[extropy-chat] No Joy in Mudville

J. Andrew Rogers andrew at ceruleansystems.com
Thu Nov 4 19:49:44 UTC 2004


Giu1i0 Pri5c0 <pgptag at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps we will just have to acknowledge that for the time being his
> message of fundamentalist jihad just resonates more than ours with the
> average American (yes, American: a politician like Bush would never
> get elected in Europe where the average citizen is a bit less
> vulnerable to advertising and listens a bit more to what is actually
> said). It is up to us to change that.


This clueless nonsense is PRECISELY why the Democrats lose generally
(ignoring that Kerry was a really lousy candidate).  And I'm saying this
as someone who is neither a Republican nor a Democrat and has lived in a
great many places and is familiar with their local cultures.


The Democrats and the left wing at large and the Europeans (which have
attrocious media coverage of US politics -- it is more "fair and
balanced" in Communist Asia) need to come to grips with the fact that
the majority of Republicans are neither ill-educated, un-worldly, or
even particularly religious.  Some factions are, but not the major
portion of the party.  That is nothing more than the liberal Democrats
trying to make themselves feel better by putting down the other guy and
not bothering to really study their opponent.


Most Republicans I know, and I know many having lived in many
traditionally conservative areas (I even have aunts and uncles who are
fairly senior GOP officials), are pro-choice, very well travelled and
worldly, non-religious (many atheists), and as educated as your average
Democrat.  As long as the Democrats and liberals maintain the fiction
that Republicans are ignorant hillbillies, religious white trash, and
country club executives, they will continue to get their clocks cleaned
in the elections because they do not know their opponent (see: Sun Tzu).

A great many average people in the US still believe in the
Constitutional notion that the job of the Federal government is to take
care of security, foreign policy, and to make the economy run smoothly.
 That's it.  A lot of those Red State folks would just as soon have the
Federal government stay out of everything else.  You'll notice that
marijuana decriminalization acts and similar are being put on the ballot
and passing NOT in liberal states, but primarily in "conservative"
western states.

The Democrats *used* to be primarily about blue collar economic issues,
which is where they found most of their power in the 20th century, and
had minimal differences on foreign policy with the Republicans.  Now
they've essentially abandoned those and are all about social issues that
the blue collar class does not believe is the domain of the Federal
government in general but the local government's, and often does not
reflect their personal values anyway.  The bottom line is that the
Republicans have a well-vetted and well-known economic and foreign
policy plan, whether you agree with it or not, and they run on it.  The
Democrats stopped talking about real meat-and-potatoes economics years
ago in favor of stumping on social issues and no longer even have a
coherent and well-vetted economic and foreign policy strategy that most
people can describe or follow.  At the very least it pales in comparison
to the Republicans in that area.

There is a huge number of people who vote primarily on economics and
foreign policy, and would rather social policy be a local issue.  Given
that the Democrats are very muddy on both economics and foreign policy,
and many people don't believe the Feds (nor judges) should be involved
in social policy, the choice is obvious for many people because the
Democrats provide no credible alternative.  This includes a hell of a
lot of pro-choice, non-religious, gay-friendly people that the Democrats
foolishly claim as their own -- I know many, many Republicans throughout
"Red States" that meet this description.


The Democrats will continue to lose ground until they start stumping for
credible economic policies again, and clean up their foreign policy
positions.  And the best thing they could do on social issues is to push
for local control of such things.  If they just dig in and try more
strident Federal social policy positions as the centerpiece of their
party, they will continue to lose support among "average" Americans.

It seems to me that the Democrats are misreading the outcome and are
bound and determined to make the same mistakes all over again, primarily
because they are working off a ridiculous stereotype of their opposition
as though it had some grounding in reality.


j. andrew rogers




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