to have "common people" spit on Dems. And on the other hand it puts Dems in a real ugly position of explaining to Dems everywhere how they would ever modify our message to "get" to people like this. Howard might want to be their president; anyone elected would be their president; but Howard and the others are going to have to do it without them and hopefully while in office change these peoples' minds. Talking economy, etc. isn't going to do it. They want us to change on the issues of minorities and on war. If we appease them, we lose Dems across the country. Apparently Zell wants us to change to this way of thinking to become "relevant" (he says the party doesn't connect and thus is irrelevant). No, Zell, we need 'that kind of thinking' to become irrelevant in this nation, not cater to it.

I feel inspired and activated and hopeful and responsible and thoughtful and glad I am a democrat. Zell-wanker needs to shut up and go cold.

They reach out but they pretend they are not reaching out. They do it on the sly. They never admit that they are standing with those folks with the Rebel flag because they agree with them. They say the Democrats are taking it out of context. But the "Rebels" understand. So tehy never really get blamed to any extent for being in bed with racists, unlike the Democrats who try to play this game...

They aren't really reaching out (while "they reach out but they pretend they are not reaching out"), except to take stuff away!

Reaching out to pick their pockets.

Because they know how to get away with appealing to certain types in the South and not having to pay a price for it.

announce it in the media. They use locals campaigners who live in the community to go to the rallies where those people hang out. You won't see the candidate there nor will you see any of the high ranking campaign officials. If there is a chance for someone to wear a CF hat, shirt, tattoo, or flag waving around you'll never catch a Repug there. Why? Because if they have a photo taken with a CF wavin person it would energize all minorities against them.

That one photo would lose the election for them. They know that.

So, DUers if you can get a repug in a photo with a CF you sell it to the media...not only will you make dough but you'll have rid the repug party of a candidate who will be cripple for life!

Bingo......


They are mostly business people....... They know marketing.... They know how to sell......

on you home, or as a tattoo on your body, wear a CF shirt, you are sending one message. You are holding on to the yesteryear of the south. The yesteryear of the south is anti Black, anti-Semite, anti-hispanic, anti-gay, anti-liberal.

The key is to know that they exist and to talk about issues that affect them. You don't however call them out because it is a double edged knife. You are damned if you do and damned if you don't.
The answer is easy...Don't.

Now this has given them the spotlight. They were never going to vote Democratic anyway. Now even if we had the slightest chance in hell they won't cuz we are seen as pandering by bothsides of the issue.

What Dean actually did is energized the CF wavin' base against all Dem Prez Candidates and us.

Don't get me wrong...though I'm not saying what he said is wrong. But somethings, however, are better left UNSAID.

PS There is a family that lives less than a mile from my house. They have a sattelite dish in their front yard that you can see from 30,000ft in the air...they also have a huge CF hanging from their front porch. Do you think I'd borrow sugar from them? Do you think I'd go trick or treating @ that house? Will I stump for Clark @ their house. Hell no. But I'm not going to tell them to take the flag down or try to convert them either. Just let it go. Take who you can on the journey and leave the others alone.

It's all the damn demagoging that is going on to try to bash Dean that is the problem. If Kerry and Edwards and Sharpton and the rest of them who had to get their kicks in -- and Kerry and Edwards at least must recognize that Dean was not pandering to racism; what Sharpton recognizes is up for interpretation -- would have just LET IT GO, it would have blown over by now.

But nooooooo, they had to twist it and spin it and turn it into something to bash Dean with. And now it's going to bite the lot of them.

teflon with that remark and it hasn't hurt him at all. So I think this will blow over. I saw Zell Miller on Buchanan & Press yesterday expounding on the fascist direction the Democratic party should take in the future. Bill Press asked him if we was thinking of changing parties and becoming a Republican. Miller answered that he would never leave the Democractic party. Lucky us. :-( All I can say is that he is an asshole.

Of course, in Dean's case is meant to be temporary...

. . it just keeps on giving.

