Blog For Arizona

Pricking the "Southern Strategy"

Recently Dean has come under fire for wanting to court voters in the south who drive pickups with Confederate flags on them. I think it's important we stay away from drowning in racial politics and take to the high ground with Dean's real message: we must unite those with common economic interests under the ledership of the Democratic Party. Dean's comments are a clarion call to southern voters that the Democratic party is not about to surrender their votes to the GOP. Southerner's economic interests will be best served by voting Democrat, and he's damned well not going to concede the South because of the rhetorical taboos of the Democratic Party.

My recommendation as to strategy for volunteers is to pull the sting of Dean's transgression of Democratic political taboos by focusing on his purpose. He is trying to bring working class Southern voters back into the Domcratic party where they belong. Most aren't racists. Most don't long for the days of slavery. Most are working people, proud of their history and heritage, being harmed by their own miguided votes. Dean is trying to break the back of the "Southern Strategy"; he'll have to lance some messy rhetorical boils to succeed. This is likely just the first among many.

Just as Dean's stands on gun control are designed to keep those who support gun rights from voting contrary to their economic interests, Dean's comments about going after southern voters are designed to bring voters to their true political home. The GOP has captured the southern vote with their noxious "southern strategy" since 1968. By taking barely veiled racist positions, they have forced Democrats to alienate southern voters by taking hard-line civil rights stands, and to use what those in the south percieve to be rhetoric which is anti-southern culture.

We musn't stop progress on civil rights, but unless we work to unveil the GOP's lies and reach out to southern voters, we'll never get them back. We must shake up southern voters - even if we must violate Democratic political taboos, such as support for the display of the Confederate flag, to do so. Only then can we have a receptive audience to demostrate the welfare of southern families is best served by voting Democrat.

The GOP's rhetorical strategy in the South depends on Democrtic unwillingness to validate any part of southern history or culture which smacks of racism or the legacy of slavery. They rightly think that we fear loosing the support of minorities and civil liberarians. We musn't fear such a backlash, we must face it in order to make inroads into the South. Sharpton's hyperbolistic comments about asking the support of people wearing swastikas is only proof of the strength of the taboos and intolerance we face within our own constituency. Dean's comments are an attempt to to reach out to southern voters and validate their cultural history and pride, not to approve racism. Dean's dedication to civil rights is perhaps the stongest of any candidate. Minorities should not fear their interests will be abandoned by the Democratic party under Dean. Dean's dedication is so strong and foundational that he may be the only candidate who can even attempt to break the grip of the GOP on the South. Instead of criticizing him Democrats should support and emulate his attempt to grow the Party.

Critics will snipe, spin, and attack, but Dean will endure the heat to take the prize: millions of southern voters who should be voting Democrat, but are instead voting to damange their own interests, impoverish their own families, and weaken their own communities by voting Republican. The Doctor must lance the poisonous boil of the Republican party's racist pandering, and heal the scars of America's racist past that make our own constitutents howl with pain when those scars are disturbed. America's working families must be one people again. The GOP is right about one thing; this is class warfare. We need all our soldiers on the same side, not divided against themselves.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 11/03/2003 09:26:00 AM