I don't know if it explains the entire process, the shift to the right. But one thing that seems important to me is the GOP has pretty strong message discipline on issues. They tend to say the same thngs, all of 'em, over and over. The Democrats don't, at least not as often.
Also, the Dems haven't staked out territory that marks them as the party for ordinary people. Health care, worker's rights...bankruptcy. These are issues the Democrats should own, but don't.

Posted at December 5, 2005 7:46 AM in response to OFF CENTER...

Josh is right. When you look at the big picture, Abramoff was running a massive deal. This isn't some small time thing. The guy was managing loads of cash, and was buddies with the men who run the GOP. Not the Limbaughs or the Hannitys who mouth off about issues, but the guys who really RUN the organization, determine its agenda and set its policies. DeLay, Reed, Norquist.
To attack this sort of criminal behavior you need the kind of prosecutor who goes after the mob. You need somebody like Fitzgerald, or Spitzer in NY. An aggressive prosecutor.

Posted at August 16, 2005 4:24 PM in response to The Abramoff 6

I have a Mac, too, and my cut-n-paste comments look the same way.

Posted at July 26, 2005 1:55 PM in response to Why Kansas?

I know, I was just using Clovis as an example of a small town in America's heartland.
And I'm happy to learn there is no Starbuck's in Clovis, NM. I bet Dave's is better than Starbuck's. anyway.

Posted at July 26, 2005 1:53 PM in response to Why Kansas?

Howdy Herostratus,
Kansas and much of the nation's middle has always been that way. Lagging behind the coasts in terms of pop culture, and other culture.
Can't get a latte, can't read the NYT, or find a copy of the Fourth World War.
I think those findings are constants. A Bostonian travelling through Kansas in 1920 would've complained of the same things.
Now, stupidity - that's another matter.
Unless you believe that living in proximity to a coast confers intelligence...or that access to decent coffee confers brains...I don't think you can honestly claim that mid-westerners are any dumber than the average American.
There are dummies all around - Kansas doesn't have a monopoly.
If anything, I think what you're seeing now is that pop culture has crept into the center of the country in a much larger way than was ever before possible. In the 1920's, the Texas panhandle was a totally different world than, say, Boston. The geographic identity of places like Kansas, west Texas, etc., defined those places, made them fairly radically different than Boston, NYC. And the people who lived in those places KNEW they were living in a different world, and they were proud of it.
You can't get a latte in Clovis? Who the fuck cares? You can't ride horseback for days without hitting a highway in Boston.
I think the glacier of pop culture has ground away the regional cultures that certainly existed in much of the USA.
As pop culture - the dominant culture - has told us all that what matters most is the avaiablity of LOTS of consumer goods, other things have lost their value.
This has little to do with Tom's book about Kansas and conservatism, but it has something to do with his earlier book on what constitutes "cool".

Posted at July 25, 2005 12:18 PM in response to Why Kansas?

Nothing beats coasting downhill from W Va into Va in a Sunbeam with a faulty carb that occasionally catches fire.
Wa-hoo-wa.
Good luck with the book.

Posted at July 25, 2005 11:57 AM in response to Why Kansas?

This discussion thread and dozens (probably hundreds) like it on the net are mirrored by similar discussions at work, at home and at play.
"Dean is catching heat" my gay colleague said this morning when I came into work.
"I know it, and he's right on the money!" I replied.
"He sure is", said my friend, and we had a good laugh about the GOP (and Biden's) response.
Dean wasn't mumbling. He made cogent, accurate statements about the GOP.
Dean is standing up for the voters, and it shows. He's not afraid to catch flack, and he's not afraid to speak his mind.
If Joe Biden or Joe Lieberman or Warner are the guys who decide what a spokesman should or shouldn't say, then we can get ready for a couple decades more of GOP domination. Because those guys are clowns. TV personalities who play a fake role, and don't care a whit about the poor, the middle class, or the war.
The GOP has been beating us senseless for 20 years. It's about time we fought back. Fuck 'em.
It doesn't matter if Biden looks good, or cool, or sounds tough on TV. What matters is that we have a party chair not afraid to differentiate the Dems from the GOoPers, and is willing to use sound-bite-friendly speech to do so.
You know what? The GOP really IS the party of white religious wackos. It really IS run by a bunch of people who've never worked for a living. You think Bush has ever worked? You think Dobson or Ralph Reed or Grover Norquist ever worked an honest day's labor in their lives?
Show me where any of those goofball rich fatcats has EVER been concerned about making ends meet.
God Bless Howard Dean for speaking the truth.

Posted at June 10, 2005 5:35 PM in response to Dr. Dean

Dean spoke the truth.
There are no African American Republicans in Congress. The GOP is a white man's party in a very real sense.
The GOP is now controlled by its religious fringe.
The GOP's actions and policies work counter to the interests of the lower and middle class workers in this country.
It is not at all surprising that people like Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman, who voted for the bankruptcy bill, are angry at Dean. Who cares?
The GOP runs on fear - fear of terrorsim, fear of gays, fear of immigrants - and uses that fear to pit people who SHOULD be working together against each other.
Dean said we weren't safer after Saddam was captured - he was right. Dean said the war was a bad idea - he was right. Dean said white voters with Confederate flags on their trucks were voting against their interests when they vote GOP - he was right.
The same clowns who criticized him for THOSE statements are criticizing him now.
The GOP is hell-bent on further enriching the rich, and who gives 2 shits about the poor or middle class?
Dismantle Social Security? Gut the EPA? How much deficit spending?
The GOP has lied us into an illegal war that has killed 1600+ Americans, maimed 10,000 more, and killed 100,000 Iraqis. A civil war is brewing in Iraq, we have no exit strategy, and no help is coming. And al Qaeda, which runs attacks on US soil on an 8 year cycle, is still active and gaining experienced recruits every day. 4 years from now we should expect another 911 attempt. What has Bush done to make us safer?
Fuck the GOP. The more times Dean calls them out, the better. Biden and Lieberman need to wake the hell up.

Posted at June 10, 2005 4:55 PM in response to Dr. Dean

....were the media, in large part. The David Broders, etc., of the DC kool kids club.
NBC and CBS both carried brief segments on the DSM today, and I'll bet you that those clips were the 1st time most Americans have heard of the DSM.
It's the media - control what gets said and you win the spin war. BushCo has fought - and won - a battle to intimidate the media.

Posted at June 7, 2005 9:16 PM in response to Understanding our National Denial about Iraq

Another place I'm looking for outrage, is among the Democrats who sided with BushCo as they lied and schemed in the run-up to this illegal war.
Where is the outrage among those Democrats who chided the "peaceniks", the protest marchers who doubted and mis-trusted Bush all along?
Where is the outrage among the 'tough centrist moderate' Democrats, the ones who belittled people who stood against the war from the beginning?
These Democrats who supported the war before it started should be outraged - at themselves.
If the Democratic Party is behind in the foreign policy arena, no small portion of blame rests with these clowns - people who wanted to act tough, and ignored the better judgement of the peacenik leftists.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice...
I hope the rank and file Democratic voters - who appear to be re-taking control of their party - know enough not to listen now to the same voices that were so utterly wrong about this crazy war.

Posted at June 7, 2005 7:50 PM in response to Where's the Outrage on Iraq?