Hubert Humphrey gave a rousing speech, and at the end most of the listeners were for civil rights, or at least willing to listen to more. We need a good orator who will be given the opportunity to speak about these issues. Many Americans have been brainwashed to hate liberals, to believe all Muslims are bad and hate America, and to hate minorities. We need to convince them that they are wrong not by calling them names, insulting them, or trying to trick them. We need education, and that means a good speaker who is given a platform (or creates a platform the way Dean did). Who will it be? Sharpton? Probably not, because they won't listen to a black. Someone not viewed as dogmatically partisan needs to come forward.

that Dean planned this whole thing to pan out this way. :eyes:

Dean is an EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL genius!

saying he would vote for Dean for sure but could never have voted for Clinton.

Morality counts with many of these folks.

The flag is a divisive symbol - but the stereotype of the ignorant southerner is only a stereotype.

Many who hate the North for the War do NOT hate African Americans.

For them the flag is a symbol of resistance to corporate greed and Yankee arrogance - NOT racism.

I know. My momma was from Georgia and I had relatives who fought on BOTH sides in that war.

The rebel yell is a yell of resistance to oppression in many respects- not always a symbol for slavery.

Remember that the war was not fought soley over slavery and that Lincoln did not IMMEDTIATELY aboilish slavery. He tried to preserve the union at first without abolishing slavery (though I believe he probably was going to TRY to abolish it).

Much of that war was between Northern industrialists and southerners who controlled the production of cotton. In other words there was an economic war going on too.

The war was not just about slavery by any means but about competition between rich folks.

The North ultimately, while destroying slavery, also destroyed many lives and many families in the South economically. Maybe they deserved it. Maybe some did not.

But the SYMBOL of the rebel flag is a symbol ALSO od the pain that the south suffered - perhaps unnecessarily.

Sherman was a mass murderer yet a very effective general.

Yankees looted and were often merciless.

It was war and war was hell.

But to say that the symbol of those who suffered in the war is ONLY a racist symbol is wrong. It is a symbol of a heritage which is NOT only about slavery. Slavery is certainly a part of what that symbol means to many -- but not to ALL. Plenty of "poor southern white boys" hate racism as much as you do, Starpass.

Remember that.

This is a red herring to help Bush. THAT is racism IMHO.

The thought was going through my mind two about the repuke pandering to these type of guys. It's a technique we simply cannot use or we do blow this party to shreds. They let their people know with a wink and a nod and a nudge that "I might have to stand up here and say that civil rights cannot be violated anymore in this nation, blah, blah" but I agree with you guys that they all still belong in the 'back of the bus'". Now--I'm not saying this to bait Dean supporters. I'm trying to figure a way out for Dean and all of us. I know (because he isn't stupid---he just sometimes shoots his mouth off)that he doesn't believe in going down south and doing that kind of wink and nod. Dean has the good quality of telling it like it is. I think he should go down there and in essence say, "look, I don't tolerate racial intolerance and I will not reach out to anyone who is looking to reinforce racial hatred---I'm here to tell you how the repukes are using that issue to distract you while they are fucking you over--let me tell you how they are fucking you over"!!! I truly think that would work for Howard. It's honest and it's manly...something they can respect.

I agree with you. :)

if you want their votes.

The Dem party is definitely going through
growth changes right now...

Republicans have an easier job...their views
are narrower (until settling for the Arnold Schwarzenneger
candidates...)

Dems still have to make platforms to suit pro-choice women,
Union workers and their leaders, African-Americans,
Mexicans, Indians, Greenie types, Indies, environmentalists,
and any one else out there who still wants civil rights
in this country. It's messy business. I really
don't envy Dem leadership in this country but we
definitely need stronger voices. That's Dean's appeal
to me.

any different then their charecterization of Muslims?

They are human beings who want the best for their children too.

That good o boys are not just in the south. Right here in the California central valley we got our share. Only difference: 'Merican flags instead of confederate. The south has no monopoly on ignorance, believe me.

wherever they exist. If we reach out to them our reach has to include telling them that racism, sexism, and Clinton's dick are tricks used the the repukes to divert them from the raping they are getting from the repukes. We cannot reinforce their bigotry---we have to confront it and expose what the repukes are covering up by using it. Then let the chips fall where they may--otherwise we just become another Trent Lott blathering at a birtday party.

what the Dean Dittoheads don't realize is that these confederate good old boys are the same people who defected from the Democratic Party in the 60s over the issue of civil rights, and are to the RIGHT of the GOP.

