Electoral map of many colors
Daily Kos mentions something interesting I remember seeing a while ago: this feature in CommonWealth magazine about the 10 regions of U.S. politics, as put together by Robert David Sullivan. It's a far more informative approach than trying to stuff the country into idiotic red, blue and sorta purple boxes.
While I'm at it, let me follow up on yesterday's post. I don't want to lend too much credence to the idea that Democrats need to "get in" on the culture war and learn how to ape Republican outrage. The long term Democratic party will never really shift the scales that way, although we may get a Bill Clinton once in a while who sounds good enough on it.
My point is that liberals need to stop pretending they have no dog in the culture war. Liberals have very strong opinions about culture, in fact, and just about every indication we have says voters want to hear politicians opinions about culture. But for a variety of bad reasons--shell schock from the GOP's monopolization of culture war language, a too narrow view of how to go about waging civil rights battles, buying into the diversity vs. morality zero sum game, etc.--we have deprioritized these ideas in favor of correct but hopelessly dry economic and policy arguments. In doing this, we have lost the ability to craft a world view that voters can relate to.
So take the previous post as simply one way that liberals should start thinking outside the box and opening up conversation about our broader agenda, not as some quick fix that can score us a few more points among moderates in '08.
While I'm at it, let me follow up on yesterday's post. I don't want to lend too much credence to the idea that Democrats need to "get in" on the culture war and learn how to ape Republican outrage. The long term Democratic party will never really shift the scales that way, although we may get a Bill Clinton once in a while who sounds good enough on it.
My point is that liberals need to stop pretending they have no dog in the culture war. Liberals have very strong opinions about culture, in fact, and just about every indication we have says voters want to hear politicians opinions about culture. But for a variety of bad reasons--shell schock from the GOP's monopolization of culture war language, a too narrow view of how to go about waging civil rights battles, buying into the diversity vs. morality zero sum game, etc.--we have deprioritized these ideas in favor of correct but hopelessly dry economic and policy arguments. In doing this, we have lost the ability to craft a world view that voters can relate to.
So take the previous post as simply one way that liberals should start thinking outside the box and opening up conversation about our broader agenda, not as some quick fix that can score us a few more points among moderates in '08.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home