corrente

Well, vacation is over so it's back to the old grind. Find stories, post stories, comment on stories, invite readers to do likewise. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, dung beetles gotta...well, anyway, we all do what we do:

(via Kristof/nyt)

Thomas Frank, author of the best political book of the year, "What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America," says that Democratic leaders have been so eager to win over suburban professionals that they have lost touch with blue-collar America.

"There is a very upper-middle-class flavor to liberalism, and that's just bound to rub average people the wrong way," Mr. Frank said. He notes that Republicans have used "culturally powerful but content-free issues" to connect to ordinary voters.

To put it another way, Democrats peddle issues, and Republicans sell values. Consider the four G's: God, guns, gays and grizzlies.

"The Republicans are smarter," mused Oregon's governor, Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat. "They've created ... these social issues to get the public to stop looking at what's happening to them economically."

"What we once thought - that people would vote in their economic self-interest - is not true, and we Democrats haven't figured out how to deal with that."

Now I am not the world's biggest Kristof fan and I omitted his conclusion (we must do more of the Jesus talk) because I disagree with it. There are those who can in our party--Obama and Clinton come to mind. Others just plain can't. Some of us don't believe in it (either the particular religion in question or the injection of religion into public discourse) and others, like John Kerry, believe deeply but just can't put it into the sort of code words that resonate with Kristof's 4-G's crowd.

To pull a couple of examples I've seen on TV over the last couple of days (no links, sorry, I can't even remember what networks they were on, it all blurs together):

--(Unfortunately Ex-)Sen. Bob Kerrey narrowed it down to abortion as the key "Values" issue and said (heavily paraphrased) that we've been losing on it by running away from it, as well as letting it be framed as "save the babies" rather than "save women's lives."

Now him I wholeheartedly agree with and it needs to start now. We need to talk about a return to back alleys and coathangers for the poor and trips to Europe for the rich and respectable "D&Cs for menstrual blockage" for the dwindling insured middle class. Work on the assumption that we lose Roe v Wade in the next four years, but remember that after abortion goes "back to the states", i.e. illegal again they'll go after birth control.

--Newly reelected (thank you God and New York City) Sen. Chuck Schumer was on The Daily Show tonight and he and Jon Stewart kicked the "values" subject around too. Catch the rerun tomorrow as I tried to remember too many points and therefore forgot them all, but it was good. In fact I almost didn't watch the show, fearing it would be a downer, but dammit it was good. TDS ain't surrendering either.

As to Kristof's other points I frankly thought the guns thing was over with a long time ago and was blindsided by its reemergence. My brother in law is not a "gun nut" but he is a hunting nut and was somehow persuaded that John Kerry wanted to keep him from ever getting a deer again. Was there a hate-radio person who harped on this? It had to travel underground because I saw nothing, nada, zero public advertising or other push on this subject.

I will leave the "grizzlies" issue for a separate post, except to note we could combine it with the previous one if we wanted to get all Rovian win-at-all-costs about it--we could support the right to arm bears.