In order to win these people back, the Democratic would have to move to the right of the GOP, back to where the Southern Democratic Party was during segregation.

They don't go for anything even slightly to the left of the GOP; witness the losses yesterday of Musgrove and the Kentucky Dem governor, and even Max Cleland in 2002. These are Dems who are center-right and pretty conservative yet that wasn't good enough for them.

Bill Clinton was a center-left moderate and they hated him.

As Kerry said after the debate yesterday "We must reach out to all voters, but we can't become Dixiecrats to do it."

It is a stupid issue to take such a controversial stand on. Absolutely stupid. Dean had nothing to gain from it. He's not going to get the votes of the people with confederate flags on their trucks, no if's, and's or but's.

But don't tell Dean all of this. The guy is, in his opinion, the smartest person in the country. Just ask him. He'll tell you.

Then, in typical Dean fashion, he waffles and then apologizes. Somebody slap some sense into this guy.

Dean's mouth is dangerous. Dean's mouth will be his downfall AND the downfall of the Democratic party if he gets the nomination.

if you go up a few lines I did come back into my own post and say something about Howard. I said he does have this direct style (sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't). But I think there can be some capital made on this. I said when he goes down south he should tell them that he does not tolerate racial intolerance or sexism, blah, blah and will not reach out to them if that's what they want BUT that he's there to explain how the repukes have used these issues (via mouths like Limbaugh) to cover up and distract them while they are raping them blind. In other words, it is a way to start a dialogue but it's the kind a parent makes when he takes the kid by the collar and tells him up front what he won't put up with. Hope that makes sense the way I wrote it???

When he says, you should think about voting for your economic betterment rather then gettting sucked in on hot button issues like Guns, God, Abortion, and gay rights. Why are you voting for people who gave a bigger tax cut to the top 1% then you make in a year? Dean never seems to leave the front page. It is because he is saying something, about something, that can lead to a Democrat in the White House, and the Rethugs know it. He is standing up to Bush* every day, and the good news is Clark is getting the idea, and doing the same.

He had the chance in the debate and he hedged. It wasn't until yesterday that he began expressing "regret". Dean's instincts are not very good, and I do not trust him to not self-destruct in the general. He is very un-cool.

He is relentless in his attacks. Can he keep up this blistering pace until the convention in his beloved Boston?

In order to convert those voters, they need to see the truth without our being condescending.

The Democratic party stands up and speaks for the downtrodden. That isn't just minorities, but you too!

The problem is some of the "guys with Confederate flags" won't see the truth because they are RACISTS. They don't see themselves as part of the downtrodden because they think they are better than "that guy" because they are white. "That guy" may be Secretary of State, but in their minds, they are "better" than him because he is automatically inferior. Even when "that guy" works right next to them and receives the same paycheck! When people won't face a fundamental fact, they are irrational. There is no amount of debate that can make them see the truth. I have tried many times. Their "Revelation" cannot be induced, I am sad to say. I wish a President could fix that, but no one has that kind of influence.

BUT THIS ISN'T EXCLUSIVELY A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE SOUTH!

I've seen that symbol here in Ohio, in Pennsylvania, Indiana, New York, and out west in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. That's what Edwards was getting at in the debate. I doesn't help us to stereotype the South.

Look at the electoral map for the last three presidentials. http://www.uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/frametextj.html If you go county by county, you'll see there has been a lot of support for our nominee in the South. Look at the urbanized counties. Doesn't it seem the "secret" to success in the South is to mobilize our supporters? Make sure they turn out on election day, and bring a neighbor or friend? And those rural counties all go Republican. Shouldn't we be appealing to the agricultural base, rather than the irrational base? We oppose agri-business, right? Do rural farmers in America realize that?

Then look at Indiana, county by county. Very little Democratic support there, urban or rural. Indiana, by the way, is where I first saw a real-life KKK memeber in the middle of the street on a membership drive, white sheet and all. That was 1983, not 1953.

Added on edit: To see county figures, click on a state.

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alternative. The one Dean has articulated. Change their minds about dems.

the hard core idiot southern boys are always going to vote for the racist party, which is without doubt the Repubs.

All of a sudden, to the not racist but merely proud and feeling put upon, intelligent and fair southerner, of which there are many, they see a Democrat who actually says he wants them in the fold. Actually comes out and says it. Naturally, he gets clobbered for it, but it still got their attention.

They were probably oblivious to Dean before this. Now they are giving him a look see, and to put it bluntly, Dean looks good. This Democrat doesn't want to take their guns away, and quite frankly, he's right about the Repubs only pretending to care about poor/middle class white folk. You know, where the hell did our jobs go? He's no coward, obviously. Believes in state's rights. Wants health care for everyone.

Did you ever wonder why it is getting so much play? It seems that not only don't a huge portion of the Dem Party want to kill Dean's chances, but it would appear that the press is after him too, ala Al Gore.

So for all you folks out there that want to use this tiny little issue to bring down Dean, and believe me, there are plenty of you suicidally blind, find another issue. Cause this one ain't gonna do it.

Dean will gain from this.

Dems are having trouble turning out the African-American vote because they feeleglected and Dean's faux paus surely can't help. agreat opportunity exists in the South and it's rarely talked about is the rising Hispanic vote. Two of the people I work with are Hispanic and they are confused and cynical about Dean's statements. By not addressing everyone in need regardless of race as group, but coyly addressing whites by themselves, Dean has done great damage to the party. If this was such a great idea a smarter man like Clinton would have done it. Another problem is that now Republicans can be be more overtly racist and say it's OK because of what Deans' doing.

you are implying his statement was planned. It wasn't, he just said it, probably not nearly as appropriately as he wanted, but I believe he was staying on his point. The idea that he wants to reach out to poor/middle class southern whites is planned I believe.

And I think you missed much of what Dean said in that statement. He was talking about bringing white, black, brown people together because they actually have the same needs, like FDR. Lots of people seem to be reading things into what Dean said, everything except what he meant. And when he clarifies what he meant, it is ignored.

You're right, we will see when the votes come in.

That is why, I say, instead of chasing a few bigots with confederate
flags we ought to be registering and galvanizing our natural base. That
is where our victory lies.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17480-2003Oct25.html

But now, that we made them out goal and purpose - well...
I also find interesting that Zell advises us, the opponents of HIS candidate. In what capacity, may I ask? Terry, wake up and yank his chain already! ENOUGH!!!

"I hear a lot of raging (even here) how we have to reach out to these southern white boys. Are we suppose to a) campaign down there wearing a white sheet, caring a burning cross and a noose in order to appeal to redneck A?? Should we b) campaign in the South promising those good old boys that if we were in office we would attack the whole bloomin' Muslim world and not Mickey Mouse around like Bush to attract good old boy B???"


I read this earlier today--from the Dean apology thread, comes a link, http://www.theangryliberal.com/11-06-03.htm, to this quote:

"Democrats should offer the following bargain to every working person who disagrees with us on racial and religious issues: We will continue to disagree with you on these divisive issues, and be damn proud to do so. But in exchange for your support, we're going to make your lives better. We're going to see to it that your employer pays you a fair wage and runs a safe and fair workplace. We're going to see that your children get a decent education and healthcare. We're going to see that the air you breathe and the water you drink is clean and safe. We're going to see that America will be a better place for your children than it was for you. And we're going to do the same for the people you hate for having dark skin or worshipping a different god or loving a member of the same sex. And when you compare that to the republican offer to allow you to play with guns and hate minorities in exchange for an ever-decreasing quality of life, you will not have an easier choice to make. You see, we Democrats are counting on your ability to put aside your beliefs in order to secure your future. Republicans, on the other hand, are counting on you to put aside your future in order to secure your beliefs. The choice is yours."

That's what you tell them. Only a stupid man would starve himself just to keep holding onto the beliefs of an overblown sense of imagined entitlement.